2020

Donald “Tough on China” Trump Has a Secret Chinese Bank Account

Funny how he never mentions this while claiming Joe Biden would be beholden to China as president.
US President Donald Trump gives a thumbsup as he walks from Marine One upon arrival on the South Lawn of the White House
By SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images.

When he hasn’t been demonizing immigrants, screaming about “Democrat run cities,” or gutting regulations created to combat climate change, Donald Trump has focused much of the last four years on supposedly fighting China like no other president has had the guts to. Despite having nothing to show for this alleged hardline with Beijing—the president’s trade war has cost U.S. taxpayers, and he praised President Xi Jinping as the coronavirus spread across the globe—with the 2020 election fast approaching, Trump has spent months insisting that if Joe Biden wins, America will be in bed with the authoritarian nation. “Nobody in 50 years has been WEAKER on China than Sleepy Joe Biden,” he tweeted in May. “China will own us!!!!” he type-screamed earlier this month. “Joe Biden must immediately release all emails, meetings, phone calls, transcripts, and records related to his involvement in his family’s business dealings, influence peddlings around the world—including China,” he shouted at a rally last week in Iowa, seemingly referring to an exceedingly sketchy news story allegedly showing financial ties between China and the Democratic nominee.

Of course, as we know from Biden’s tax returns, which he released in contrast to Trump, the former vice president doesn’t have any income from or business dealings with China. But you know who does? The New York Times has an idea:

...it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations—the others are Britain and Ireland—where Mr. Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records...The foreign accounts do not show up on Mr. Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear. The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management LLC, which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015.

In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue—some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Mr. Trump from the company’s capital account.

In addition to the existence of the Chinese bank account—controlled by a company that just happened to record eight figures’ worth of revenue during Trump’s first year in office—the Times reports that shortly after he won the election, Trump sold a penthouse in one of his buildings for $15.8 million to a Chinese-American businesswoman named Xiao Yan Chen, who “runs an international consulting firm and reportedly has high-level connections to government and political elites in China.”

(In a statement, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said Trump International Hotels Management LLC had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” related to attempts to do business there, adding that “no deals, transactions, or other business activities ever materialized and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive.”)

In related news, earlier this week the Times separately reported an extremely disturbing story concerning diplomats in China, who in 2018 were seemingly victims of an attack similar to the ones on their colleagues in Havana in 2016 and 2017—both groups experienced sudden headaches, blurred vision, dizziness, and memory loss. But while the administration withdrew embassy staff in Cuba, expelled Cuban diplomats from Washington, said U.S. diplomats had experienced “targeted attacks,” and blamed Cuba for not keeping the diplomats and their families safe, its approach to what happened to people in China was suspiciously different:

The administration took a softer approach with China. In May 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the CIA director during the Cuba events, told lawmakers that the medical details of one American official who had fallen ill in China were “very similar and entirely consistent” with the syndrome in Cuba. The administration evacuated more than a dozen federal employees and some of their family members. The State Department soon retreated, labeling what happened in China as “health incidents.” While the officers in Cuba were placed on administrative leave for rehabilitation, those in China initially had to use sick days and unpaid leave, some officers and their lawyers say. And the State Department did not open an investigation into what happened in China.

Critics say disparities in how the officers were treated stemmed from diplomatic and political considerations, including the president’s desire to strengthen relations with Russia and win a trade deal with China. China diplomats began reporting strange symptoms in spring 2018, as U.S. officials stationed there were trying to coax their Chinese counterparts into a trade deal that Mr. Trump had promised to deliver. The president was also looking to Beijing for help in clinching nuclear talks with North Korea and consistently lavished praise on Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian leader.

So yes, there’s definitely someone running for president who is “WEAK” on China, but it’s not Joe Biden.

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