Trump 2.0

Donald Trump’s family business is breaking ground on an accelerated project in Vietnam as the country’s government seeks an updated trade agreement with the United States.

The U.S. president’s tariff threats have driven Vietnam to seek a new arrangement with America, potentially including efforts to combat trade fraud, as the White House inches closer to a July deadline when Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” tariff measures will snap back into place.

  Independent UK

 Trump family graft.

[Trump] previously ordered a 90-day pause of his order imposing sky-high tariff rates on many countries, including Vietnam, which is set to face a 46 percent tariff on all exports to the United States on top of the Trump administration’s 10 percent across-the-board import measures.

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[A] $1.5 billion Trump Organization development project outside of Hanoi has seemingly blown through the typical approval process, leaving locals enraged at the government and the president adding another layer to the onion of alleged self-dealing and kickbacks that has defined all four years and four months of Trump’s presidential tenure. According to documents published by the Times on the Trump Organization’s Hanoi development, the project skipped typical environmental reviews and cut short a local public comment period — one that had been dotted by fired-up local residents who’ve been informed that their land will be sold for less than half the value of what the parcels would have been worth prior to the alleged land grab.

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Wednesday’s groundbreaking for the project took place just three months after the initial documents were filed, a process which experts told the Times usually takes at least two years. Some steps were reportedly skipped entirely, while others were still underway.

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The area set to be developed for the project includes farms and nearly four square miles of riverbank property, all together totaling “hundreds” of residences.

One local, Le Van Truong, 54, was quoted byThe New York Times as saying he could lose farmland as well as the local cemetery holding five generations of his ancestors.

Will those farmers be able to get immediate relocation in the US like the Afrikaners?

Fun fact:

In one anecdote, the paper even noted that “the province is dotted with unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War” and saw a 200-pound bomb recovered recently.

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In an emailed statement to the Times regarding the Vietnam project, a White House spokesperson said: “All of the president’s trade discussions are totally unrelated to the Trump Organization.”

Sure, Jan.

The White House also insisted there was no conflict of interest because the president’s sons run the business.

LOL. Can you say, Hunter Biden?

Erasing all doubt about the project’s ties to official relations between the U.S. government and his own, Vietnam’s prime minister Pham Minh Chinh said at the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday that the project would “receive maximum support” to “further strengthen the relationship between Vietnam and the U.S.”

Retraction to come.

UPDATE 05/29/2025: