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Forbes
Forbes
11 Apr 2025


Trump

Trump's international licensing deals are on an upswing after buildings in Canada, Panama and Brazil ditched his name.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Everyone knows Donald Trump likes to make deals, and he’s been making them around the world for years. The Trump Organization has slapped Trump’s name onto hotels, golf courses and luxury apartment buildings in more than a dozen countries. The latest announcement: a commercial tower in Pune, India, roughly a month after Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was one of Trump’s first international guests at the White House.

The trade war that Trump kicked off on April 2 with an avalanche of new American tariffs has the potential to impact his foreign constellation of properties. That potential doesn’t come from the tariffs themselves—he’s not making products overseas and shipping them back to the U.S.—but rather the enormous economic uncertainty and turmoil they bring as they upend the global commercial order. “We’ve gone from tariff impacts to demand destruction, and the latter is much more important,” Michael Bellisario, a hotel industry analyst at Baird, described earlier this week.

If that demand destruction holds, the tourism industry—already showing signs of weakness in the U.S. amid Trump’s immigration and student visa crackdowns—will undoubtedly be hit around the world. “Relative to many other expenditures, travel is more discretionary,” notes Bjorn Hanson, a hospitality industry consultant. Trump-owned properties, like his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, could suffer especially acutely if an economic downturn is blamed on his policies.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, all 13 countries (including two in the European Union) where Trump does business have signaled at least some willingness to negotiate with the U.S., meaning all have benefited from a 90-day pause on some tariffs. The U.S. actually has trade surpluses with six of them, meaning they only got hit with the minimum rate of 10% to begin with. In contrast, Trump has no branded properties in China, which is having a standoff with the U.S. as tariffs soar, leaving world markets jittery.

Trump has limited his skin in the game for the most part, meaning it will be his international partners, not Trump himself, that will feel any pain. That's because most other “Trump properties” are licensing and management deals, where a property owner pays to put Trump’s name on their building and, sometimes, to manage it.

The biggest impact might be felt by those projects still in the planning stages or under construction, like proposed developments in Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, that could be delayed due to macroeconomic uncertainty. Trump’s deals are unlikely to fall apart any time soon, though, Hanson says. “The people who hate Donald Trump the most aren’t in licensing deals with Donald Trump anymore,” he says. “The downside risk is limited.”

Below is a list of all the countries in which Donald Trump either owns properties or has signed licensing deals, plus how they’re impacted by the initial tariffs Trump announced, which are on hold for 90 days. Meanwhile, the 10% “baseline” tariff still applies.

The Trump Organization announced a deal with Kinh Bac City Development, a Vietnamese real estate conglomerate, in October. Reportedly, the development will include $1.5 billion of golf, hotel and residential property in Hung Yen province, just southeast of Hanoi. It’s unclear if any ground has been broken yet, though, and after Trump announced sky-high tariffs on the southeast Asian nation, shares of KBC plummeted 25% before recovering somewhat on the pause news. On April 4, Trump posted on Truth Social that Vietnam had offered to lift all tariffs on U.S. goods in exchange for a reprieve.

“The biggest and the best” is how billionaire Hary Tanoesoedibjo described to Forbes his planned resort in Bali in 2017, two years after his MNC Group and the Trump Organization announced plans to team up and open resorts in Bali and Lido. Hary and the Donald have much in common, starting with how they made their fortunes (real estate and media) and their political aspirations, though Tanoesoedibjo has yet to become Indonesia’s leader. A decade later, at least Lido’s Trump-branded golf course is open, but the surrounding estate remains under construction. The Bali project seems to have flopped, reportedly leaving local construction workers in the lurch. Trump didn’t report income from either on his most recent financial disclosure. As for the trade war, Reuters reports that Indonesia has offered to ramp up its purchases of U.S. energy and agricultural products in exchange for a deal to brings tariffs down.

The world’s most populous country also has the most Trump projects outside the United States. Forbes estimated that the president earned almost $1 million in 2023 from licensing agreements for towers in Mumbai and Gurgaon, though Trump-branded towers in Calcutta and Pune don’t seem to throw off any income for him. The Trump Organization also lists multiple additional projects as “coming soon” on its website, including a commercial real estate venture in Pune announced last month. The Indian government—led by Modi, a Trump ally—has so far declined to retaliate against the United States for Trump’s tariffs and is reportedly seeking a deal to lower them instead.

Ongoing Construction at Trump Towers Mumbai as Donald Trump Jr. Visits India

The gold-tinted Trump Tower Mumbai under construction in 2018.

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

South Korea is going the negotiation route. “Their top TEAM is on a plane heading to the U.S., and things are looking good,” Trump posted on Truth Social, the same day his taxes on South Korean imports went into effect (and were then paused). Despite his skepticism of basing American troops there, the president has a long history in South Korea. In the 1990s, he licensed his name to six towers, in Seoul and two other cities, that were built by Daewoo, a conglomerate that later collapsed following the Asian Financial Crisis. He reports no income from the deal on his most recent disclosure, but Google Streetview shows his name remained on the buildings as recently as 2018. Trump’s ties to Daewoo brought scrutiny between his terms in office when documents revealed that he owed them $19.8 million when he was first elected president, but never disclosed the debt.

Trump actually owns two properties in EU territory. His Doonbeg, Ireland golf course turned a $500,000 profit in 2023 on roughly $16 million of revenue. He rents out his mansion in French St. Martin, a Caribbean island, for $60,000/week in the high season. The 27-nation bloc planned to hit back at Trump’s tariffs, but paused its retaliation on Thursday following Trump’s suspension of his own tariff hikes the previous day.

Trump’s name emblazons one of the tallest buildings in the Filipino capital of Manila. The luxury apartment tower opened during Trump’s first term, and he reported earning between $1 million and $5 million in royalties for multiple years, but that’s down to $0 on his most recent disclosure. The Philippines, a former American colony whose population routinely maintains one of the highest approval ratings of the U.S. globally, is reportedly seeking to negotiate with the Trump administration over tariffs in conjunction with other southeast Asian nations.

The day before Trump’s fateful debate with Joe Biden in June 2024, the Trump Organization announced a licensing deal with DAR Global, a Dubai-based luxury real estate firm that is slated to build a golf resort in Muscat, the capital of Oman. The 140-room beachfront project is slated to open in 2028, but per his disclosure it’s already hauled in $2.5 million for Trump, likely the licensing fee. Oman—which has had a free trade agreement with the United States since 2009—will be minimally affected by the new tariffs, a government official told local media soon after they were announced, because oil and gas products are exempted.

In December, Trump’s partnership with DAR Global expanded westward to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s chief port city that, according to a press release, will soon have a 47-story Trump-branded apartment tower. The Kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, will apparently also get a Trump project, but details are currently scarce. “What I’ll tell you is one of them will definitely be a tower,” Eric Trump told Reuters. The Saudi stock market was down about 7% on the tariff news (before the pause boosted it back up), and plummeting global oil prices could pose a threat to the regional economy.

Trump Tower Istanbul opened in 2014; less than two years later, his calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States led his business partners, the Dogan family, to try to terminate the licensing deal. It didn’t work, and Forbes estimates that Trump made about $300,000 in 2023 in fees. On the day after Trump announced his tariffs, the country’s finance minister reportedly said that the low rate Turkey faces could provide it a comparative advantage over other countries that got hit with more punitive taxes.

The first Trump-branded golf club in Dubai opened in 2017, less than a month after he became president, and earned him an estimated $3.5 million in 2023 in licensing fees and management profit. A second, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, was supposed to open soon after, but has apparently been plagued by delays. Undeterred, the Trump Organization announced a third UAE-based project, a branded hotel and apartment tower, last July, partnering once again with DAR Global. The Abu Dhabi stock exchange fell on the tariff news but has since recovered some of its losses.

Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland, Aberdeen and Turnberry. The former lost about $1.7 million in 2023, the last year for which numbers are available, but Turnberry turned a $4.7 million profit, more than making up the loss. The U.S.’s trade surplus with its former colonial master helped secure the U.K. Trump’s lowest possible tariff, but the British FTSE 100 stock index is still down about 8% as of Thursday. Prime minister Keir Starmer has signaled a more cautious approach than his fellow Europeans: “My instinct is that we shouldn’t jump in with both feet to retaliate,” he told members of his Labour party this week.

Donald Trump Visits Turnberry Golf Club

Trump at his Turnberry Golf Club in Scotland roughly a week before declaring his 2016 presidential run.

Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

The only remaining Trump-branded property in Latin America was announced in 2012, but construction reportedly stalled during Trump’s first term. Local media reports indicate that it opened in 2022, celebrated at a ceremony attended by Uruguay’s president, but was still unfinished. Nonetheless, it threw off an estimated $600,000 for Trump’s licensing business last year. Uruguay, like many smaller countries, is seeking negotiations to reverse the new tariffs.

Dan Alexander contributed reporting.