Jamie Gorelick, a Washington ethics lawyer who is acting as an independent adviser to Ms. Trump’s trust, said in a statement<br />that since Ms. Trump had resigned from her company, she “has had no involvement with trademark applications submitted by the business.”<br />“The federal ethics rules do not require you to recuse from any matter concerning a foreign country just because a business<br />that you have an ownership interest in has a trademark application pending there,” she added.<br />Ms. Klem, president of Ms. Trump’s brand, said in a statement, “The brand has filed, updated<br />and rigorously protected its international trademarks over the past several years in the normal course of business, especially in regions where trademark infringement is rampant.<br />“Before my brothers and I joined the company, our business was primarily a New York-based operation,” she wrote in her book, adding<br />that her father would say, “There are plenty of great deals right here in New York.”<br />It was not long before she began to concurrently push her own brand in many of the same markets as her father’s.<br />Even since her father took office, her own fashion brand has continued to look abroad, filing four new trademarks in Canada<br />and the Philippines, according to a New York Times analysis of trademark records.<br />Earlier this month, China approved three new trademarks for Ms. Trump’s brand on the same<br />day she met China’s president, Xi Jinping, according to an Associated Press report.<br />Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a left-leaning watchdog group, said<br />that if Ms. Trump’s brand was trying to expand operations or import from other countries, there could be “meaningful interaction” with foreign governments.
