President Trump Steered the 2026 G20 Summit to His Own Doral Resort as Foreign Governments Continued Patronizing His Properties
Foreign governments and officials continued spending money at President Trump's for-profit hotels, resorts and golf clubs during his second term. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington recorded 60 visits by foreign officials and eight foreign governments hosting or sponsoring events at those properties. Because these are paid transactions at businesses the president owns, rather than ordinary meetings on government grounds, they raise Foreign Emoluments Clause concerns.
President Trump also selected his own Doral resort to host the December 2026 G20 summit, reviving the concerns that forced him to abandon a 2020 G7 plan at the same property. No court has ruled on the merits, because the first-term emoluments lawsuits were dismissed as moot once he left office, leaving the underlying questions unresolved into his second term. The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute concluded the second-term arrangements "probably violate" the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
Details
In the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump continued to profit from foreign governments and officials patronizing his hotels, golf courses and resorts, and in September 2025 he took the practice a step further by selecting his own Trump National Doral Miami resort to host the December 2026 Group of 20 leaders' summit. The two developments—foreign money flowing into Trump-owned properties, and the president steering an official diplomatic event to a business he owns—have revived long-running questions about the Constitution's Emoluments Clauses, which no court has ever definitively interpreted.
According to a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan watchdog group, 55 officials from 21 countries made 60 visits to Trump properties during his first year back in office, and eight foreign governments hosted or sponsored five events at those properties. Trump himself visited his properties 198 times in that year, including 116 visits to his golf courses. CREW, which tracked more than 3,700 conflicts of interest across Trump's first term, characterized his second-term profiteering as exceeding that earlier standard.
The Emoluments Clauses
The Constitution contains two anti-corruption provisions relevant here. The Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9) bars any federal officeholder from accepting "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State" without the consent of Congress. The Domestic Emoluments Clause (Article II, Section 1) fixes the president's salary and bars him from receiving any other payment from the federal government or the states.
As the Brennan Center for Justice explains, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has historically read the clauses to broadly prohibit a president from receiving any tangible profit or benefit from a foreign government (absent congressional consent) or from a U.S. state. Foreign-government spending at Trump properties implicates the Foreign Emoluments Clause. The decision to route the G20 to a Trump property—and the free global publicity that comes with it—implicates the Domestic Emoluments Clause. When Trump first took office in 2017, he broke with the practice of recent predecessors by declining to divest his business holdings or place them in a blind trust, an approach he has continued in his second term.
Foreign Officials at Trump Properties
CREW reported that officials from Israel made the most visits to Trump properties in his first year back in office, followed by officials from Argentina. What sets these apart from routine diplomacy, in CREW's account, is the venue: because Trump still owns and profits from Mar-a-Lago and his private clubs, foreign delegations that lodge, dine or hold functions there can generate revenue that flows to the president. Several heads of state were among the visitors. In January 2026, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico met Trump at Mar-a-Lago and afterward described the meeting, held in Trump's "private living room," as a sign of honor and trust. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited in December 2025, attended Trump's New Year's Eve party at Mar-a-Lago days later. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also met Trump in Florida in late December, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met him at both of his golf courses in Scotland. The presidents of Finland, Ecuador, Argentina and Costa Rica visited as well.
Argentine President Javier Milei made two visits to Mar-a-Lago in 2025, in April and November, each time accompanied by a delegation that included his economy minister, foreign minister and ambassador to the United States. The pattern echoes an incentive one diplomat described after Trump's 2016 election: that staying at a Trump property signaled goodwill toward the incoming administration.
Foreign-Government Events
The eight foreign governments CREW counted as hosting or sponsoring events were led by entities tied to the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth-fund-backed LIV Golf league held a tournament at Trump National Doral in April 2025—the fourth consecutive year LIV scheduled an event at the venue, and the first with Trump as sitting president—and sponsored a smaller event in May. LIV, which pays the Trump family for use of the resort's courses, is scheduled to return in 2026 with tournaments at Trump National in Virginia and at Trump National Bedminster.
In August 2025, the cryptocurrency company Nexo held a tournament at Trump's Aberdeen golf course in Scotland with three foreign-government-linked sponsors: Emirates Airlines and DP World, a shipping company owned by Dubai's sovereign wealth fund, and Adlar Properties, a developer owned by Abu Dhabi's government.
The 2026 G20 at Trump Doral
On September 5, 2025, Trump announced from the Oval Office, with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez present, that the United States would host the 2026 G20 leaders' summit at Trump National Doral on December 14–15, 2026. He said the resort—which he purchased in 2012 for $150 million—was chosen for its proximity to Miami International Airport, and that it would not profit from the event. "There's no money in it," he told reporters. The White House said Doral would host the summit "at-cost, and will receive no profit from either the State Department or a foreign government."
The choice revived a plan from Trump's first term. In 2019, his administration announced that Doral would host the 2020 G7 summit, only for Trump to reverse course within days amid bipartisan criticism that it would enrich him and could violate the Emoluments Clauses. The summit was ultimately held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, reporting suggests the selection was settled early: CNN reported in July 2025 that the plan had been under discussion for weeks, and that an aide had been seen carrying a "G20 Miami 2026" sign into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in June.
CREW, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records on how the site was chosen, said the State Department produced no proposal from Miami or any other city outlining why it was the best venue, even as the department laid out detailed requirements in the Federal Register for smaller G20 meetings elsewhere. The group argued that even if the summit generates no direct revenue, Trump's property would gain substantial free publicity from its time in the global spotlight—which it contends could itself constitute a domestic emolument. CREW noted that after Pittsburgh hosted the 2009 G20, its mayor remarked that the worldwide marketing the city received could not be assigned a dollar value.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told CNN that the risks of self-dealing are heightened when a president's business intersects with international relations and opportunities for foreign officials to curry favor. Some commentators drew a distinction between the summit decision and earlier criticism of Trump's properties: whereas the administration has long argued that Trump merely benefits passively when others choose to patronize his businesses, directing an official U.S.-hosted summit to his own resort is an affirmative act by the president. Trump has said the club may end up worse off financially by hosting. Separately, in November 2025 Trump announced that South Africa would not be invited to the 2026 summit, citing a dispute over the handover of the G20 presidency and its treatment of Afrikaners.
First-Term Precedent: The Washington Hotel
The clearest prior accounting of foreign-government money reaching a Trump property came from his first term. Based on documents obtained from the General Services Administration, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform estimated in 2021 that the Trump International Hotel in Washington—housed in the federally owned Old Post Office building—received roughly $3.7 million in payments from foreign governments between 2017 and 2020. The committee derived that estimate in part from the $448,000 the Trump Organization donated to the U.S. Treasury as identified foreign-government profits over 2017–2019, and cautioned that the figure was imprecise and that it could not determine which governments made the payments. The same records showed the hotel lost more than $70 million overall. Trump sold the property in 2022, so the $3.7 million figure is a first-term benchmark rather than a second-term total. Comparable ledger-level figures for the second term have not been made public.
A broader House Oversight report that same period found Trump businesses received at least $7.8 million from at least 20 foreign governments over two years, though the committee said that figure—based on incomplete ledgers from four of Trump's more than 500 businesses—was likely a fraction of the true total.
The Trump Organization's Second-Term Ethics Plan
Ten days before Trump's second inauguration, the Trump Organization released an ethics plan that pledged the company would not enter new agreements with foreign governments while Trump is in office, would voluntarily donate any identifiable foreign-government profits to the Treasury, and would place management of the business with his sons and an outside ethics adviser rather than the president himself. Ethics experts noted the plan was narrower than it appeared: it restricted deals with foreign governments themselves but, unlike the first-term policy, placed no restriction on new deals with private foreign companies. Eric Trump, the company's executive vice president, had said the firm would continue pursuing foreign business.
CREW documented 22 Trump-branded projects under development abroad during the second term, more than tripling the number of Trump properties operating overseas. Several have close ties to foreign governments: in Oman, a Trump hotel, golf course and residences are being built on government-owned land with a state tourism agency as a partner. The Trump Organization has said these arrangements comply with its ethics commitments because they involve private developers rather than governments directly.
Legal Status
The Emoluments Clauses have never been authoritatively interpreted by the Supreme Court. During Trump's first term, three lawsuits were filed alleging he was violating them: CREW v. Trump (brought by the watchdog group and hospitality-industry competitors), Blumenthal v. Trump (brought by congressional Democrats), and D.C. and Maryland v. Trump. As the Constitution Annotated summarizes, these produced the first significant judicial rulings on the clauses, but standing was a persistent obstacle: the D.C. Circuit held that individual members of Congress lacked standing, while the Second Circuit allowed the competitor-standing theory to proceed. After Trump left office in January 2021, the Supreme Court instructed the lower courts to vacate their rulings and dismiss the remaining cases as moot, leaving no merits precedent. Former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub called the mootness dismissal misguided, arguing that Trump still retained the money.
Legal analysts across the spectrum have said the second-term arrangements raise serious questions. The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute wrote that Trump has "expressly organized" his business interests to facilitate foreign gifts and that these arrangements "probably violate" the Foreign Emoluments Clause—while acknowledging that standing remains a high hurdle and that meaningful enforcement would likely require new legislation, which faces long odds given divided views in Congress and a probable presidential veto. The Brennan Center reached a similar conclusion, arguing that courts may again be asked to weigh in but that any new suit could founder on the same procedural barriers as before.
Administration and Trump Response
Trump and his allies have defended the arrangements on several grounds. They maintain that he benefits passively from properties others choose to patronize and does not require any foreign official to spend money at his businesses. On the G20, the White House says Doral will operate "at-cost" with no profit to Trump. The Trump Organization has said it donates identified foreign-government profits to the Treasury and that its foreign developments involve private partners, not governments. The Trump Organization did not, in past reporting, contest that foreign officials patronize its properties, but has disputed characterizations that it received preferential treatment from lenders. The administration has broadly rejected emoluments allegations as meritless, a position Trump has held since his first day in office in 2017.