WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s company last week donated its 2017 profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, the company said Monday, but declined to give any details on the size of its contribution or how it determined that number.

George Sorial, chief compliance counsel for the Trump Organization, said that the company had made its donation on Thursday, “calculated in accordance with our policy and the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry.” Mr. Sorial noted the donation was “voluntary” and “not a legal requirement.”

A company spokeswoman declined to provide more details about the policy to which Mr. Sorial referred.

The Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry is a set of standards for lodging businesses’ financial statements, which outlines a system for tracking customers but not their professions. It isn’t clear whether that system provides any means for companies to identify customers who work for foreign governments.

In a news conference before taking office last year, Mr. Trump said his companies would abide by “severe restrictions on new deals” and that the profits from any foreign government payments would be donated to the Treasury.


Ethics experts on Monday criticized the company’s lack of transparency about the donation and raised concerns that while Mr. Trump retains ownership of his companies, he reaps the benefits of foreign payments.

“No matter the size of the check they write, it doesn’t change the fact that foreign interests are spending money to line the president’s pocket,” said Adam Smith, communications director at the transparency advocacy organization Every Voice. “Their lack of transparency on this process doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that the check truly reflects the full profit Trump is making from foreign interests.”

The White House has referred questions about the Trump Organization’s payments to the company.

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Since the president’s inauguration last year, the Trump International Hotel in Washington has hosted a series of foreign visitors.


Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his delegation stayed at the hotel in September. A firm tied to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia paid the hotel $270,000 for lodging, catering and parking during a lobbying campaign last year to overturn a law allowing terrorism victims to sue foreign governments, according to Foreign Agent Registration Act documents.

The Turkey-U. S. Business Council and the American Turkish Council, two groups connected to the Turkish government, held a conference in May at the Washington hotel. The groups have scheduled their 2018 conference at the hotel, according to the Turkey-U. S. Business Council’s website.

Over the past year, the Trump Organization has rebuffed requests to provide details on how it would track its profits from foreign governments. The company responded to a House Oversight Committee request last year for details with an unsigned pamphlet that said it wouldn’t identify all of its foreign customers, describing the request as “impractical in the service industry.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the committee, said that document “raises grave concerns about the president’s refusal to comply with the Constitution.”


—Julie Bykowicz contributed to this article.