Business
Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Set Off Panic in an Unexpected Place: Real Estate
President Trump’s plan to sell green cards for $5 million each, a program he is calling a “gold card,” has largely been met with a shrug. It’s not clear exactly how the program would work, if it’s legal or how many potential immigrants would really pay $5 million for a path to U.S. citizenship.
But in a niche area of dealmaking, alarm bells are blaring.
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said on Tuesday that the plan to effectively sell green cards would replace the EB-5 investor visa, a favorite source of funding for major real estate projects.
Massive developments — from New York’s Hudson Yards to the San Francisco Shipyard to, yes, Trump Plaza in Jersey City — have been financed in part by overseas investors applying to the EB-5 program, which grants permanent U.S. residence. Such investors are motivated by a green card, not by maximizing returns, and so for developers their capital tends to be less expensive than borrowing money from a typical commercial lender.
The real estate company owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner Capital, drew scrutiny for its use of EB-5 funding during the first Trump administration.
Overall, the EB-5 program does not bring in a lot of money — about $4 billion last year in the context of the $28 trillion U.S. economy — but it represents a huge profit bump for a small but powerful political contingency: major real estate developers. They are not likely to see EB-5 killed without a fight.
“Cheap capital is the crack cocaine to the real estate industry and probably every other industry,” said Matt Gordon, the C.E.O. of E3iG, which advises both foreign investment-based visa applicants and U.S. companies seeking funding.
“They and their rather large political donations are going to be very motivated.”
Some background: EB-5 visas were established in 1990 to encourage investment in rural and economically depressed areas. Foreigners who invest either $800,000 or $1.05 million, creating at least 10 jobs, are eligible. Initially, that meant directly creating 10 jobs. Now most companies meet the requirement by showing the overall economy will gain 10 jobs as a result of each investor’s funding.
All sorts of companies can seek EB-5 investment — DealBook heard about pharmacies, hospitals, day care centers and manufacturing plants that raised money through the program — but the vast majority are real estate deals.
News of Trump’s gold card plan sent this ecosystem reeling. “Naturally the whole world is panicking,” said Ishaan Khanna, the president of the American Immigrant Investor Alliance, a group that lobbies on behalf of EB-5 investors. “As India and China woke up, my phone blew up.”
“Everybody I’m hearing from is like ‘rush’ — get in as much as you can, because who knows how long” the program will last in its current form, Gordon said, “On both the sponsor side and on the immigrant side.”
Developers who qualify for the program win big savings. For example: One project Gordon is working on, a $100 million 19-story apartment building, qualifies for about $35 million of EB-5 funding. Traditional mezzanine debt financing for such a project might come with an interest rate of 10 or 12 percent, Gordon said, but the developer will pay 5 to 7 percent for EB-5 funding. “You’re really cutting, you know, 30 to 50 percent of your cost of capital, on a rather significant portion of your capital,” he added.
On top of saving money, developers say the program has been crucial during periods like the financial crisis when other funding sources become prohibitively expensive or scarce.
Unsurprisingly, the real estate industry has been one of the EB-5 program’s most ardent defenders. The National Association of Realators and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied against a bill introduced in 2017 that would have terminated the program.
Such programs aren’t unusual. Seventy countries exchange permanent residency or citizenship for investments or donations, according to Kristin Surak, an associate professor at the London School of Economics who studies so-called golden visa and passport programs worldwide. In some countries, including Malta and Cyprus, the programs represent a significant part of the economy.
Proponents point to the jobs created. Critics say the EB-5 program falls short of its goal to stimulate investment in rural and distressed urban areas. Previous iterations allowed developers to gerrymander maps so that even densely populated and highly employed districts like Hudson Yards qualified for preferable terms. A 2022 law ended that practice and added new incentives to build in rural areas.
Would selling visas work better? Lutnick said on Wednesday that EB-5 projects “were often suspect, they didn’t really work out, there wasn’t any oversight of it.” It’s true that there have been horror stories: Two investors who raised $350 million from foreign investors for a massive development in Vermont, for example, were accused in 2016 of perpetrating the biggest fraud in the state’s history.
But according to a report from the Government Accountability Office that looked at pending petitions in 2021, less than 1 percent were found to be fraudulent or posed national security risks (about 3 percent were investigated). Additional safeguards were added in the 2022 law.
The gold card may have a different problem: A dearth of applicants. Participants in the EB-5 program expect to get their $1 million investment back at some point, whereas Trump’s plan requires a $5 million donation that isn’t returned.
The EB-5 program drew about 7,000 investments between April 1, 2022 to July 31, 2024, according to data compiled by the American Immigrant Investor Alliance. Even if the gold card comes with a tax benefit, why would a substantially larger group of foreigners — Trump said “maybe a million” — be willing to pay the much higher cost?
Many in the industry see Trump’s plan as unworkable. Trump would need congressional approval both to abolish a visa program that was created by law and to allocate visas for a new one. “This is unpredictable,” Khanna said. “No one truly knows where this is going.”
More than Trump’s recent announcement, which lacked specifics, many of the big players in the ecosystem — including the companies that put together the funds, the developers and the lawyers — are focused on what will happen in 2027, when the EB-5 program expires and needs to be renewed by Congress.
They’re betting on compromise. The players in such investments are hoping the gold card becomes an addition rather than a replacement.
The idea may already be breaking through: By Wednesday, Lutnick had changed how he described the gold card plan, saying it would “modify” the EB-5 program, but it was unclear what specifically would change.
— Sarah Kessler
In Case You Missed It
President Trump’s meeting with President Zelensky of Ukraine turned into an explosive shouting match on live television, a moment unlike anything we’ve ever seen at the White House. At an Oval Office appearance Friday the Ukrainian president met with Trump to sign a mineral rights deal, when Trump accused Zelensky of being ungrateful and “gambling with World War III.” Zelensky had questioned whether Trump would be able to get President Putin of Russia to honor a peace agreement without security guarantees, saying the Russian leader had broken cease-fire accords in the past. Vice President Vance, sitting on a nearby couch, chastised Zelensky for not showing more appreciation for Trump’s efforts. The U.S. president then issued an ultimatum: “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.” The fiery exchange (here’s the video) revealed Trump’s nakedly combative approach to dealmaking. Zelensky left without signing the mineral agreement. Elon Musk, whose Starlink satellite internet service has been vital to Ukraine’s military defenses, seemed to praise Trump on X after the exchange.
Shari Redstone urged her board to find a resolution with President Trump. Redstone, who is trying to sell Paramount, her family business, to David Ellison’s Skydance, directed her board to find a way to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the company’s CBS News division, DealBook was first to report. The president sued the company last year for $20 billion, accusing the network of deceptively editing an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to cast her in a more favorable light. Even though legal experts say Trump has a weak case, some Paramount executives feel a settlement would smooth the way with the Trump administration toward greenlighting the company’s Skydance merger.
Apple’s Tim Cook gave a lesson in the art of dealmaking with President Trump. The Apple leader drew praise from Trump for his commitment to invest $500 billion in the United States and create 20,000 more jobs over the next four years. The stakes are high for Apple because its iPhones are primarily made in China, which faces an additional 10 percent tariff on exports. But Cook appeared to take a page out of his playbook from Trump’s first term, when he pledged more U.S. investment and won tariff exemptions. By the way, that $500 billion commitment was probably already earmarked. Expect similarly framed corporate announcements to follow.
The S.E.C. said memecoins aren’t like stocks and bonds. That means you and I can trade them at our own risk and the novelty crypto tokens — including those tied to President Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump — won’t be subject to regulatory oversight. Trump, whose presidential campaign was backed by top crypto executives, has promised less regulation for the industry. Even so, the price of Bitcoin has plunged in recent days, stoking concern about crypto volatility.
Weighing a return to Russia
President Trump and President Putin of Russia marked the third anniversary of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this week with a similar message: Russia will soon be open for business. Never mind that Russia and the United States remain far apart on the fundamental terms of a peace negotiation, or that Russia is under heavy sanctions by Western countries, or that uncertainty over the region’s future has only grown after yesterday’s Oval Office blow-up.
DealBook spoke with Charles Hecker, a former reporter for The Moscow Times and a geopolitical risk consultant who for decades advised Western companies on expanding their business in Russia, about the prospect of business leaders taking Trump and Putin up on the pitch. (A reminder: most, but hardly all, Western companies left Russia shortly after war in Ukraine broke out.)
Hecker is the author of the book “Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia,” which is set for publication in the United States next week. This interview has been edited for brevity.
The assumption is that Western, and especially American companies, will not return to Russia any time soon. How do you see it playing out?
Inside a number of companies, conversations are already taking place about whether and how to go back to Russia. And those conversations probably preceded this flurry of diplomatic activity between Moscow and Washington. There are also companies that have decided already, resolutely, that they are not going back. What this speaks to is risk appetite. There are clearly companies that have cast iron stomachs and bottomless appetites for risk. Those are the companies that are probably considering going back to Russia most actively.
Who might they be?
These are companies in the energy sector, and more broadly, in the natural resources sector. These are companies that are thoroughly accustomed to doing business in very-high-risk jurisdictions.
For companies with a higher appetite for risk, what kind of negotiated resolutions between the West and Russia would they view as a kind of all-clear?
One of the red lines is sanctions. If part of the resolution of the war on Ukraine is sanctions relief, then there will be companies that see that, essentially, as a signal to go back.
What kind of Russia is waiting for them?
Over the past three years there have been some changes that have taken place that will be very, very difficult to reverse. We all know of the famous headline-grabbing nationalizations and reallocations that took place, like Danone and Carlsberg — really high profile expropriations. There is a new business elite in Russia that is one level below the individuals who have been sanctioned who serve largely at the pleasure of the Kremlin. This new business elite has possession of a great number of very shiny new toys that were previously Western companies. It’s a valid question to ask about whether these new owners are going to want to give their shiny new toys back. And if they do, whether under political pressure or otherwise, what would the cost be?
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you Monday.
We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
China’s exports and imports each set monthly records in April, further cementing the country as the world’s leading trading nation as Beijing prepares to welcome President Trump for a summit next week with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.
China also ran a trade surplus — the excess of exports over imports — of $84.8 billion last month, according to data released on Saturday by the General Administration of Customs. However, that surplus did not set a record. The war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushed up the cost of imported oil and natural gas, causing China’s overall imports to increase slightly faster than exports.
The surplus in April keeps China on track for a third year of roughly trillion-dollar trade surpluses. China posted a $1.19 trillion trade surplus last year, easily breaking the world record of $992 billion that it had set the year before.
Mr. Trump is expected to press Mr. Xi to buy more American goods during their scheduled summit, part of his long-running effort to narrow China’s longtime trade surplus with the United States. But two recent court decisions overturning Mr. Trump’s tariffs on imports have eroded some of his leverage.
China’s exports to the United States jumped 11.3 percent last month compared to its shipments in April of last year, when President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs produced a slump in imports from China.
The country’s imports from the United States rose only 9 percent in April this year. As a result, its trade surplus with the United States widened by 13 percent.
China has long used state-run purchasing collectives in big categories like farm goods and commercial aircraft to manage its trade with the United States, ensuring it sells three to five times as much as it buys. Mr. Trump and his advisers have criticized that imbalance.
Semiconductor exports doubled last month compared with April of last year. Chinese manufacturers cashed in on the artificial intelligence data center boom even though they cannot yet produce some of the fastest kinds of chips.
Overall exports of electronics and machinery were up 20 percent in April from a year earlier.
China acts in many ways as a shock absorber in global oil markets. Beijing buys more oil for its vast reserves when the price is low, then cuts back purchases when prices are high, as they were last month.
With oil prices spiking upward this spring, the tonnage of China’s oil imports dropped last month to its lowest level since July 2022, when Shanghai’s two-month Covid lockdown reduced demand. The lockdown hurt many of China’s oil-dependent industries.
Because prices rose faster last month than the tonnage declined, China’s overall bill for crude oil imports rose 13 percent from a year earlier. Rising oil prices helped drive China’s overall imports up 25.3 percent in April from a year ago, to a record $274.6 billion. Its exports surged 14.1 percent last month from a year earlier, to a record $359.4 billion.
China has been particularly successful this year in exporting electric cars as well as renewable energy products like wind turbines and solar panels. Exports of electric vehicles were up 52.8 percent last month from a year earlier.
China has been running large, and widening, trade surpluses over the past several years with most of the rest of the world. It has trade deficits with only a handful of countries, including those like Brazil and Australia which have very large commodity exports.
The European Union and many developing countries now find themselves with rapidly growing trade deficits with China. Practically all of them have run their own trade surpluses with the United States to fund their deficits with China, sometimes repackaging goods from China and shipping them on to the United States to do so.
China’s huge trade surpluses are not necessarily a sign of economic strength. They partly reflect very weak spending by Chinese households on imports and domestic goods alike after five years of sliding housing prices wiped out much of the savings of the middle class. This has prompted many families to scrimp on purchases like new cars, leaving Chinese automakers with more cars to export.
“The Chinese economy still demonstrates resilience in trade and industrial supply chains,” said Zhu Tian, an economics professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, after the release of the trade data.
But weak domestic spending and a leveling off in the trade surplus, he said, “suggest that economic growth will continue to face significant challenges for the rest of the year.”
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC is forcefully resisting Federal Communications Commission efforts to soften the network’s programming, accusing the federal agency of an overreach that violates 1st Amendment freedoms.
Last week, the FCC took the unusual step of calling in the licenses of eight Disney-owned television stations for early review. The move — widely interpreted as an effort to chill the network’s speech — came a day after President Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
The FCC separately has taken aim at ABC’s daytime discussion show, “The View,” which delves deeply into politics.
The FCC has questioned whether the show, which prominently features Trump critics Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, could continue toclaim an exemption to rules that require broadcasters to provide equal time for opponents of political candidates.
In its response this week to the FCC, Disney’s Houston television station raised the stakes in “The View” dispute, calling the commission’s actions “unprecedented” and “beyond the Commission’s authority.” The ABC station’s petition for a declaratory ruling said “The View,” has long qualified as a “bona fide” news interview program with freedom to conduct interviews of legally qualified political candidates.
“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” the Houston station KTRK-TV said in the filing.
The network’s firm stance sets up a clash with the Trump administration, including the president’s hand-picked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has made no secret of his disdain for Kimmel and other ABC programming. Earlier this year, Carr announced that decades-old exemptions from the so-called “equal time rule,” for some programs, including “The View,” were no longer valid.
In a statement, the FCC said it would “review Disney’s assertion that ‘The View’ is a ‘bona fide news program’ and thus exempt from the political equal time rules,” according to a spokesperson.
“Decades ago, Congress passed a law that generally prohibits broadcast television programs from putting a thumb on the scale in favor of one political candidate over another,” the spokesperson said. “The equal time law encourages more speech and empowers voters to decide the outcome of elections.”
ABC’s strenuous arguments mark a turning point for the Disney-owned outlet.
In December 2024, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the network quickly settled a lawsuit over statements made by news anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump found offensive. ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to end his legal fight — sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who accused the network of caving on a case it may have won.
But, over the past year, the network has weathered several storms, including a threat by Carr in September to punish ABC if it didn’t muzzle Kimmel for comments he made in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. ABC briefly benched Kimmel to allow tensions to cool but, during the week his show was off the air, protesters loudly bashed Disney, demanding the legendary company stand up for free speech.
Thousands of consumers canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in protest.
Protesters swarmed Hollywood Boulevard, protesting ABC’s move to bench Jimmy Kimmel in September over comments he made about the shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Some conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and commentator Ben Shapiro also criticized Carr’s handling of 1st Amendment issues.
“The days of the FCC as a paper tiger are numbered,” the FCC’s lone Democrat, Anna M. Gomez, said Friday in a statement. “What the public will remember is who complied in advance and who fought back. I’m glad Disney is choosing courage over capitulation.”
The high-profile dispute presents an early challenge for Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro, who succeeded longtime chief Bob Iger in March.
ABC has asked for the full commission — a three member panel of Carr, Gomez and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, a Republican — to rule on the equal time exemption for “The View.” ABC said that, in 2002, it received a ruling from the FCC that granted the exemption, and the show’s format has not changed. “The View” is produced by ABC News.
“Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows,” the station said in its filing. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views.”
ABC described a logistical nightmare of providing equal time for political opponents by pointing to California’s crowded primary field of gubernatorial candidates. “Affording equal time would mean accommodating over 60 legally qualified candidates, regardless of their perceived newsworthiness,” the station wrote.
The network said it makes show bookings based on newsworthiness, not partisan politics. It also noted it has invited politicians from both sides of the aisle to appear on “The View,” but some, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and entrepreneur Elon Musk, have declined the invitation.
The station also noted that, while the FCC has questioned the exemption for “The View,” the agency hasn’t shown interest in regulating programs on other networks, “including the many voices — conservative and liberal — on broadcast radio.” The FCC also oversees radio station licenses.
“The danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,” ABC said.
On April 28, Carr called for a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses, including for the Houston station and KABC-TV in Los Angeles, two years before any of them were set to expire. The FCC said the review was part of the agency’s year-old inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.
In its Thursday petition, ABC said it had fully complied with the FCC’s request for documents related to its diversity and hiring.
The company has produced more than 11,000 pages of documents to comply with the request, Disney said.
The same week that Disney sent documents to the FCC, Kimmel made a joke on his show about Melania Trump, comparing her glow to that of “an expectant widow.” On April 25, a gunman tried to breach security at the Washington Hilton, where the first couple were on stage for the White House Correspondents’ Assn. Dinner. Shots were fired outside the ballroom.
Three days later, the FCC announced it was requiring early license renewal applications for the Disney-owned stations.
The United States on Friday announced a flurry of new sanctions intended to increase pressure on Iran’s economy, targeting people and companies in China and Hong Kong that have been helping the Iranian military gain access to supplies and war equipment.
The sanctions came ahead of a major summit between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing next week. China’s support for Iran has become a flashpoint with the Trump administration, which has been trying to compel independent Chinese refineries to stop purchasing Iranian oil.
China is Iran’s biggest buyer of oil, and the Trump administration has said that it is sponsoring terrorism by propping up the Iranian economy.
The new sanctions are aimed at Iran’s military industrial supply chain, and are intended to make it harder for Iran to secure access to the material it needs to build drones and missiles. In addition to China, the sanctions also target people and companies based in Belarus and the United Arab Emirates.
“Under President Trump’s decisive leadership, we will continue to act to keep America safe and target foreign individuals and companies providing Iran’s military with weapons for use against U.S. forces,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The Trump administration has been looking for ways to squeeze Iran’s economy and pressure the Iranian government to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for the flow of global oil. Oil tankers have had sporadic access to the critical waterway since the war started earlier this year, and the United States and Iran have been fighting over who should control it.
U.S. warships that have been trying to transit the strait have been attacked by Iranian forces. The United States on Friday fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged oil tankers as they tried to reach an Iranian port.
The Treasury Department has also imposed sanctions on the Chinese “teapot” refineries this month. The independent refineries are major purchasers of Iranian oil. But China invoked a domestic policy ordering its companies to disregard the sanctions.
Mr. Bessent said earlier this week that he expected Mr. Trump to urge Mr. Xi to use the country’s leverage over Iran to pressure it to allow oil cargo to travel.
“Let’s see if China — let’s see them step up with some diplomacy and get the Iranians to open the strait,” Mr. Bessent told Fox News on Monday.
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