(Sent to all the American Politics faculty at Columbia, including me)
RE: Donald Trump presidential candidacy
Hi,
Firstly, apologies for the group email but I wasn’t sure who would be best prized to answer this query as we’ve not had much luck so far.
I am a Dubai-based reporter for **.
Donald Trump recently announced his intension to run for the US presidency in 2016.
He currently has a lot of high profile commercial and business deals in Dubai and is actively in talks for more in the wider region.We have been trying to determine:
If a candidate succeeds in winning a nomination and goes on to win the election and reside in the White House do they have to give up their business interests as these would be seen as a conflict of interest? Can a US president serve in office and still have massive commercial business interests abroad?Basically, would Trump have to relinquish these relationships if he was successfully elected? Are there are existing rules specifically governing this? Is there any previous case studies to go on?
Lastly, what are his chances of winning a nomination or being elected? So far, from what we have read it seems highly unlikely?
Regards,
***
Executive Editor
***
I hope you gave this question all due attention.
Hey, not every email makes it onto the blog—some get deleted immediately!
It is a legitimate question. Trump would probably put his assets into a blind trust. This may not have any practical consequence for Dubai.
Roger:
It’s never clear at any given time whether Trump’s assets are positive or negative. But since he won’t be elected president, the question doesn’t really matter!
Even when his net worth are negative, it’s still a positive for him because, as the saying goes, if you owe your creditors $100 that’s your problem; if you owe them $100 million, that’s their problem.
Corey:
Yup, Trump inspired the general principle that what is relevant is not your net worth, but the absolute value of your net worth.
Try telling Greece that!
If they had only borrowed more!
I had heard that the general principle had been first enunciated by a Canadian petroleum CEO (the Canadian Banking system/establishment is very strong and failure resistant)…
Greece should have left the Euro in 2010, or threatened that. Then they could have gotten a great deal (and avoided 5 years of depression-level austerity). The stupidity of the Greek leadership is overwhelming, not noting that for the last 5 years the European Union has been putting up firewalls that would allow Greece to exit.