How Trump Gets Rich on Tariffs: New Golf Course

Tariff Crisis

Small Farmers' Farms Are Being Destroyed for Trump's Golf Course: "Forcing Us"

Joachim Kerpner

Published 06.14

 

Photo: Patrick Semansky / AP

The Trump Organization got the green light in record time to build a skyscraper and a 36-hole golf course in Vietnam.

Now the small farmers' farms will be destroyed to make way for the luxury resort.

- They will take our land. What are we going to do with our lives? says Do Thi Suat, 63, to The New York Times. 

Quick version

• The Trump Organization has been given permission to build a skyscraper and a golf resort in Vietnam in record time, which will lead to the destruction of small farmers' farms.
• Vietnam promised new and better homes for small farmers, but there are suspicions that the project did not follow normal laws and processes, which normally would have taken significantly longer.
• The Trump administration claims that the deal has nothing to do with Donald Trump's tariffs, even though the construction permit was issued in connection with ongoing tariff negotiations between the United States and Vietnam.
  

Panic spread in Vietnam when Trump announced 46 percent tariffs in early April.

Six weeks later, the counterattack came from Pham Minh Chinh, Vietnam's Prime Minister. At that time, the agreement was presented that the Trump Organization will be allowed to build a tourist and golf resort in Hung Yen province and a skyscraper in the capital Hanoi for a total of $ 1.5 billion, around SEK 14.4 billion.

- The Trump family will make you very, very proud, said Eric Trump, Donald Trump's son, at the ceremony.

 

Small farmers work on land that will become the Trump Organization's golf course. Photo: Linh Pham / New York Times

Local residents were turned away by police. They were not allowed to join the party tent where Prime Minister Chinh promised from the podium that small farmers would get “new homes that are better than your old ones.”

The Prime Minister, however, did not mention that the construction process took just over three months, and that the laws governing this type of project have not been followed. Normally, the process would have taken between two and four years, according to The New York Times.

 

Cyclists roll through an area that is to be cleared and become a golf course, owned by the Trump Organization. Photo: Linh Pham / New York Times

In the spring, local residents have become increasingly negative about the golf facility, which is to be located on their farmland. They do not trust the Prime Minister’s words that they will be compensated generously:

“They don’t listen to us. They just come here and impose their will on us,” Le Thi Thanh, 57, told The New York Times.

– They will have hotels, golf courses and swimming pools. We will have nothing, Le Van Truong, 54, told the newspaper.

 

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, Eric Trump and other powerful people press the start button for the Trump Organization's project in Vietnam. Photo: Pham Kiem / AP

The Trump administration denies that the deal has anything to do with Donald Trump's tariffs. The White House writes in an email to The New York Times that "all tariff discussions that the president is conducting are completely unrelated to the Trump Organization". In addition, it is Eric Trump, not Donald Trump, who runs the Trump Organization and therefore there are no ethical doubts about the deal, according to the White House.

 

“The Trump family will make you very, very proud,” Eric Trump said at the ceremony in Vietnam on May 21. Photo: Pham Kiem / AP

On the same day as the ceremony in Hung Yen – May 21 – tariff negotiations between the United States and Vietnam were taking place in Washington. The following day, a press release was issued stating that “Vietnam and the United States have made positive progress” in the negotiations.

Tariffs against Vietnam and the rest of the world have previously been suspended until July.