Foreign Company at Center of Trade Dispute Paid Trump Millions

The main investor in a South Korean aluminum company facing an investigation by the Department of Commerce paid $2 million to President Trump’s holding company last year.

Trump included the payment from Base Group in his financial disclosure form in late June, The New York Times reports. The form stated that the payment was for a “nonrefundable development fee” and part of a “letter of intent,” but offered no further explanation. The Trump Organization told the Times in a statement that the payment is part of a golf course project that has yet to be announced.

“We have been in the golf, hospitality, and real estate business for decades and have entered into transactions with countless companies around the world,” Alan Garten, chief legal officer for The Trump Organization, said in the statement. “Any suggestion that this transaction was driven by anything other than legitimate business considerations is pure fiction.”

The Trump family has a longstanding relationship with Base Group, which exclusively sells Trump-branded wine in South Korea. The company hosted the president’s son Eric in February at its headquarters in Seoul for a meeting to increase trade between South Korea and the U.S.

The Commerce Department found in 2023 that Korea Aluminum, of which Base Group has a major stake, skirted trade duties on Chinese-made aluminum. Since then, the company has significantly cut its exports to the U.S.

The Times has not found any evidence that the president or his family members have tried to advocate for Base Group or Korea Aluminum with government officials. But the payment raises questions about conflicts of interest concerning the president and his family with government operations. Trump has close to 30 different ventures with foreign businesses around the world, according to the Times, creating issues that were unheard of in any previous presidential administration.

Trump has made a whopping $2.2 billion in his second term as president from cryptocurrency, foreign real estate, stock trading, and other ventures. Being president isn’t supposed to be a business move to increase one’s personal fortune, but Trump has used the office to make himself wealthier, ignoring the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution with the Supreme Court’s assent.

We only have The Trump Organization’s word that this South Korea payment didn’t come with any government favors. Who knows whether that is true, or if Trump has taken money in other cases from businesses in exchange for favorable policies.

Representative Thomas Kean Jr.’s grand return to Capitol Hill has come fully loaded with a no-win dilemma.

The New Jersey Republican inexplicably disappeared for several months, only to reemerge on the House floor late last month, claiming that he had struggled with depression and was therefore unable to vote on behalf of his constituents.

But Kean has since been forced between a rock and a hard place by the Trump administration after the Department of Homeland Security renewed a bid to resurrect a detention facility proposal in northern New Jersey, despite unified local opposition to the effort.

The conundrum has put Kean in an impossible position, requiring him to either infuriate voters in his district or publicly break with the White House, mere weeks out from a contentious midterm election that has him pitted against well-funded Democrat Rebecca Bennett for New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District. As of Monday afternoon, Kean had not taken a firm position for or against the facility.

“I have remained actively engaged on this issue from the beginning, and I will continue to bring together multiple levels of government to find a responsible, workable solution,” Kean said in a statement to Politico. “My priority is ensuring the residents of Roxbury are respected, heard, and represented every step of the way.”

Conservative strategists warned that the fallout for Kean could be just as bad on the right-wing side of politics if he decides to support the detention center’s construction.

“There are going to be conservative voters who are concerned about this development going in their backyard, which they very much don’t want, and it will affect their votes in November,” Carlos Cruz, a Republican consultant, told Politico.

Locals have already taken notice of Kean’s indecision.

“Even the Republican-led Roxbury Township Council has called out Congressman Kean Jr. for refusing to advocate on behalf of their community,” a spokesperson for Kean’s Democratic opponent, Bennett, told Politico. “His job title is representative, but he consistently fails to show up and fight for the people of New Jersey.”

The issue had almost resolved itself without Kean’s input. On June 29, DHS indicated in a legal filing that it no longer intended to convert the warehouse into a detention facility following a bipartisan lawsuit brought by Governor Mikie Sherrill’s administration and the Republican-run Roxbury Township.

But that same day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin put his foot down, insisting that the agency would not let go of the site.

“DHS will NEVER back down. We will be keeping this site for a detention center,” Mullin wrote on X.

Days later, DHS followed Mullin’s lead, writing in another legal filing that the “agency intends to move forward with plans to consider the retrofitting of the Roxbury Township warehouse facility for use as a detention facility.”

Rather than provide steady, articulate leadership and communication during his Iran war, the commander in chief has embraced bluster and erratic flip-flopping. The latest example of this came Tuesday, when President Donald Trump adopted a stance on the Strait of Hormuz diametrically opposed to the one he had announced the day before.

On Monday, Trump decided that the United States would seize control of the strait. “We’ll become the guardian of the strait,” he told Fox News. “Now we’re gonna guard it, and we’re gonna get paid for guarding it. A lot of money. But we just want to be reimbursed.” In a Truth Social post, he said a 20 percent toll would be imposed on “all cargo shipped” through the strait.

It was a stark reversal of the administration’s previous stance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance had stated unequivocally that no country would impose such a toll.

Then the sun set and rose again, and Trump had yet another 180-degree change of heart.

Tuesday, Trump declared that there would be no toll after all. Instead, he said vaguely in a Truth Social post that the U.S. would pursue “Trade and Investment Deals” with Gulf states. Shortly thereafter, he confirmed this new approach during a press conference. “I don’t think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait,” the president said, “or for any other strait relationship in terms of other sections of the world. I don’t think anybody should be really in that position.”

What spurred Trump’s whiplash-inducing reversal of an already-reversed course?

After he proposed the toll, Trump told a reporter Tuesday, he was allegedly contacted by “kings and emirs and all of the people that we all know and we all love … and they said, ‘We’d love to do it a different way.’”

Also, after Trump initially announced the tolls, Iran asserted its control of the strait. Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi answered Trump with a message on X: “POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service. Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair.”

President Trump on Monday significantly reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, cutting the amount of protected land that they hold by about 1.5 million acres each.

Trump slashed protections for both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante during his first term to free up two million acres for oil drilling and uranium mining. This led environmental groups and Native American tribes to sue, and former President Joe Biden reversed the measure. Now, with this most recent move, those same groups are preparing to take up legal arms against the Trump administration once again.

National lands and monuments, which often appear similar to national parks, have a different set of regulations around them as established by the Antiquities Act of 1906. Those opposed to Trump’s executive order argue that under this law, a president can only create national lands and monuments but not shrink or eliminate them. Those in favor of opening the land to oil drilling note that “any land reserved under the act must be limited to the smallest area compatible,” as argued by Supreme Chief Justice John Roberts in 2021.

“Today’s action makes it clear that Utah is the epicenter of Republican efforts to dismantle and obliterate America’s system of public lands,” Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance executive director Scott Braden said in a statement, vowing to challenge the executive order in court. “President Trump’s outrageous attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monument was taken at the urging of Utah politicians—Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis, Governor Spencer Cox, and the others—who championed this action. These two landscapes deserve to be protected for current and future generations of Utahns and Americans, not opened to exploitation.”

“You have an administration that backs you up, and then you’re back to square one again,” Pueblo of Zuni councilman and Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition co-chair Anthony Sanchez Jr. told The New York Times on Monday. “Even now, with the boundaries not reduced, we still run into that trouble.”

Bears Ears is the ancestral homeland of the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni, and contains rock art that is culturally significant.

Democrats in Congress aren’t happy that President Trump has restarted the Iran war.

Trump formally notified lawmakers last week that the war in Iran has resumed, attempting to legally claim that a new 60-day period has started that gives him the power to use military action in Iran without congressional approval. Democrats called out the Trump administration for going back on its promises that the war was over.

“We were promised the war would be over for months. And now in a matter of days, we’ve gone from a bad U.S.-Iran deal to more strikes, another blockade, and added turmoil that will only drive prices higher,” Senator Adam Schiff said on X Monday.

The California senator filed a new war powers resolution on Monday, co-sponsored by colleagues Tim Kaine, Andy Kim, Jeff Merkley, and Chris Van Hollen, in an attempt to rein in the president.

“Any assertion by the Trump Administration that he gets 60 more days to act without Congress has no foundation in law,” Schiff said in a statement, asking for a “new vote to end this war.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday that “Trump’s rinse and repeat approach to the Iran war isn’t a strategy, it’s a recipe for utter disaster.

“We keep moving backward. Gas prices stay high, casualties increase, costs increase. It’s incredible what a fiasco this war is,” Schumer added.

Senator Chris Murphy pointed out that the war’s resumption hurts the economy, saying, “Gas prices are spiking again.”

“The bottom line? Trump has no moves to make. His spiraling incompetence has boxed America in. It’s only going to get worse,” Murphy said in an X post.

Last month, Iran and the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding, seemingly ending the conflict while long-term negotiations continued. Those negotiations have collapsed, and Iran has resumed attacking American and oil industry targets in the Persian Gulf, while the U.S. military is once again bombing targets within Iran. Iran has resumed its tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, while Trump claims that the U.S. naval blockade of Iran is back on. By trying to reset the clock, Trump is acknowledging, consciously or not, that he’s also resetting a quagmire.