One of the projects, in an area of West Java known as Lido, will include a Trump-branded resort alongside facilities planned by MNC that include a theme park twice as large as Universal Studios in Singapore and a golf course. Trump critics had been alarmed in May when MNC’s owner announced that China Metallurgical Corporation Group and Chinese Export and Credit Insurance were among the companies financing the development.

However, at the pre-launch event attended by Trump Jnr on Tuesday, MNC’s billionaire owner Hary said all financing from Chinese companies had been dropped. “There is no financing from China. The Chinese financing originally was in discussion for the theme park, nothing to do with the Trump residence. My team had a discussion with some Chinese bank, but finally we dropped the option. So we will do everything internally in Indonesia.”

The announcement by Hary came just days after US President Donald Trump upped the stakes in the increasingly acrimonious trade war between the United States and China by vowing to slap a new 10 per cent tariff on US$300 billion of Chinese goods as of September 1.

However, Donald Trump Jnr, who runs the Trump Organisation with younger brother Eric as the executive vice-president, told journalists at the pre-launch event that the two issues were not connected.

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“The two have nothing to do with each other. I haven’t spoken with my father, he hasn’t looked at the projects since he sort of changed careers,” Trump Jnr said, adding his father had “literally zero influence in the decision making process”.

Trump Jnr also hit out at suggestions in the media that the developments contradicted a pledge that the Trump Organisation would not enter any new foreign deals while in office. Posco E&C Indonesia, which is partly owned by the South Korean government, signed a US$120 million deal with MNC to help build the project in Lido last September and the company is also helping MNC with the Trump project in Bali, though details are still vague. In June, President Trump met his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in for a two-day state visit.

But Trump Jnr denied the issues were linked, saying the project had already been on the drawing board before his father became president. The memorandum of understanding was reached between MNC and the Trump Organisation in September 2015 – a full year before Trump won the presidential election in November 2016.

“When my father ran into politics, we said, voluntarily, we wouldn’t do new deals going forward. Obviously, we have to [follow the] obligation for the deals we had signed up before that happened,” Trump Jnr said.

He said he had even abandoned another project he had been working on with MNC at the time his father became president to avoid any suggestions of impropriety.

“[Hary] and I, we were working on a hotel deal that wasn’t over the finish line. So when we won the presidency, we decided we just can’t even do it … we voluntarily chose to put that aside so as not to create even the impression of any kind of impropriety there.”

He added that “after politics, we’d love to come back into the market” to pursue more real estate deals in Asia.

Critics have questioned President Trump’s commitment to distancing himself from the family business, on the grounds that he refused to fully separate from his company and instead put his holdings in a trust – which he can revoke or receive money from at any time. Some also suggest projects such as those in Indonesia should be considered “new” projects, rather than ones that were “unfinished” at the time of Trump’s election, on the grounds that the developer has signed new contracts with other companies since the memorandum of understanding was reached.

But Trump Jnr gave those arguments short shrift.

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“There’s gonna be critics no matter what, because if Donald Trump does something, that’s the reality that we’ve got used to dealing with, usually with the fake news of everything,” he said. “But the notion that some people would say that my father would even remotely be influenced or change US policy on major issues that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world is frankly asinine.”

A TALE OF TWO PROJECTS

The project in Lido, some two hours drive from Jakarta, sits on a leafy, 3,000-hectare site. In addition to the theme park by MNC it will consist of a Trump-branded “six-star” hotel, 281 luxury residences, an Ernie Els-designed golf course and a country club. The other project, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, will be the largest resort on the tourist island of Bali and be managed by the US developer. It will include a Phil Mickelson-designed, 18-hole golf club; a beach club; and 150 luxury suites that sit on 102-hectares overlooking the ancient Hindu shrine Tanah Lot. MNC Land aims to finish both projects in 2022, with the golf courses and clubs set for completion before the hotels.

The two long-stalled projects have put the close ties between the Trumps and Hary Tanoesoedibjo, a tycoon with net worth of more than US$1.1 billion, back under the spotlight. Hary was a vice-presidential candidate in the 2014 election alongside Wiranto, who is now among Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s top ministers, and in 2017 had mooted plans (since abandoned) of running for president.

The political party he founded in 2015, Indonesian Unity Party (Perindo), joined Jokowi’s coalition government this year and Hary has reportedly floated the name of his daughter, Angela Tanoesoedibjo, 32, as a potential cabinet member.

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However, Ujang Komarudin, a Jakarta-based political analyst from Al-Azhar University of Indonesia, said it was “highly unlikely” Widodo would consider Angela as a cabinet member as Perindo hadn’t gained the parliamentary threshold of four per cent of the vote.

“Typically, the president will only consider names from political parties that pass the threshold,” said Ujang.

Ujang also suggested the projects in Indonesia could provide momentum for Hary’s political career and that Hary could learn from Trump Snr’s journey from mogul to president.

On his part, Hary said the relationship had “nothing to do” with his political career.

“All the discussion and the involvement with the Trump Organisation is just pure business,” he said.