(Bloomberg) -- Eric Trump has big plans for his family’s real estate firm as his father prepares to enter the White House for a second term: New projects in Europe, Vietnam and India; perhaps a Trump-branded golf course in Saudi Arabia; “certainly” buildings in Israel at some point down the line.
Still, he wants to make one thing clear: Anyone doing business with the Trump Organization to curry favor with the incoming president will be “coming to the wrong guy.”
“I shield myself off from the White House and the administration,” he said. “My father has nothing to do with the company and I have nothing to do with Washington DC.”
It’s a pledge, made in interviews with Bloomberg both in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh this week, that ethics watchdogs and critics will closely scrutinize. While Donald Trump resigned from his position at Trump Organization before his first term, he continues to own the firm, and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. now manage it.
Eric Trump has been on a whirlwind tour of the Middle East in the wake of his father’s election win last month, addressing a cryptocurrency conference, overseeing the launch of a Trump Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and going to Riyadh to look at plots for the company’s next development.
As the firm plows ahead with forging deals internationally, few regions offer more opportunity than the Middle East, Eric Trump said. It’s home to one of the world’s hottest property markets, Dubai, where luxury house prices have surged in recent years. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is building luxury resorts and thousands of new homes as part of a trillion-dollar economic transformation plan.
“We’ll be doing a lot more projects in the Gulf, it’s a quickly expanding area and it loves the brand,” he said. “For developers the Gulf is a dream come true. They actually encourage you to go bigger than you even maybe want to go, and as a developer that’s kind of a beautiful thing.”
Some countries will be off-limits for the Trump Organization’s expansion, according to Eric Trump. Projects in China and Russia are unlikely, he said, given “macroeconomic and geopolitical forces.”
China has been a particular target for the incoming president. He has threatened sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports into the US in an attempt to reduce trade imbalances, while Russia is the subject of wide-ranging international sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine.
As for Israel, where terrorist attacks in October 2023 kickstarted over a year of bloody conflict in the Middle East, Eric Trump said the family’s firm will build in the country “when the tensions cool.”
No matter the region, he said, all deals will be with private companies.
“We won’t be working with foreign governments,” Eric Trump said. “That wouldn’t look right and it wouldn’t feel right.”
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