Damac is a major developer in the Persian Gulf region. It is building the Trump International Golf Club Dubai and an adjacent luxury housing development, which does not bear the Trump name. The project has been in the works since 2013, with the Trump Organization managing the golf club after it opens, scheduled for February.

Damac has some ties to the Emirati government — any big business in the Emirates does — but its founder, Hussain Sajwani, is not part of the social and political elite. His father owned a small shop in Dubai’s market that sold midrange watches and pens, and the family was solidly middle class, and even today Mr. Sajwani remains an outsider among the tightly knit old families that control the Emirates.

In many ways, Mr. Sajwani is a lot like Mr. Trump. He has a flair for showmanship — he once tried to attract buyers for a new development by offering a free Bentley with every apartment — and his best customers tend to be rich outsiders who are trying to buy their way into the elite, like moneyed Iranians and well-off Indians.

This time, Big Pharma gets to panic

Admittedly, the president-elect was a little vague, but for the nation’s pharmaceutical giants, he was clear enough: The drug industry, Mr. Trump said, is “getting away with murder.”

“Pharma has a lot of lobbies and a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power, and there’s very little bidding on drugs. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don’t bid properly and we’re going to start bidding and we’re going to save billions of dollars over a period of time,” he said.

During the early months of the campaign, before less substantive issues swamped the debate, Mr. Trump broke with his party and said the federal government should be using its purchasing power to negotiate drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid.

Democrats have been pressing that for years — it was in an early version of the Affordable Care Act. But Republicans, backed by the drug industry, have adamantly opposed, and thwarted, every effort to give the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that authority.