The Emoluments Clauses

The framers worried that foreign powers would buy influence with gifts, a common practice in European courts. The Foreign Emoluments Clause, in Article I, Section 9, provides that no person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States shall, without the consent of Congress, accept any present, emolument, office, or title from any king, prince, or foreign state. It also bars the United States from granting titles of nobility. The Domestic Emoluments Clause, in Article II, Section 1, bars the President from receiving any emolument from the United States or any state beyond the fixed salary.

Congress gave its consent to small gifts in the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act of 1966. Officials may keep gifts of minimal value, a threshold of a few hundred dollars adjusted every three years, while more valuable gifts become government property, often transferred to the National Archives or a presidential library. The State Department publishes an annual list of foreign gifts to officials. The clauses have rarely been tested in court, and what counts as an emolument, whether any payment or profit or only payment for services, is disputed.

Lawsuits filed from 2017 claimed that foreign governments' spending at the President's hotels and properties violated the clauses, but they were dismissed as moot after his term ended in 2021 without a final ruling. In May 2025 the administration accepted a Boeing 747 from the government of Qatar for use as Air Force One, to be transferred later to the presidential library foundation, and family business ventures with foreign investors renewed the debate. Supporters said the plane was a gift to the United States, not the President, and that the ventures were lawful. Critics said both raised exactly the risks the clauses were written to prevent.