2025-06-17
8 分钟NPR. This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Waylon Wong.
And I'm Adrian Ma.
Last month, President Trump's son Eric paid a visit to Vietnam.
He's an executive vice president at the family business, the Trump Organization.
And Eric was in town to break ground on a $1.5 billion project.
The company is building a luxury residential development and golf course in the Hung Yen province,
which is right outside Hanoi.
This groundbreaking ceremony was important enough that Vietnamese Prime Minister Pha Minh Chin attended.
And he suggested in his public remarks that this golf course project will help smooth Vietnam-U.S.
relations.
The two countries are in trade talks right now,
and Vietnam is hoping to avoid a sky-high 46% tariff rate.
But this potential intermingling of official trade policy with Trump family business raises red flags when it comes to government ethics.
Today on the show,
we look at those flags and how Vietnam's difficult position in the trade war may have pushed the government to fast track a deal.
Back in 2017, in the early months of the first Trump administration,
Jessica Tillipman was invited by a U.S. federal agency to lead a training session for foreign government officials.
Jessica is an associate dean at the George Washington University Law School,
and she was there to teach these foreign leaders how they could improve their ethics and anti-corruption rules back home.