Trump's Real Estate Licensing Revenue Hits $59.5M; Gulf Deals Drive 71% Growth

Trump’s international real-estate licensing operations generated $59.5 million in 2025, a 71% increase from 2024 and nearly ten times the 2023 figure, according to a CNBC analysis of his annual financial disclosure. The surge marks a strategic reversal: the Trump Organization had largely avoided new foreign agreements during his first term.

The licensing model is straightforward. International developers finance and build properties; the Trump Organization collects fees for use of its name and, in some cases, for management services. The arrangement has proven especially lucrative in the Gulf, where branded residences command premium prices. During the first nine months of 2025, branded-home transaction volume in Dubai rose 26% year over year while sales value climbed 51%, according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE.

Four Trump-affiliated licensing entities not previously disclosed generated $20.25 million in 2025, accounting for 82% of the year-over-year increase. Five additional licensing LLCs previously listed as inactive produced another $9.64 million. More than 60% of total licensing income flowed from Gulf countries: the United Arab Emirates generated roughly $22 million, Saudi Arabia contributed $9 million, and Qatar provided $5 million.

Two Gulf developers dominated the revenue stream. Saudi-linked Dar Al Arkan and its Dubai-based international arm, Dar Global, generated $25.8 million in licensing payments. UAE-based Damac, founded by billionaire Hussain Sajwani, contributed $11.3 million. The Trump Organization’s second-term ethics policy permits deals with private foreign companies while barring direct transactions with foreign governments, though it allows arrangements where state-controlled entities participate indirectly.

Damac’s financial relationship with Trump illustrates the overlapping interests that concern ethics experts. In January 2025, Sajwani announced plans to invest at least $20 billion in U.S. data centers at Mar-a-Lago alongside Trump, who praised the commitment and promised companies investing $1 billion or more would receive expedited environmental and regulatory reviews. Six months later, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to accelerate permitting for qualifying data centers and supporting energy infrastructure.

By December, a Damac subsidiary paid $36.5 million for land near Canton, Ohio for a proposed data center, according to county property records. The same property had sold for $8.55 million just two days earlier. CNBC found no evidence that Damac’s licensing payments influenced the executive order or that Trump intervened on the company’s behalf. Canton city spokesperson Christian Turner said Damac Digital faces the same requirements as any other developer and no incentives have been approved.

The Qatar project presents a similar conflict structure. Trump reported $5.25 million in licensing income tied to Dar Global’s plans for a Trump-branded golf club and luxury villas in Qatar, part of the Simaisma coastal development led by Qatari Diar, a real estate investment company established by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and chaired by the country’s municipality minister. Dar Global and Qatari Diar announced the project on April 30, 2025, two weeks before Trump visited Doha during his first major foreign-policy trip of the second term and announced major aviation, defense and economic agreements with Qatar.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, Trump reported $5 million in licensing income tied to a planned $1.5 billion golf development outside Hanoi. The project advanced while Vietnamese officials negotiated with the Trump administration over a threatened 46% tariff. Then-Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh joined Eric Trump at the May 2025 groundbreaking and said the visit had “motivated us to expedite this project.”

The Trump Organization told CNBC it operates “completely separate from the presidency,” complies with ethics and conflict-of-interest laws and uses an outside ethics adviser. The organization did not respond to questions about specific projects. A White House spokesperson did not address the arrangements directly but said Trump’s decisions are guided by “the best interest of the American people” and pointed to more than $2 trillion in investment commitments and commercial, defense, aviation and technology deals announced during the May 2025 Gulf trip.

Ethics experts raised concerns about the structure of these arrangements. Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International U.S., told CNBC that “foreign governments and politically connected businesses now have a direct, incredibly visible way to put money into the sitting president’s pocket.” Kedric Payne, ethics director at the Campaign Legal Center, said the overlapping financial and policy interests create “at least the appearance of an ethics problem.”

Legal scholars also noted unresolved constitutional questions. The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars federal officeholders from accepting certain benefits from foreign states without congressional consent. Scott Anderson, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said courts have never definitively resolved whether payments routed through private developers can be attributed to foreign states when government-controlled companies own land, finance projects or participate in development. The Supreme Court dismissed several first-term lawsuits accusing Trump of violating the clause as moot after he left office in 2021, without ruling on the merits. Whether the current licensing structure would survive that scrutiny remains an open question.