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Disclosure shows $38.4M in Gulf licensing fees to Trump Org
Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure, released June 30, 2026, reported $38.4 million in licensing fees from Trump-branded projects in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The developers are tied to Gulf states with trade, security and investment matters before the administration.
What happened
The Trump Organization’s largest licensing partner is Dar Al Arkan, a Saudi-listed developer, and its London-listed arm Dar Global. The Trump Organization licenses the family name to developers who build and sell under it. Dar Al Arkan and Dar Global hold Trump licenses for a $4 billion resort in Oman, towers in Jeddah and Riyadh, a golf community in Qatar, and a hotel-tower and golf estate in Dubai.
On June 30, 2026, the Office of Government Ethics released Trump’s 927-page financial disclosure for 2025. It reported that developers paid him and his company $38.4 million in licensing fees for projects in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. Line by line, the filing shows $22.95 million from the UAE, $9.24 million from Saudi Arabia, $5.25 million from Qatar and $0.95 million from Oman.
The same filing reported about $2.2 billion in total income, $1.4 billion of it from crypto. The fees were paid in a year when the Gulf states were negotiating with the administration on AI chips, arms, Iran and investment pledges. Some contracts predate the second term.
Who benefited
The Trump Organization, run by Eric Trump, and the president, who reported the income on his own disclosure, received those fees. The fees are realized cash, paid while he held office, from a developer controlled from Saudi Arabia and its partners in four Gulf states.
Who wanted something
Dar Al Arkan and the other Gulf developers operate in states whose governments were negotiating with the administration on chips, arms, security and investment while the fees were paid. The record does not match individual fees to individual projects or to any government decision.
Who lost out
No public money is in this record. The president’s company took those fees from businesses tied to foreign governments with active business before him. The only public accounting is a handful of lines in an annual filing released 18 months after the year began.
Why it matters
The Constitution bars a president from taking payments from foreign states without Congress’s consent. Whether licensing fees from state-linked developers count has never been decided by a court. The fees reported for one year were large, and the deals kept being signed.
Sources The NationalABC NewsCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in WashingtonOffice of Government Ethics (via CNBC) (primary)U.S. Office of Government Ethics (primary)