US President Donald Trump has a Chinese bank account and spent years pursuing business projects in the country, the New York Times has reported.

The account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management and paid local taxes between 2013 and 2015.

It was set up “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia”, according to a Trump spokesman.

Mr Trump has been critical of US firms doing business in China and sparked a trade war between the two countries.

The NY Times revealed the account after obtaining Mr Trump’s tax records, which included both personal and company financial details.

The newspaper’s previous reports show he paid $750 (£580) in US federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, when he became president.

The Chinese bank account has paid out $188,561 in local taxes.

Mr Trump has been critical of presidential candidate rival Joe Biden and his policies towards China in the lead-up to the US election, taking place on 3 November.

The Trump administration has singled out Mr Biden’s son Hunter and made unsubstantiated claims about his dealings with China. Joe Biden’s income tax returns and public financial disclosures show no business dealings connected to China.

Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organisation, described the NY Times story as “pure speculation” and said that it made “incorrect assumptions”.

He told the paper that Trump International Hotels Management had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes”.

“No deals, transactions or other business activities ever materialised and, since 2015, the office has remained inactive,” Mr Garten said.

“Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose,” he told the NY Times.

The US president has multiple business interests both in the US and overseas. These include golf courses in Scotland and Ireland and a chain of five-star luxury hotels.

The NY Times reported that Mr Trump maintains foreign bank accounts in China, Britain and Ireland.

Source: BBC news

President Donald Trump on Monday threw into doubt a deal to restructure ownership of the popular video app TikTok, vowing to block any deal that allows its Chinese parent firm to retain any control.

The comments raised fresh concerns over a weekend deal that appeared to avert a US-ordered ban of TikTok, which the Trump administration has called a national security risk.

The deal would make Silicon Valley giant Oracle the data partner for TikTok with retail giant Walmart also taking a stake in a new entity to be called TikTok Global.

But details of the plan remained unclear, amid differing accounts on the American and Chinese shares of the new firm, and who would be in control of the data and algorithms.

Trump on Monday told Fox News that TikTok’s Chinese parent firm ByteDance “will have nothing to do with it and if they do, then we just won’t make the deal.”

He added Oracle and Walmart “are going to have total control over it. They’re going to own the controlling interest… If we find they don’t have total control, then we’re not going to approve the deal.”

ByteDance, under pressure in China not to give in to US demands, said it would hold an 80 percent stake in TikTok Global after a public share offering.

The Chinese firm said the current plan “does not involve the transfer of any algorithms and technologies” and that reports to the contrary were “rumors.”

A separate statement from Oracle offered a different view of the transaction.

“Upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global,” Oracle vice president Ken Glueck said.

TikTok — which became a global phenomenon with its brand of short, addictive phone videos — has come under fire in recent months as tensions escalate between China and the west.

Trump has increasingly put national security and his aggressive stance toward China at the center of his campaign, claiming without providing evidence that TikTok is collecting user data for Beijing.

Source: AFP

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William H. Gates II, a lawyer and philanthropist who was the father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has died at 94.

Gates died Monday at his beach home in Washington state from Alzheimer’s disease, his family announced Tuesday, CBS News reports.

In an obituary, the family credited the patriarch with a “deep commitment to social and economic equity,” noting that he was responsible for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s first efforts to improve global health. The family also touched on his advocacy for progressive taxation, especially his unsuccessful efforts to pass a state income tax on the wealthy in Washington.

“My dad’s wisdom, generosity, empathy, and humility had a huge influence on people around the world,” Bill Gates wrote in a tribute.

Born in 1925, Gates Sr. grew up in Bremerton, Washington, where his parents owned a furniture store. During World War II, he joined the Army following his freshman year at the University of Washington and was en route to Japan when it surrendered in 1945.

He served a year in war-torn Tokyo before returning to the United States and resuming his education, his family said. After earning his law degree in 1950, he began working in private practice and as a part-time Bremerton city attorney.

He formed a Seattle law firm with two other partners that eventually became Preston Gates and Ellis — now known as K & L Gates, one of the world’s largest law firms. The firm was one of the first to work with the region’s technology industry.

Gates Sr. met his first wife, Mary Maxwell, at the University of Washington. They had two daughters and a son — Gates Jr. — and remained married until her death in 1994. Two years later he married Mimi Gardner, then the director of the Seattle Art Museum, with whom he spent the last quarter-century of his life.

“When I was a kid, he wasn’t prescriptive or domineering, and yet he never let me coast along at things I was good at, and he always pushed me to try things I hated or didn’t think I could do (swimming and soccer, for example),” Gates Jr. wrote in the tribute.

“And he modeled an amazing work ethic. He was one of the hardest-working and most respected lawyers in Seattle, as well as a major civic leader in our region.”

That civic work included serving as a trustee of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Planned Parenthood and United Way, and as a regent of the University of Washington, where he led fundraising drives. He also served as the president of the state and local bar associations and in the leadership of the American Bar Association, helping create diversity scholarships and promoting legal services for the poor.

“Bill Sr. was a person who cared about the plight of many, and he had the resources and never-ending civic commitment to do something about it,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement. “He made the choice to use his wealth and influence to advocate for and improve equity in our communities.”