

Besieged with questions about foreign influence and conflicts of interest, President-elect Donald J Trump has insisted that he is free to mingle his private business with the nation’s public policy. As Trump explained in his press conference on Wednesday: “I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president … it’s a nice thing to have.”

Except that this assertion is dead wrong, and none of the reform proposals that Trump announced on Wednesday fixes the problem.

It is widely recognized that Trump, by virtue of his ownership stake in the Trump Organization, stands to benefit personally from decisions made by governments worldwide – while also serving as president and representing America abroad.

This is a stark conflict of interest, and a dangerous state of affairs: Trump’s tangled web may lead foreign leaders and US officials to view the interests of Trump, the presidency and the Trump Organization as one and the same, impeding US policy objectives.

The framers of our constitution recognized this possibility and sought to prevent it through the foreign emoluments clause, which prohibits the president (among others) from accepting any “present” or “emolument” of “any kind whatever” from any “foreign State”. As many legal experts have noted, Trump’s conflicts place him in direct violation of this rule.

The proper remedy is for Trump to divest himself of ownership interests in the Trump Organization and place his assets into a true blind trust.

On Wednesday, however, Trump refused to take those steps, which his lawyer cursorily dismissed as impracticable. Instead, Trump announced the following plan: he will resign from his positions in the Trump Organization; his two adult sons, joined by an executive, will manage the company; no foreign deals will be made during his presidency; all new domestic deals will be subjected to (unspecified) ethics review and payments to his hotels by foreign governments will eventually be donated to the US treasury.

This is meant to sound impressive. Indeed, Trump introduced this plan by asserting, with a straight face: “I could actually run my business and run government at the same time.” Determined to prove his generosity, Trump also bragged that, just this past weekend, he declined a $2bn deal in Dubai – as if he should be congratulated for taking a break from his presidential transition to discuss, and then turn down, a private venture in the Gulf.

But Trump’s new plan falls woefully short. His continued ownership interest in the Trump Organization will keep his financial welfare tied to the business. And nobody seriously believes that the affairs of the company will truly become mysterious to Trump.

To the contrary, he generally will know exactly what assets the company holds and how they will be helped or hindered by his actions. Foreign powers, too, will act with awareness (or at least suspicion) that benefits conferred on Trump enterprises – if not in the form of deals, then in a thousand other forms – may elicit favor or wrath from President Trump.

Notably, the Trump Organization simply cannot turn over to the US treasury all profit from interactions with foreign powers. For example, consider the significant benefit conferred by a foreign state that decides to host a series of widely advertised functions at a local Trump hotel, greatly increasing the property’s cultural cachet and thus markedly boosting its profit margins and those of other properties branded “Trump”.

For these and other reasons, Trump will remain in violation of the emoluments clause even if he adheres to this plan. While his lawyer denied that the clause applies to “fair value exchanges” – presumably as distinguished from sweetheart deals – that conclusion defies common sense.

Why should an otherwise forbidden foreign payment to the president be allowed, but only if the president gives that foreign government its money’s worth in services, advancing interests that may be contrary to our own?

Trump’s promised ethics checks are also far weaker than they appear. Critically, we still do not know what standard will be applied to evaluate domestic deals and whether the public will be informed about those decisions. And it is extremely doubtful that promised bans on discussion between Trump and his own children can effectively be enforced – especially given that power, business and family have long flowed together for Trump.

In fact, Trump made clear on Wednesday that he plans to return to the Trump Organization, and that he cares how it is managed in his absence: “I hope at the end of eight years I’ll come back and I’ll say: ‘Oh, you did a good job,’” he said. “Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say: ‘You’re fired.’” Statements like these hardly inspire confidence that Trump will divorce himself from private motives while in office.

Trump has been honored with the awesome responsibility of the presidency. In exchange, the very least he can do is honor that trust by truly ridding himself of private interests, leaving no doubt that he acts only for the greater good of the American people.