As Vietnam Faced Trump’s Tariff Pressure, Farmers Were Evicted for a Trump-Branded Resort
Vietnamese authorities moved to clear farmland for a $1.5 billion Trump-branded resort as Hanoi faced tariff pressure from the president whose family business stood to benefit.
Scandal: A series examining corruption in leadership and its downstream consequences.

Vietnamese authorities have sent eviction notices to farmers in Hung Yen province to clear land for a $1.5 billion Trump Organization-branded golf resort, advancing a project carrying the president’s family business brand as Vietnam sought to manage steep tariff pressure from his administration.
The project, a planned complex of golf courses, luxury hotels and residential estates along the Red River, has been promoted as a major development linking Vietnam’s effort to attract foreign investment with the Trump name. But for farmers in the villages marked for clearance, it has become something else: the loss of orchards, ancestral land and income that residents say were built over generations.
According to Bloomberg News reporting republished by The Straits Times, local officials in Hung Yen province sent written instructions warning that farmers who refused to surrender their land would face enforcement beginning June 26. One farmer, Khanh Huyen, told Bloomberg that her family was losing 540 square meters planted with fruit trees that had generated up to 100 million dong a year and helped support the family for decades.
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