Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand dunes of Scotland’s northeastern coast rank among Donald Trump’s favourite spots on earth.
“At some point, maybe in my very old age, I’ll go there and do the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen,” Trump said in 2023, during his New York civil fraud trial, talking about his plans for future developments on his property in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire.
At 79 and back in the White House, Trump is making at least part of that pledge a reality, landing in Scotland 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 (local time) 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 320km 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”. But she added Trump “has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport”.
Trump family’s new golf course has tee times for sale
Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But this trip comes as the new golf course is already actively selling tee times.
“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 Organisation.”
During his first term, the Trump Organisation signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks 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 Organisation while he’s in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, 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 first Aberdeen course sparked legal battles
Trump’s existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area’s cliffs.
It 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’d 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 US$355 million (NZ$589 million) in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than US$510 million (NZ$847 million) as Trump appeals.