The issue of US-China rivalry has once again taken centrestage in US elections after a New York Times report revealed that President Donald Trump maintains a bank account in China and has invested in companies and businesses directly or indirectly linked to China.
The report comes as Trump and his allies said that Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden will go ‘soft’ on China if elected as his son has had business dealings with the country.
Senate Republicans produced a report claiming that Biden’s son Hunter opened a bank account with a Chinese businessman.
NYT cited various fact-checking sites to report that the huge figure was quoted from a a fund-raising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10 percent stake after Joe Biden left office.
According to the report, China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where President Trump has a bank account. The Chinese account is reportedly in the name of Trump International Hotels Management LLC which paid $188,561 in taxes to China from 2013 to 2015.
The company in 2017 had a buyout of its management contract for the SoHo hotel in New York, which according to Bloomberg cost around $6 million.
Here are some other details that the the report revealed:
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told NYT that the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” after establishing an office in China to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.
The report further said that these accounts do not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosures as his personal assets, because they are held under corporate names.
(With inputs from The New York Times.)
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