Donald Trump Jr. says any talk of his family profiting from his father's presidency is "nonsense".
His trip to India has raised ethical concerns about using the name of the American president to promote international business ventures.
The eldest son of US President Donald Trump, who is in India to meet the promoters and buyers of Trump brand luxury homes in the country, said his family is actually missing out on business opportunities because his father pledged to conduct no new foreign business while he was in office.
Trump Jr., who along with his brother Eric now runs the Trump Organisation, told Indian television channel CNBC-TV18 that when critics talk about them "profiteering from the presidency and all this nonsense" they forgot about "the opportunity cost of the deals that we were not able to do."
"It's sort of a shame. Because we put on all these impositions on ourselves and essentially got no credit for actually doing that ... for doing the right thing," he said.
Trump Jr. was scheduled to speak about Indo-Pacific relations during a business summit attended by Prime Minister Narenda Modi.
On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Trump Jr. "was visiting as a private person" and said US diplomats had not "interacted with him regarding his meetings or speech".
For at least a week before Trump Jr. arrived in India on Tuesday, several major Indian newspapers carried glossy, front-page advertisements boasting, "Trump has arrived. Have you?"
The ads promised that buyers who ordered apartments in a new Trump-brand luxury real estate development in a suburb of the Indian capital by Thursday would get "a conversation and dinner" with Trump Jr. a day later.
The Trump Organisation has licensing agreements with all its Indian business partners. They build the properties and acquire the Trump name in exchange for a fee. With five projects in India, the country is the brand's largest market outside the US.
Australian Associated Press
