



RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Trump Organization has agreed to a new Middle East golf course and real estate deal that involves a Qatari government-owned firm, two weeks before President Donald Trump is set to travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on a state visit.
The project in Qatar, a key U.S. ally and home to a major American military base, is a partnership with Qatari Diar, a real estate company established by the country’s sovereign wealth fund and chaired by a government minister.
Eric Trump, the president’s son who runs the family business, traveled to the Middle East this week to attend a cryptocurrency conference and promote the company’s real estate developments, which include a separate Trump-branded tower in Dubai, the largest city in the Emirates.
The two projects will also involve Dar Global, the international subsidiary of the private Saudi real estate firm Dar Al Arkan, which is leading the project and has close ties to the Saudi government. The Qatar project was initially reported by Reuters.
The Trump golf course in Qatar is the most recent in a series of projects that directly involve foreign governments. And it is just one of a growing list of ways that the Trump family is profiting from Donald Trump’s refreshed status after his return to the White House, including two cryptocurrency ventures.
In Oman, the Trump family has partnered on a Dar Global hotel and golf project that is being built on state-owned land, and the government will get a share of the revenues generated, according to company documents. In Serbia, the Trump family is planning a new hotel in collaboration with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
During Trump’s first term, the family held off signing international deals while he was in office. In January, before Trump was inaugurated as president for a second time, the Trump Organization issued a formal ethics statement that it would have “no new transactions with foreign governments” but would pursue international deals.
Eric Trump said in a statement Wednesday that his family continued to honor this pledge, as Dar Global had purchased the land from the Qatari government entity.
“Our partners Dar purchased land from them,” Trump said, after he appeared at a signing event with Dar Global and representatives from the Qatari government. “We have zero relationship with them — they are there showing me the vision of the city.”
But the Trump Organization has accelerated its international real estate dealmaking in the months since the elder Trump was reelected, including a new development in Vietnam.
Few places exemplify the Trump family’s fluid melding of business with politics as clearly as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, the three countries in the Gulf that the president will visit.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and the national security adviser of the Emirates, also oversees a vast business empire and chairs G42, one of the region’s leading artificial intelligence firms. In Qatar, the energy minister heads its state energy company.
In Saudi Arabia, nearly every major business has ties to the state, either via government-owned stakes in the companies or extensive government contracts.