Business trumps presidency as Don meets India partners
Mr Trump meeting Indian businessmen shows he has not fully disengaged from his ventures Trump Towers Pune have an extraordinary new marketing tool and a brand image boost
It is a daunting proposition to put $2 million apartments on the market in Pune, where even the fanciest neighborhoods are lined with squat housing blocks.
But the developers of Trump Towers Pune, an elegant pair of 23-story black-glass pillars, have an extraordinary new marketing tool they are moving quickly to exploit: the President-elect of the US.
Since Donald Trump won the presidency, they have celebrated the growth that Mr Trump’s win could bring to their brand, even flying to New York last week to meet with the president-elect and his family as he was assembling his Cabinet.
“We will see a tremendous jump in valuation in terms of the second tower,” said Pranav R. Bhakta, a consultant who helped Mr Trump’s organization make inroads into the Indian market five years ago.
“To say, ‘I have a Trump flat or residence’ — it’s President-elect branded. It’s that recall value. If they didn’t know Trump before, they definitely know him now.”
In just under nine weeks, Mr Trump will take control of a portfolio of public business between the US and India, the world’s two largest democracies, supervising debates over issues including climate change, maritime shadowboxing with China and the nuclear standoff with Pakistan.
The meeting shows that Mr Trump has not fully disengaged from his business ventures even as he leads his presidential transition, and it highlights the potential conflicts he will face going forward if he does not separate himself from a brand that has been constructed around his persona.
In a telephone interview, Atul Chordia, one of the developers who met last week with Mr Trump, played down the appointment as a “two-minute” congratulatory conversation in which no business was transacted and no new projects were discussed.
But newspapers in India reported it as a business meeting, illustrated with a photograph of the beaming real estate executives — Atul Chordia, Sagar Chordia and Kalpesh Mehta — flanking the future president, and indicated that the builders and Mr Trump’s organization are planning further collaborative real estate projects.
Sagar Chordia confirmed to The New York Times on Saturday that this account of the meeting in New York — which included discussions with the Trump family about possible additional real estate deals — was accurate. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not dispute this account, saying only that the encounter with Trump himself was brief.
“We have identified a piece of land and spoken to them,” Sagar Chordia told Business Standard. Sagar Chordia, who posted photos of himself wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat on social media during the presidential campaign, did not respond to requests for comment from The Times.
Three prominent ethics lawyers said in interviews Sunday that the interaction between Mr Trump and his business partners from India does not appear to violate federal laws or ethics rules, nor would it even if he had already been sworn in. This is in part because the president, unlike members of Congress and most other federal employees, is exempt from such requirements. But each lawyer agreed the activities created the appearance that Mr Trump and his business partners are using his status as a way to profit.
“It is unprecedented in modern history,” said Andrew D. Herman, a lawyer who has represented more than a dozen members of Congress in ethics cases. “But this is the new normal.”