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Almost 70,000 people have registered for the new Golden Trump Card, a Visa program that is led by Commerce Minister Howard Lutnick and the foreigner in the USA gives at a price of USD 5 million.
Lutnick’s department started a website last week – Trumpcard.gov -For prospective applicants to register their interest in the visa and to provide basic contact information, including the name, the email address and the region of the world. The card shown on the website shows the face and signature of President Donald Trump as well as an eagle, the Statue of Liberty and the American flag.
On Monday morning, Lutnick said that the internal online dashboard of his department showed 67,697 people on the waiting list. The number had increased to 68,703 within an hour.
“The card will consist of gold,” said the US trade secretary at Financial Times. “It will be nice.”
“Donald Trump appreciates this kind of things. He takes care of what it looks like. He takes care of what it feels like. I think he takes care of it and thinks when you buy and make this investment in America, we should give you something that is nice.”
Lutnick said the initial idea for the visa was from the billionaire trump donor John Paulson to increase income for the United States and pay its debts of 36 participants.
The trading secretary said the Trump card will address the company manager and companies who are looking for a legal stay in the USA for themselves or their employees in the United States.
The managing director of a global technology company, which did not apply by a spokesman not to be named, would try to buy more than 100 Trump cards when the program was “carrying”, and added that he regarded the initiative as “the best and smartest in the world” in the world – especially entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists “.
In 1990, the Congress created a way to a permanent stay for foreign investors as part of the EB-5-Visa program, which a minimum investment of up to $ 1.8 million. Last year around 14,000 such visas were granted last year, so Invest in the USAAn EB-5 trade association.
Lutnick pushes to the new program to replace the EB-5 visa and plans to accelerate the creation of a much larger program within months.
The trade department plans to spend tens of thousands of Trump cards in the summer, said people familiar with the matter. Lutnick has said The exhibition of 200,000 Visa would use $ 1 for the Ministry of Finance.
Lutnick traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in May and closed his conversations with foreign dignitaries with a pitch for the Trump card.
“Whenever I meet international managers, I always do it with them and sell it to them,” he said. “I can’t help myself.”
The White House still has to set decisive details about the program, although Lutnick said three months ago All-in-podcast that it would start in about fourteen days.
The design of a special control structure for Trump card holder must still be completed, and while the applicants checked by the departments of the home protection, the state and trade is expected, Trump has not decided whether citizens of a certain country would be excluded from the application. The White House has banned the trips to the USA from a dozen nations and is Reports look at others.
The Italian billionaire and StableCoin Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino In April, the FT announced that the success of such visas depends on the tax treatment they have done.
Ardoinino, who has teamed up with Lutnick’s former company Cantor Fitzgerald in a crypto company, said: “The problem” with the Americans is “wherever they go, they have to pay taxes in the USA”.
“I didn’t research it, but I live in El Salvador in Switzerland,” he added. “Why should I (buy)?”
Philip Stafford’s additional reporting contributed to this report
