A planned Trump Organization resort in Vietnam has barely gotten off the ground five months after a glitzy ceremony marking the launch of the $1.5 billion project.
The 2,223-acre site in Hung Yen province, which is meant to one day house Trump-branded hotels, golf courses and luxury apartments, is still just “fields of banana and orange trees” due to an ongoing dispute over compensation for the land, according to a Bloomberg report.
Farmers being forced out to make way for the construction site, who are being offered as little as $12 per square meter for their land, are demanding around twice the amount in compensation.
Villagers whose farms will be bulldozed to make way for the development just outside the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi have also been offered just a few months’ worth of rice provisions and roughly $3,200 in cash as an incentive, Reuters reported in August.
In May, Eric Trump, executive vice president at the Trump Organization and son of President Donald Trump, attended a lavish groundbreaking ceremony to launch the real estate project, which is slated for completion by 2029.
The New York Times reported that Vietnam ignored its own planning laws to fast-track the Trump-backed development. The ground-breaking ceremony took place one month after President Trump announced he would impose a 46 percent tariff on Vietnamese imports—among the highest rates under his sweeping “Liberation Day” tax plans. Those tariffs have since been reduced to 20 percent.
Work to clear the land was assigned in late June, but stalled over the compensation dispute and only resumed in August.
Hung Yen officials demanded earlier this month that the land compensation deal be finalized by the end of October, with a goal of completing 95 percent of the land clearance by the end of the year.
A lawyer who spoke with Bloomberg suggested the dispute could drag on for months, noting there is a mandatory discussion period of up to 60 days before compulsory land seizure can begin.
The $1.5 billion resort, along with plans to build a skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, are the Trump Organization’s first projects in Vietnam.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Trump Organization for comment.
