President Donald Trump is attending the U.S. Open on Sunday as a guest of Rolex despite imposing steep tariffs on the Swiss watchmaker’s home country and with organizers seeking to keep off-court disruptions — like audience members booing him — from being seen on the TV broadcast of the tennis event.
Trump has built the bulk of his second term’s domestic travel around attending major sports events rather than hitting the road to make policy announcements or address the kind of large rallies he so relished as a candidate.
He’ll be watching the men’s final between second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, a 22-year-old Spaniard, and No. 1 seed and defending champion Jannik Sinner, 24, of Italy, from Rolex’s suite.
The president’s acceptance of Rolex’s invitation comes mere weeks after the Trump administration imposed a whopping 39% tariff on Swiss products.
The levy is more than 2 1/2 times higher than the one the Trump administration agreed to for European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S. It has raised questions about Switzerland’s ability to compete with the 27-member bloc that it neighbors.
The White House declined to comment on Trump accepting a corporate client’s invitation at the tournament, but the president has had few qualms about blurring lines between political and foreign policy decisions and efforts to boost the profits of his family business.
Any negative reaction to Trump’s presence won’t be shown on ABC’s national telecast, per standard policy, the U.S. Tennis Association says.
“We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions,” the organization said in a statement.
Trump was once a U.S. Open mainstay, but hasn’t attended since he was loudly booed at a quarterfinals match in September 2015, months after launching his first presidential campaign.
The Trump Organization once controlled its own U.S. Open suite, which was adjacent to the television broadcasting booth in Arthur Ashe Stadium, but suspended it in 2017, during the first year of Trump’s first term. The family business is now being run by Trump’s sons with their father back in the White House.
Trump was born in Queens, home of the U.S. Open, and for decades was a New York-area real estate mogul and, later, a reality TV star. Attending the tournament before he was a politician, he usually sat in the suite’s balcony during night matches and was frequently shown on the arena’s video screens.
In recent years, however, including between his presidential terms, Trump primarily lived at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Alcaraz said before the final that having Trump on-hand would be a privilege and “great for tennis,” but also suggested that such sentiment went for any president watching from the stands.
“I will try not to be focused, and I will try not to think about it,” Alcaraz said of Trump’s attendance. “I don’t want myself to be nervous because of it.”
Trump golfed at the Virginia club outside Washington on Saturday, as he has many recent weekends once the summer weather turned too hot for playing near Mar-a-Lago. But the president has also frequently attended sporting events — where the roar of the crowd sometimes features people booing the president while others cheer him.
Since returning to the White House in January and prior to Sunday’s U.S Open swing, Trump went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500, as well as UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Having a sitting president attend is unusual and, before Trump, hadn’t happened since Clinton went to the 2000 tournament. Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended the event’s opening night in 2023.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
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