Participants in Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution” protest Jared and Ivanka’s planned resort.Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/AP
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Some Trumpian construction projects go smoothy. In Vietnam, for example, the government has relocated hundreds residents to make room for a $1.5 billion-dollar Trump-branded mega-resort, and that project is well underway. But elsewhere in the world, the first family’s real estate deals don’t always go according to plan.
In recent days, Albania has been rocked by widespread protests that have shaken the foundation of the ruling prime minister’s 13-year tenure. The trigger for the unrest: A luxury resort that Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kusher are developing in the Balkan nation—and allegations that the Albanian government may have improperly ignored migratory bird routes when approving the 10,000-room project.
What accounts for the disparate fates of the Trump family’s various international ventures? There are likely many factors, but one is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: democracy.
In the last couple years, the president’s Trump Organization has announced a flood of overseas projects—in Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Romania, Australia, Vietnam, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and India. At the same time, Ivanka and Jared have announced their own plans for a Trump-branded development in Serbia and the non-Trump-branded resort in Albania.
“What do I need power for if I have to abandon the vision I have shared with you all these years?”
The backlash to those latter two projects—the Kushner deals in Serbia and Albania—has been particularly volatile; news of Trump family involvement and possible government intervention to move those deals along has sparked massive demonstrations. And a separate proposal to build a Trump tower that would have become the “tallest building in Australia” quickly fell apart amid a feeding frenzy by Australia’s boisterous free press.
By contrast, in countries like Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE, Trump World projects seem to have coasted along breezily, without much pushback from pesky protesters. This probably shouldn’t be surprising. Saudi Arabia is, in the words of the watchdog organization Freedom House, an absolute monarchy that “restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties” and “relies on pervasive surveillance [and] the criminalization of dissent.” The Kingdom has recently executed people for “offenses related to their participation in protests and demonstrations when they were still minors.” Freedom House gives Saudi Arabia a freedom score of 9 out of 100, among the lowest in the world.
In Oman—another absolute monarchy, with a Freedom House score of 24—the Trump Organization has partnered with a Saudi developer and the Omani government to secure land in a prime location overlooking the Persian Gulf (not far from the war-ravaged Strait of Hormuz). Several of the other countries with new Trump-related real estate projects have similarly abysmal human rights records. Out of the possible 100 points, Freedom House gives the UAE, Qatar, and Vietnam scores of 18, 25, and 20, respectively.
The current situation in Albania—Freedom House score of 69—is very different from its autocratic counterparts. Jared and Ivanka’s project there was announced as a double resort, one on the mainland coast and the other on a remote island in the Adriatic. The two properties are ostensibly in private hands, but both seem to require significant government assent—environmentalists say both sites are ecologically sensitive, and the island is a former Albanian military base, covered with concrete blockhouses and landmines.
The Balkan nation’s elected prime minister, Edi Rama, has been full-throated in his support for the project. But Albania “has a record of competitive elections” and freedom of assembly is “generally respected,” according to Freedom House. And indeed, public opposition is spiraling. The growing protest movement has been dubbed “the Flamingo Revolution,” in reference to the bird protesters say could be harmed if redevelopment goes forward. Albania’s official anti-corruption agency has announced that it is probing whether changes to the resort area’s environmental and zoning regulations in 2024 were suspicious. And there has been outrage over videos of security guards allegedly assaulting protesters.
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Rama, who has faced calls for his resignation, says he won’t back down from supporting Kushner. “There is no chance for this investment to stop as long as I am here,” Rama said recently, accusing protesters of antisemitism and disinformation.
He also seemed to align the rationale for his 13-year rule with the success of the project.
“What do I need power for if I have to abandon the vision I have shared with you all these years?” Rama declared in a public speech on Wednesday. “We must enter the Champions League of global tourism.”
“If it was not Jared, they would not give a shit about what is happening in Albania,” Rama told Politico on Friday.
But critics of the plan point to what happened to a similar project proposed by Kushner, meant for an abandoned military site in nearby Serbia (Freedom House score 53). That deal, which would have created a Trump-branded hotel tower, eventually collapsed after protests and an investigation by Serbia’s anti-corruption agency. Four individuals have been criminally charged in the ensuing scandal—including the country’s culture minister, who is currently on trial.
Neither Serbia nor Albania get particularly high marks from democracy advocates. Both countries are categorized as “partly free” by Freedom House and as “flawed democracies” by the Economist Intelligence Unit. But this type of open, and potentially consequential, public protest movement is virtually impossible in other, far more authoritarian countries where the Trumps are building.
Notably, the United States’ own Freedom House score ticked down from 84 to 81 during the first year of Trump’s second term. But the US remains “free,” and anti-Trump protests here show no signs of stopping.
