WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. will host next year’s Group of 20 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, arguing it was “the best location” for the high-stakes international gathering but insisting his family’s business “will not make any money on it.”
In his first term, Trump tried to host a separate global summit at the club, but backed down after criticism from his own party about the propriety of doing so. Now, though, Trump rarely travels domestically without golfing at or staying in properties bearing his name and has faced very little political blowback.
Trump’s sons have taken over running the Trump Organization while their father is in the White House. But the president has nonetheless prided himself in blurring the line between domestic and global policy and generating profits for the Trump brand.
He’s actively promoted his $TRUMP meme coin and even hosted the top 220 investors in it for a swanky dinner in May at his golf property in Virginia. The president made his first foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, after his sons crisscrossed the region drumming up business for the family’s other cryptocurrency ventures. Trump also went to Scotland to inaugurate his new golf course there.
The G20 is made up of some of the world’s major economies, the European Union and the African Union. Hosting the G20 at Doral would be an especially striking example of using the presidency to enrich his family, but Trump wasted little time defending it.
“I think everybody wants it there,” he said when asked if the global summit would be at his golf club and spa. Trump noted that the conference would be occurring in December 2026, a time of year when hotels in South Florida are often more full, and said that Doral had the space and was ideally suited because of its close proximity to the city’s airport.
The United States hasn’t hosted a G20 since it was held in Pittsburgh in 2009. The president suggested that organizers had requested the summit be at his property, but didn’t elaborate. He said each delegation from different countries “will have its own building.”
“It’s the best location, it’s beautiful, beautiful everything,” Trump said, while adding, “We will not make any money on it.”
“We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money, there’s no money in it. I just want it to go well,” Trump said. “I think it’ll be really a beautiful thing.”
He also called Doral “very, very successful, one of the most successful properties in the country.”
Miami Mayor Frances Suarez, who attended Friday’s G20 site announcement in the Oval Office, said it “puts us on the global map” but also acknowledged that, for the area, “It’s a tremendous boom for your economy.”
“As the president knows,” Suarez added. “He has multiple hospitality assets.”
Trump also said Friday that he would not be attending this year’s G20 in South Africa, but planned to send Vice President JD Vance in his place.
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