Democrats have ripped a jewelry firm, saying their gift to President Donald Trump could have amounted to a “cartoonish bribe.”
Trump was handed a “watch-sized” 18-karat gold ring bejeweled with 321 diamonds, 56 sapphires, 13 emeralds, and six rubies, completed with the numbers 45 and 47, by the Belgian diamond industry’s primary lobbying organization to honor his two terms in office.
The gift, reported by the Associated Press to be worth between $25,000 and $35,000, has rankled Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, who on Monday wrote a strongly worded letter to the president and founder of the Antwerp World Diamond Center, Isidore Mörsel and David Gotlib.
In the letter, they drew a link between the gift and the Belgian diamond industry’s subsequent exclusion from a new round of tariffs implemented on European countries.
The new round was introduced in July and is the latest workaround in Trump’s bid to levy charges without congressional oversight after the Supreme Court ruled his previous IEEPA project unlawful in February. The new plan sees rates ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent placed on 80 countries.
“We write regarding our concerns about the watch-sized, 18-karat gold ring encrusted with 321 diamonds and 75 gemstones that the Antwerp World Diamond Center (AWDC) gifted to President Trump, just weeks before the Administration announced it was exempting European diamonds from its chaotic tariffs,” Warren and Blumenthal said.
“We have previously raised concerns about ‘the President’s record of doling out special treatment to CEOs who are able to woo him with flattery, payoffs, or both,’ and the circumstances surrounding the European diamond industry’s exemptions raise troubling new questions about foreign corporate interests potentially buying special favors from President Trump with lavish gifts—or in the case of the gold ring, what appears to be a cartoonish bribe.”
In their message, they also laid out how the ring came into U.S. possession, revealing it was passed to the ambassador to Belgium during an America 250 event.
“On June 28, 2026, at an America 250 celebration in Brussels, Mr. Mörsel presented U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White with the aforementioned ring for delivery to President Trump. Custom-crafted by Mr. Gotlib, the watch-sized, 18-karat gold ring features 321 diamonds, 56 sapphires, 13 emeralds, six rubies, two diamond ‘T’ emblems, Superman-style ’45′ and ’47′ logos, the Presidential Seal, and an interior engraving reading: ‘Crafted in Antwerp for Donald John Trump.’
“Mr. Mörsel explicitly linked the gift to trade issues, stating that AWDC commissioned the ring to “celebrate that enduring relationship” with the Antwerp diamond sector’s “most important trading partner for generations.”
According to the U.S. embassy in Brussels, cited by MS Now, a video of Trump was played at the celebration, where he said, “A very special thank you to my friends from Antwerp for the magnificent Freedom 250 ring.”
The senators then noted that despite Trump not being able to keep the ring under congressional anti-corruption laws, “presenting a gift of this magnitude could still play directly into President Trump’s well-established affinity for shiny gifts.”
The senators from Massachusetts and Connecticut then alleged that the “return on your ‘ostentatious’ gift appears to have been swift and substantial,” because “the administration officially exempted European natural diamonds from the new Section 301 tariffs, restoring the Belgian diamond industry’s zero-percent tariff access to the U.S. market.”
They added that it “fits a deeply troubling pattern of corporate executives using flattery and gifts to obtain lucrative exemptions to the administration’s tariff rules.”
They then asked AWDC to answer a list of questions about the events that led to the gifting of the ring and warned that their actions could “raise serious legal questions under federal criminal law.”
They gave them until August 24 to respond.
The White House denied that Trump issued a favorable ruling with Europe because of the gift.
“The Trump administration agreed to provide preferential tariff treatment for diamonds as part of our historic trade deal with the European Union that was agreed to last summer. The exemption of diamonds in the Forced Labor Section 301 tariffs reflects how the Administration continues upholding our end of the deal. The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” Spokesman Kush Desai told the Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Antwerp World Diamond Center for comment.
