US President Donald Trump landed in Scotland on Friday as his family’s business prepares for the August 13 opening of a new golf course bearing his name.
Trump will be in Scotland until Tuesday, and plans to talk trade with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The Aberdeen area is already home to another of his courses, Trump International Scotland, and the Republican president is also visiting a Trump course near Turnberry, around 200 miles (320 kilometers) away on Scotland’s southwest coast. Trump said upon arrival on Friday evening that his son is “gonna cut a ribbon” for the new course during his trip. Eric Trump also went with his father to break ground on the project back in 2023.
Using a presidential overseas trip — with its sprawling entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters — to help show off Trump-brand golf destinations demonstrates how the president has become increasingly comfortable intermingling his governing pursuits with promoting his family’s business interests.
The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest, arguing that Trump’s business success before he entered politics was a key to his appeal with voters.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a “working trip.”
Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while enroute to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We’re at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn’t seem to see much of a difference,” said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for the ethics watchdog organisation Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It’s as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organization.”
During his first term, the Trump Organization signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics framework for Trump’s second term allows them.
Trump’s assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while he is in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf course, including plans to build luxury developments in Qatar and Vietnam, even as the administration negotiates tariff rates for those countries and around the globe.
Trump’s existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has struggled to turn a profit and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. Trump’s company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government’s legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it hurt golfers’ views.
And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals.
Trump’s company’s initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he would be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged.
Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $355 million in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $510 million as Trump appeals.