During the campaign, Trump’s organisation continued to file dozens of new trademarks, in China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and Indonesia, and one of his companies applied for trademark protection in the Philippines more than a month after the election, a review of foreign records by The New York Times showed.
His trademarks in recent years have covered all manner of potential products, including soap and perfume in India, engineering services in Brunei and vodka in Israel. Even last week, the government in China, where his companies have filed for at least 126 trademarks since 2005, announced it was granting Trump rights to protect his name brand for construction projects, affirming a decision made in November.
The contrast with his hard-line anti-globalism since taking office is stark. During his first weeks as president, Trump denounced China and Mexico for unfair trade practices and derided the European Union as “basically a vehicle for Germany.” He ended American involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sprawling trade pact with Asian nations, and said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“Trump seems to be the archetypal businessman with mercantilist instincts,” Dani Rodrik, a professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said in an email. “Open your market for me to do business in it, but you can have access to mine only on my terms.”
The trademarks are the natural outgrowth of a global-spanning strategy. Like any businessman, Trump has long sought to protect his brand and products legally with trademarks, whether by registering a board game he once tried to sell, slogans like “Make America Great Again” or simply the name “Trump.”
But the trail of trademarks offers further clues to his international business ties, which leave the president vulnerable to potential conflicts of interest, or at least perception challenges. The Chinese government’s trademark announcement last week came just days after Trump retreated from challenging China’s policy on Taiwan in a call with China’s president, Xi Jinping.
The Times review of nine databases identified nearly 400 foreign trademarks registered to Trump companies since 2000 in 28 countries, among them New Zealand, Egypt and Russia, as well as the European Union. There are most likely many more trademarks, because there is no central repository of all trademarks from every country. The Trump Organisation has been filing trademarks for decades and has said that it has taken out trademarks in more than 80 countries.
“Over the last 20-plus years, the Trump Organisation has filed trademarks in numerous locations,” the company said in a statement. “Although the company will not be doing any new international deals, it will continue to take steps to protect its various brands.”
The organisation did not address specific questions posed about deals that emerged from the trademarks.
Some of the trademarks hinted at previously unknown foreign forays. While Trump assailed Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign for her connections to Brunei, he explored opportunities in the country, taking out a trademark covering several categories used for real estate projects, the review showed.
The Trump organisation also has international designs for its new Scion hotel brand. The organisation took out trademarks last year for Scion in Indonesia, the European Union, China and Canada, though an executive recently said expanding domestically would be the focus while Trump is in office.
Sometimes Trump’s trademarks are markers for ventures that never materialised or construction projects underway where he is licensing his name. Other times they appear to be part of a defensive strategy to ward off copyright infringement.
Some trademarks reinforce that for Trump, the ‘art of the deal’ has often proved elusive overseas. His record is littered with numerous failed or stalled projects, including development deals in Cozumel and Baja California, Mexico, in Russia and in Brazil.
A number of his trademarks are curiosities. He took out a European Union trademark for “Numquam Concedere,” Latin for “Never Give Up,” which is part of the crest at one of his Scottish golf courses. His Israeli trademarks highlight that his failed Trump vodka was revived in Israel, where the brand was licensed to another company and made with potatoes and not a grain, helping its popularity among observant Jews during Passover.
And while Trump is known to be involved in a high-rise project in India, he also has a trademark there in a category that covers laundry detergent, perfume and soaps. It is not clear if he envisions himself an Indian soap king or was simply laying down markers for branded products in his developments. What will become of all the overseas ventures remains unclear. Trump has said he is turning over control of his businesses to his two eldest sons, though he remains closely tied to his empire.
Foreign entanglements led a group of former White House ethics lawyers and constitutional scholars to file suit, charging that Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his businesses to receive payments from foreign governments. The president’s lawyers have disputed the merits of the suit.
Concerns about benefits flowing from foreign governments to the Trump Organisation have generally focused on payments and large loans held by lenders like the Bank of China. But trademarks, too, could pose problems.
©2017 The New York Times News Service