The Trump conflicts of interest policy could be even worse than last time

In an interview this week, Eric Trump promised that his father will build a “very large wall” between the incoming first family’s private business interests and any government business. Then, apparently without a hint of irony or shame, he took the stage at a crypto conference—which he attended as a representative of the crypto company his father has deep financial ties to—and spoke passionately about how President Trump would bolster the crypto industry as a whole.

The younger Trump sat for the interview with Reuters while in Abu Dhabi for the pro-crypto conference and said a number of potentially reassuring things about how his family intends to avoid conflicts of interest between the Trump Organization and the Trump presidential administration. But he stopped short of offering ironclad safeguards.

“There’s going to be, obviously, a very large wall between anything having to do with our company and anything to do with government,” Eric Trump told Reuters, promising to take the obligation seriously and pointing to his father’s first term as an example. While many government ethics expert agree that President Trump did not do enough to prevent conflicts the first time around—he refused to divest ownership of the Trump Organization, for example—Trump did refrain from making new deals with foreign investors between 2017 and 2021. Of course, Trump continued to do business with his pre-existing foreign partners, giving them preferred access at his 2017 inauguration and refusing to disclose exactly how much money foreign governments paid to rent hotel rooms at his various properties.

But this week—during the very same interview in which he pledged to take ethics issues seriously—Eric Trump described a far narrower promise: no new Trump Organization deals directly with foreign governments. That notably wouldn’t cover new deals resembling business partnerships the Trumps currently have in countries like India, Indonesia, Turkey, Oman, and, most recently, Saudi Arabia. It’s also not clear whether the promise not to deal directly with foreign governments includes Trump’s ongoing partnerships with LIV Golf, the golf league owned by the Private Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund which, at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, invests profits from Saudi Arabia’s oil industry.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, did not directly respond to a question about foreign deals, but said Donald Trump had already taken steps to remove himself from any conflicts and would be sacrificing even more wealth by serving as president.

“President Trump removed himself from his multi-billion-dollar real estate empire to run for office and forewent his government salary, becoming the first President to actually lose net worth while serving in the White House,” Leavitt responded. “Unlike most politicians, President Trump didn’t get into politics for profit – he’s fighting because he loves the people of this country and wants to make America great again.”

The final plan for how Donald Trump and his progeny will handle these potential conflicts hasn’t been released—a formal arrangement is currently being negotiated between Trump’s attorneys and the Office of Government Ethics. But despite, Eric Trump’s pledge to take the ethics issue seriously, he almost immediately appeared to undermine his own words.

Taking the stage at the same conference, Eric Trump told the crowd that his own family saw value in crypto as a way to circumvent the gatekeepers in the traditional investment world. He touted World Liberty Financial, the crypto company Trump founded earlier this year.

Then, Eric Trump riled up the crowd by asking if they liked current Gary Gensler, the current Securities and Exchange commissioner who is widely viewed as an enemy in the crypto world.

“Gary Gensler waged war against the industry that we all love and everybody knows it,” Eric Trump told attendees. Then he lauded Paul Atkins, a pro-crypto lawyer who Donald Trump has picked to replace Gensler.