Vietnam Is Moving People’s Graves to Make Room for a Trump Golf Resort

Vietnam is reportedly digging up people’s graves to make room for a $1.5 billion Trump-branded golf resort, because apparently even the dead aren’t safe from Trump’s gaudy real estate properties. 

The project is planned for northern Vietnam outside Hanoi, and is tied to the Trump Organization and its Vietnamese partner Kinhbac City. It’s expected to include the Trump classics: golf courses, hotels, real estate, commercial areas, and parks across nearly 2,500 acres. We’ve yet to see renderings, but Trump’s second favorte son Eric has called the development “the envy of all of Asia and of the entire world.” Which is certainly one way to describe a resort that requires families to exhume their ancestors! 

According to The Financial Times, the development could affect more than 4,000 households and require graves in the area to be dug up and moved. In the Chau Ninh commune, residents have reportedly been painting large X marks on graves to show that their loved ones’ remains have already been removed. Some burial sites even date back to the Vietnam War era.

The story gets even worse, because residents are saying that the compensation is nowhere near enough. The Financial Times also reported that 72-year-old Hoang Do was paid about $2,660 to move the remains of his son and parents. “It’s painful,” he told the outlet, adding that he was outraged by the payment.

The living are not exactly thrilled either. The Guardian previously reported that farmers displaced by the Trump-backed project were offered as little as about $12 per square meter of farmland, along with “rice provisions.” Many residents fear the resort will threaten their livelihoods in an agricultural community where land is not just an asset, but necessary for survival.

Reportedly the Trump Organization isn’t directly funding the construction, but it is licensing the Trump name and collecting fees from the project.

And, naturally, the politics in all of those are a huge mess. According to reporting by the New York Times, Vietnam broke its own laws to fast track this development because the country was trying to avoid steep U.S. tariffs from the Trump administration. Which included a threatened 46% tariff on Vietnamese exports. Of course the White House has denied conflict-of-interest concerns and said Trump Organization business is separate from trade negotiations blah blah blah. 

But it’s just impossible to ignore the basic optics here: a foreign government approves a massive luxury project tied to the sitting U.S. president’s family business while negotiating with that same president’s administration over tariffs. Meanwhile, local residents are being asked to give up farmland, family burial sites, and pieces of ancestral history so a Trump-branded golf resort can rise in their place.