China OKs Ivanka Trump trademarks

HONG KONG — October brought bleak news for many American companies doing business in China, with tariffs rising and bilateral relations plummeting.

Not so for Ivanka Trump. On Oct. 13, Chinese regulators awarded Ivanka Trump Marks LLC preliminary approval on 16 trademark applications that were first submitted in early 2016, online filings with the Chinese trademark office show.

For President Donald Trump’s daughter, who is also a White House senior adviser, the approval was the crucial step toward letting her market a bevy of goods in China under her name, from cosmetics and sunglasses to semiconductors and voting machines.

Ethics watchdogs have long warned about the possibility of foreign governments seeking to curry favor with Trump through his family’s extensive business interests, and Ivanka Trump appeared to acknowledge the potential for conflict in her dual roles as White House official and international entrepreneur in July, when she shut down her namesake fashion line.

The October decisions were the largest batch of approvals for Ivanka Trump since her father entered the White House, and they came as he was locked in a trade standoff with China, according to Carolyn Zhang of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who first pointed out the updated filings this week.

The approvals were granted 2½ years after Ivanka Trump’s company applied, which is far longer than the average processing time of a year or less, said Hao Junbo, a trademark lawyer at the Beijing Hao Law Firm.