Korean aluminum group under US trade penalties pays Trump $2M

In 2025, Base Group, a South Korean holding company, paid $2 million to President Donald Trump's holding company. The payment was revealed for the first time in Trump's annual financial disclosure report released in late June 2026, which described it only as part of a "letter of intent" and a "nonrefundable development fee." In statements to The New York Times, Base Group and the Trump family said the payment relates to a still-unannounced golf course project. Base Group holds a controlling stake in Camus E&C, the construction company that owns Korea Aluminium, a maker of aluminum foil that has curbed exports to the United States after the Commerce Department concluded in 2023 that a group of South Korean companies had circumvented trade duties on Chinese-made aluminum. Commerce moved in 2025 to impose a separate tariff on certain imports from South Korean aluminum suppliers, including Korea Aluminium, and a preliminary agency review released in July 2026 indicated that staff were considering raising tariffs on the company further. Base Group has sought a relationship with the Trump family since 2017, when its subsidiary Keumyang International began importing wine from Trump's Virginia vineyard; the wine was served at an October 2025 dinner between Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. Chairman Kim Sung-jip attended Trump's second inauguration in 2025 and met Eric Trump at Trump National Doral that spring, and in February 2026 hosted him in South Korea for meetings, including a dinner with executives of other major South Korean companies, that a Base Group executive said covered ways to increase trade between the two countries. Eric Trump also visited a golf course site that a local government was promoting for development. The New York Times found no evidence that Trump or any member of his family had intervened with U.S. officials on behalf of Base Group or Korea Aluminium. Base Group disputed that it had violated any U.S. trade rules and said the golf project was unrelated to the trade dispute. Alan Garten, the Trump Organization's chief legal officer, said the payment was not related to the trade dispute and that any suggestion otherwise was "pure fiction." White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump had not been involved in the trade dispute and that there are no conflicts of interest, and a spokeswoman for the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration said the proceedings involving Korea Aluminium were quasi-judicial and free of political interference. The payment was one piece of at least $125 million that Trump's holding company collected in 2025 directly from foreign sources, in countries including Britain, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Oman, the Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates.