Foreign leaders lavish gifts on Trump, family
Chess set, model jet among the presents
WASHINGTON – Before President Donald Trump’s relationship with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went south, the northern neighbor presented him with a statue of a “male lion” carved from Ohio sandstone worth $450.
And before Trump’s administration escalated trade tensions with Beijing by imposing tariffs on billions of dollars of goods, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave Trump a paper panel with five columns of calligraphy, valued at $14,400.
The artwork is among more than 80 gifts delivered to Trump and members of his family by foreign leaders during the president’s first year in office and disclosed Wednesday in an annual State Department report. The gifts, valued at more than $140,000 in all, are turned over to the National Archives or other U.S. agencies.
They include a portrait of a smiling Trump, sporting a red necktie, painted on mother-of-pearl panels from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; a $935 fountain pen from Germany’s Angela Merkel; and a map of the U.S. by 18th century French geographer Louis Brion de la Tour from French President Emmanuel Macron.
The most expensive gift bestowed on the Trump family came from Xi, a dinnerware set that includes an image of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worth $16,250. The two leaders met at the Florida property in 2017, and are expected to do so again in coming weeks to discuss a possible trade deal.
Another Trump building, Trump Tower in New York, was featured in an album presented by Poland’s Andrzej Duda.
Horacio Cartes, the former president of Paraguay, gave Trump a chess set worth $1,800. The crown prince of Bahrain gave the president a model jet fighter, made of goldplated silver, complete with missiles and rockets, worth $4,850.
Presidents and other U.S. officials are barred from receiving gifts from foreign governments under the Constitution unless approved by Congress – a clause that has inspired suits alleging Trump is accepting payments through his hotels.
But gifts of “minimal value” presented as a courtesy between heads of state are common. In those cases, a gift can be accepted on behalf of the United States. The administration justifies accepting those gifts by declaring that “non-acceptance would cause embarrassment to (the) donor and U.S. Government.”
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, received a bamboo bicycle valued at $1,060 from the Philippines in 2011 and a golf bag price priced at $7,750 from then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Presidents and other officials may purchase a gift for market value. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent $970 to purchase a necklace given to her by then-Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.