Trump’s Cash-for-Favors Diplomacy Reshapes the World

India is being bashed with 50% U.S. tariffs. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s military leader is being given exceptional White House hospitality. The U.S. President’s approach to the rival South Asian nuclear powers is illustrative of the United States’ “cash-for-favors” diplomacy.

On April 28, Zach Witkoff met in Islamabad with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhamma Shehbaz Sharif. The last name may sound familiar. After all, Steven Witkoff is President Trump’s special international envoy. But who is Zach Witkoff? He is Trump’s envoy’s 32-year old son.

The Trump clan’s mission: Commercialize everything

Notably, Witkoff Jr. was not meeting the Prime Minister to resolve the hot war that had suddenly erupted between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. True to the Trump team’s crass way of commercializing every conceivable angle of U.S. “foreign” policy, he was in town to do a crypto-currency deal.

Pakistan’s government, with Binance founder Changpeng Zhao as its adviser, agreed to sign a deal – the details of which have not been disclosed – with World Financial Liberty.

The company is run by Zach Wittkoff together with President Trump’s sons Eric, Don Jr. and Baron. Its website features as members of its leadership team two smiling “emeritus chairmen” – President Trump and Steven Witkoff.

Hosting the Field Marshall

Earlier this year, on June 19, President Trump hosted the head of Pakistan’s military, Field Marshal Asim Mun, to lunch at the White House. Pakistan’s civil government leaders were not invited. A military statement after the meeting noted that they discussed “trade, economic development and cryptocurrency.”

The visit followed Trump’s announcement in early May that he had brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Indian Parliament that there had been no involvement of Trump in ending the hostilities.

That statement may well have contributed to souring Trump’s relations with Modi.

However, Pakistan’s Field Marshall Asim Mun publicly praised Trump for brokering the peace deal and declared that Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace prize. That was music to Trump’s ears.

The man in the Oval Office by now has a worldwide reputation for having an irrepressible need to be flattered. No doubt, together with the crypto deal with World Financial Liberty, Asim Mun’s pronouncement secured the Field Marshall’s luncheon invitation.

Peace in the Congo and paying off the U.S.

Trump also claims that he brokered a peace deal in eastern Congo. Steven Wittkoff, for his part, dutifully declared at a recent televised White House cabinet meeting that Trump fully deserves the Nobel for all the peace deals he is concluding.

At the signing at the White House between officials from the governments of the Congo and Rwanda (which has been backing the M23 rebel group), President Trump noted: “We’re getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo.”

Witkoff did not mention that, despite the signed deal, hostilities are continuing in the Congo and that this is jeopardizing the business deal. Lobbying for the deal has been a company called Ballard Partners, owned by Brian Ballard, a major financial donor to Trump campaigns.

The firm’s former employees include current White House Chief-of-Staff, Susie Wiles, and current U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Ballard is said to have business interests that would have access to major Congolese mineral rights if “Trump’s” peace deal is realized.

Emirati deals

In mid-May, President Trump was greeted with full honors and a tidal wave of flattery on his arrival in Abu Dhabi. The President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, greeted his U.S. guest at the airport.

It must have been by sheer coincidence that, about 10 days earlier Zach Witkoff arrived in Dubai to join Eric Trump to announce that World Financial Liberty had secured a $2 billion investment in a transaction involving “the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance.”

The highly suspect presence of Changpeng Zhao

As in Islamabad, so in Dubai, the former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was involved with World Financial Liberty. His involvement with the Trump family’s business may be significantly more extensive.

The New York Times reported that he is financing a major lobbying campaign in Washington to secure a pardon from President Trump: In 2024, he served four months in U.S. prison and Binance paid a record $4.5 billion fine for what prosecutors claimed were crimes that included the non-reporting of more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with designated terrorist groups including Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Russia and Ukraine

Before becoming president in 2016, Trump had talked publicly about doing real estate deals in Moscow. He never did, but perhaps he still has ambitions.

The fact that Trump’s old New York real estate billionaire friend Steven Witkoff held meetings in the Kremlin with Putin on his own without any U.S. officials, has heightened my concerns that Trump would side with Putin against Zelensky and be rewarded with some sort of business deal.

Is requiring minerals for White House support now called U.S. “diplomacy”?

Meanwhile, President Zelensky was humiliated in his first White House meeting with Trump for demonstrating insufficient respect, while at the time there were behind-the-scenes negotiations for the Ukraine government to give the U.S. large, long-term, mineral rights in Ukraine.

Eventually, to restore relations with Trump and flatter him, Zelensky signed minerals deal that gives U.S. investors significant rights without the United States providing any security guarantees in return.

And Trump blamed the Biden family? Seriously?

It is more than ironic that, back in 2019, President Trump, then in his first term, telephoned Zelensky to demand that he find damaging information on the business activities in Ukraine of Hunter Biden. Trump’s charge? He claimed that when father Biden was Vice President of the United States, the son took fullest advantage to secure business deals.

While Trump’s efforts at extortion at the time eventually led to his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives, whatever the possible misdeed of Hunter Biden is kid stuff compared to what the members of the Trump family and their business associates are doing now.

An unbelievable double standard

Without any shame or reservation, they are very publicly touring the world, meeting with government leaders and doing deals not only with the President’s blessing, but with his absolute encouragement. And, so U.S. foreign policy is forged.