TRUMP HAS NO BUSINESS IN SOUTH AMERICA / THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Trump has no business in South America

By John Paul Rathbone


Donald Trump has no business in Latin America. That is not a slur. It is a statement of fact.

The US president is to remain at home during this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in order to oversee the US response to Syria. That makes him the first US president to skip the summit — although with a 16 per cent approval rating in the region, he is unlikely to be missed.

Yet Mr Trump has no business in Latin America in the sharper sense of Calvin Coolidge’s famous quote: “The chief business of the American people is business”. The past week saw a kerfuffle over his former hotel in Panama City. It transpired that on March 22, Trump Organization lawyers appealed directly to Juan Carlos Varela, Panama’s president, to reverse the company’s acrimonious eviction as managers of the 70-storey luxury high rise, formerly known as the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower.

The letter is unusual on several counts. While never mentioning Mr Trump’s presidency, it notes Panama’s separation of powers but then essentially asks Mr Varela to intervene anyway. It suggests that the eviction of its management team by the hotel’s majority owner, Orestes Fintiklis, violates a bilateral investment treaty — although the Trump Organization is not an investor in Panama but rather a service provider. It then adds that the Panamanian government could be blamed for any wrongdoing.

A conflict of interest? Not for Trump Organization lawyers in Panama, who in a statement said the letter was not an attempt to pressure any “official of the government” and such appeals were “very common”.

In strict business terms, the letter is moot anyway. That same day, a New York judge blocked the Trump company from pursuing additional arbitration claims aimed at restoring its management of the hotel. That decision followed a March 9 ruling by a Panama judge, which argued the same. Finally, on March 27, an international arbitration panel also declined to reinstate the Trump team.

Now that the hotel management question has been definitely settled, and the Trumps thrown out, all that is left now is for both sides to finish their fight about damages, lost profits and other costs. The Trump Organization has, for some reason, dropped its alleged damages from an initial $150m claim to $9m, versus a $15m claim by the hotel owner.

After losing Panama, nixing a 2009 hotel project in Mexico, dropping out of a Brazil luxury hotel and cancelling a mooted Buenos Aires project, the only other Trump business project in South America is a licensed building in Uruguay’s Punta del Este. According to the company website, it will open late this year.

Donald Trump has no business in Latin America. That is not a slur. It is a statement of fact. The US president is to remain at home during this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in order to oversee the US response to Syria. That makes him the first US president to skip the summit — although with a 16 per cent approval rating in the region, he is unlikely to be missed.

Yet Mr Trump has no business in Latin America in the sharper sense of Calvin Coolidge’s famous quote: “The chief business of the American people is business”. The past week saw a kerfuffle over his former hotel in Panama City. It transpired that on March 22, Trump Organization lawyers appealed directly to Juan Carlos Varela, Panama’s president, to reverse the company’s acrimonious eviction as managers of the 70-storey luxury high rise, formerly known as the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower.

The letter is unusual on several counts. While never mentioning Mr Trump’s presidency, it notes Panama’s separation of powers but then essentially asks Mr Varela to intervene anyway. It suggests that the eviction of its management team by the hotel’s majority owner, Orestes Fintiklis, violates a bilateral investment treaty — although the Trump Organization is not an investor in Panama but rather a service provider. It then adds that the Panamanian government could be blamed for any wrongdoing.

A conflict of interest? Not for Trump Organization lawyers in Panama, who in a statement said the letter was not an attempt to pressure any “official of the government” and such appeals were “very common”.

In strict business terms, the letter is moot anyway. That same day, a New York judge blocked the Trump company from pursuing additional arbitration claims aimed at restoring its management of the hotel. That decision followed a March 9 ruling by a Panama judge, which argued the same. Finally, on March 27, an international arbitration panel also declined to reinstate the Trump team.

Now that the hotel management question has been definitely settled, and the Trumps thrown out, all that is left now is for both sides to finish their fight about damages, lost profits and other costs. The Trump Organization has, for some reason, dropped its alleged damages from an initial $150m claim to $9m, versus a $15m claim by the hotel owner.

After losing Panama, nixing a 2009 hotel project in Mexico, dropping out of a Brazil luxury hotel and cancelling a mooted Buenos Aires project, the only other Trump business project in South America is a licensed building in Uruguay’s Punta del Este. According to the company website, it will open late this year.