As Donald Trump will tell you (even if it isn’t relevant to the topic at hand), he has business interests all over the world. So it’s not surprising that someone as brand-conscious as the presidential popular vote loser would have lots of trademarks all over the world—at least 400 of them in 28 countries. That’s what a New York Times investigation finds, and those trademarks can tell us a lot, from how Trump exempts himself from his “America first” rhetoric to how widespread his conflicts of interest are to just how often he fails to achieve his ambitions.
Some trademarks reinforce that for Mr. Trump, the “art of the deal” has often proved elusive overseas. His record is littered with numerous failed or stalled projects, including development deals in Cozumel and Baja California, Mexico, in Russia and in Brazil. [...]
Mr. Trump registered eight trademarks in Egypt in 2007, mostly related to what appears to be an abortive golf resort venture. A campaign filing last year revealed his involvement in several companies set up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The ethics concerns here are considerable: take, for instance, the fact that China just gave Trump trademark protection on his name. That’s a foreign government giving him something of value at the same time as he’s dealing with them supposedly on behalf of the United States.
But also … wow. Trump fails a lot.