Most Americans oppose President Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House to clear the way for a new 90,000-square-foot, 300 million-dollar ballroom. In addition to criticizing the lack of oversight over drastic changes to the historic and symbolic building—and the misplaced attention on a construction project during the country’s longest-ever government shutdown—there are serious concerns about the possibility of the project’s private donors receiving political favors in return for their funds.
Media outlets circulated the list of these private donors after the photos of the demolition began to surface. The most recognizable names—companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google—fly off the page and have prompted the most discussion. But the public has been confused by the individual donors who supported Trump’s passion project. On Friday, October 24, Rachel Abrams from the New York Times podcast, The Daily, said two names struck her as “out of left field”: Pepe and Emelia Fanjul
That the Fanjuls would donate to President Trump’s construction project did not come as a surprise to those of us at CAL who have been following the saga of sugar from the Dominican Republic that is tainted by labor abuses. The Fanjul family operates a vast sugar conglomerate comprising the likes of Domino Sugar, Florida Crystals, and Central Romana Corporation, a massive sugar producer in the Dominican Republic that exports to the United States and that workers and human rights advocates have denounced for decades for its use of forced labor. Central Romana has already benefited from the “first family of corporate welfare’s” close relationship to President Trump.
This post highlights how the Trump administration has allowed the Fanjuls to continue to rake in billions while the sugarcane workers in their supply chain frequently go without potable water, electricity, and living wages.
Trump’s Relationship with the Fanjuls
The Fanjuls’ contribution to the White House ballroom is only the latest news in a long and mutually beneficial relationship with President Trump. Trump and Jose “Pepe” Fanjul have been friends for over forty years, and over the last decade, the Fanjuls have donated over $7 million to Trump fundraising committees and super PACs. In one emblematic event in 2024, Trump spent the evening he was convicted of thirty-four felonies in New York state court at a campaign fundraiser Pepe hosted that raked in an astounding $50 million.
Equally notable, the Fanjuls’ prospects have improved under Trump’s presidency. In March 2025, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rescinded a 2022 order blocking U.S. imports of sugar from Central Romana—an order that was based on reasonable suspicion of forced labor on the company’s sugar plantations. Imports from companies hit with these orders normally only resume when the company remediates the underlying conditions of forced labor. However, credible evidence—including from CAL’s on the ground investigations—suggests that Central Romana did not meaningfully rectify the conditions on the plantations. Instead, the company devoted most of its efforts to lobbying activities, more than $1.1 million of which have been documented. In fact, The New York Times reported in March that the decision to resume imports did not follow normal administrative procedures. This is not entirely surprising given the Fanjuls’ access to the highest levels of the administration.
Additionally, back in January 2025, just before his inauguration and while the order blocking imports from Central Romana was still in place, President Trump publicly displayed the commemorative inaugural Coke can that Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey bestowed upon him, in the presidential tradition. In the same meeting, when Trump inquired as to why the Coca-Cola sold in the United States was not made with cane sugar, Quincey replied that “there wasn’t enough supply.” Soon after, it was reported that Trump phoned Pepe Fanjul to inquire about the alleged sugar shortage.
Fast forward to July 2025, and headlines blared that Coca-Cola would introduce a new U.S. product—Coke made with real cane sugar. In October 2025, Forbes reported that, although Coca-Cola declined to officially comment on where it would procure its sugar for the new product, “a source familiar with the company’s launch” informed Forbes that while Coca-Cola “is trying to keep this under wraps,” the Fanjuls “will be in the mix.”
All this to say that, in just the first few months of his administration, Trump may have played a role both in removing U.S. restrictions on imports of Central Romana’s sugar and in matching up the Fanjuls with a monumental commercial opportunity with Coke. And the benefits run in both directions, as evidenced by the ballroom donations.
Senate Democrats have sent a letter to the White House demanding more transparency around the ballroom donations. They warned that contributions from major corporations with federal contracts run the risk of “blatant corruption as these companies and their stakeholders seek to position themselves in the government’s good graces.” Lawmakers should be just as concerned about donations from individuals at the top of these corporate empires as they are about donations from the companies themselves.
Forced Labor in the Fanjul Empire
Stepping back from the specter of cronyism, CAL harbors serious ongoing concerns about forced labor in Central Romana’s operations in the Dominican Republic. To the extent that profits from those operations might be recycled into the new White House construction project, that would add blithe insult to injury to some of the most vulnerable workers in the Western Hemisphere.
When CBP issued the ban on Central Romana sugar imports in 2022, the agency cited abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime as the forced labor indicators apparent on the ground. CAL and other civil society organizations have also historically found these indicators of forced labor at Central Romana, in addition to evidence of debt bondage and physical violence.
While Central Romana made superficial changes to its operations in response to the import ban, credible evidence suggests that indicators of forced labor remain. Within the last two weeks alone, CAL has received multiple credible reports from workers that raise serious concerns about possible labor violations. Workers report that company agents have confiscated dozens of workers’ identity documents without informing them if or when they will be returned; that the company is laying off and evicting elderly canecutters without paying them the retirement benefits they are legally owed; and that private security officers are prohibiting workers from meeting in the company’s housing communities known as bateyes.
Enslaved African-Americans built the White House in the late 1700s. We cannot permit the story of the refashioned White House to echo that shameful chapter in U.S. history. CAL will continue to fight to ensure that, when Donald Trump sips on real-cane-sugar Coke in his glitzy new ballroom, his administration is not turning a blind eye to the taint of forced labor in U.S.-facing supply chains.
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