Vice, “Jared Kushner’s sister courted Chinese investors with a controversial visa program Trump just extended”, 8 May 2017:
Jared Kushner’s sister Nicole Meyer, right
The $1.2 trillion spending bill President Donald Trump signed Friday extended the controversial EB-5 program, which grants U.S. visas to foreigners, mostly from China, who invest at least $500,000 in a domestic development project.
A day later, Jared Kushner’s sister stood at the Beijing Ritz-Carlton pitching the program to a ballroom-full of at least 100 wealthy Chinese investors. “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States,” a brochure for the event read, according to the Washington Post. The family business, Kushner Cos. LLC, needed $150 million in financing for a housing development in Jersey City, New Jersey, the New York Times reported.
While Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser at the White House, promised to fully divest from his family’s multibillion-dollar real estate empire, the presentation Saturday highlighted clear conflicts between his lingering business interests and policy decisions. Kushner has become a key diplomat in increasingly tense U.S.-China relations, among his many roles with the administration.
During the presentation, Nicole Kushner Meyer didn’t hold back linking Kushner Cos. to the current U.S. administration. She:
- mentioned that her brother left the company to work for Trump, according to the Post
- showed a slide that pictured Trump as the “key decision-maker” on the fate of the EB-5 visa, according to the Times
- encouraged attendees to invest early before the Trump administration decides to roll back the program — as Congress is pushing for, according to the Post.
Footage of U.S. President Donald Trump is shown on a video screen as workers wait for investors at a reception desk for a presentation at a Shanghai hotel. The event promoted EB-5 investment in a Kushner Companies development in the U.S., Sunday, May 7, 2017.
“It’s incredibly stupid and highly inappropriate,” Richard Painter, former White House ethics counsel for President George W. Bush, told the Post. “They clearly imply that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa. . . . They’re [Chinese applicants] not going to take a chance. Of course they’re going to want to invest.”
This isn’t the first family’s first ethically questionable brush with Chinese investors and the EB-5 program. Kushner Cos. could earn as much as $500 million in a planned real estate deal, which relies on the EB-5 program for funding, with a Chinese company that has close connections to the Chinese government. And loans obtained through the EB-5 program funded about one-quarter of a Trump Tower in New Jersey.
Kusher Cos. apologized “if that mention of [Meyer’s] brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors,” in a statement emailed to NPR.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Tue, 09 May 2017 08:46 | #
Wow. It must be really tough for the Trump administration and its supporters these days. They’ve really put themselves into an interesting dilemma. How do they manage to hate Asian people and strategically oppose Asian people everywhere, while also strongly desiring the sweet, sweet sound of the counting of crisp dollar notes that are increasingly accumulating in Asia precisely because of that hatred?
It’s not even multidimensional chess at this stage, it’s more like hyperdimensional hungry-hungry hippos (not to be confused with Hyperdimension Neptunia—although, if you think about it, that can work too) is overlaid atop it.
The Americans understand that Asia’s overcapacity and hot money has to be sent to somewhere. For the Kushner-Trump dynasty, the question is:
1. Draw Asian investment into the United States and accept the sovereignty-hit which comes from it, in the hopes that they can counter it later on in the game, so as to offset the amount of activity occurring in Central Asia and the Pacific?
OR
2. Block Asian investment from the United States, and let it all be sent to Central Asia and the Pacific where it then challenges the strategic interests of the United States from a different angle?
It seems that the Kushner-Trumps prefer option number one, but they don’t know if they’re entirely sure about it or not.
What they don’t understand is that in hyperdimensional hungry-hungry hippos, is that it is possible to add more balls on the playing field through the use of a printing press, and there are a finite number of hippos. Therefore, Asian powers can simply choose both option one and option two, on a discriminatory sectoral basis.
The Kushner-Trump administration however, limits itself from doing the same thing back, because the Kushner-Trump administration is doing protectionism to please its White working class base so as to get re-elected. Therefore Trump had to abandon the TPP, and other trade initiatives, and cannot just throw money into all kinds of investments abroad in the same way.
Asian powers don’t have to worry about re-election because to the extent that we even have democracies in Asia, they are all ‘sham democracies’ anyway, so regardless of what happens, the real Asian administrators in the civil services jobs will never have to stand for judgement at a ballot box if any blowback occurs. Kushner and Trump are just realising that this game is really pretty difficult to play from the conspicuous and highly visible position they’ve placed themselves in.
Nevertheless, ready, steady, go! They have no choice but to play the game.