Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Trump will put his sons in charge, but some critics argue this is not enough 
 
 Donald Trump has said his sons will run his businesses during his presidency but there will be "no new deals". 
 
 He tweeted he would "hold a news conference in the near future", after delaying an announcement on how to handle his business interests. 
 
 The US president-elect had been due to hold a rare press conference on the matter on Thursday. 
 
 Mr Trump also said that he would make an announcement about his choice for secretary of state on Tuesday. 
 
 On his Twitter account, Mr Trump said that, although he was not mandated by law to do so, he would leave his businesses before 20 January, when he will be inaugurated president. 
 
 "Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them," he tweeted. "No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office." 
 
 No mention has been made of the role of Mr Trump's high-profile daughter, Ivanka, fuelling speculation that she might have a role in his administration. 
 
 Risk of impeachment - John Mervin, BBC News, New York 
 
 If Mr Trump retains ownership, or just some financial interest in his business, then the threat of a constitutional crisis looms over his presidency. His insistence that there's no law which forces the president to be free of business interests doesn't only ignore decades, even centuries of convention. It's also an explicit disavowal of the constitution itself. 
 
 The US federal government's founding document specifically prohibits US office holders from receiving presents or emoluments (defined as "the returns arising from office or employment" - ie payment) from foreign governments. 
 
 It's hard to see how even the most straightforward of business transactions between the Trump organisation and an overseas company wouldn't threaten to put President Trump in breach of that clause. Commentators and political rivals have raised this problem time and again, first during Trump's campaign, but in particular since his stunning victory. 
 
 That he still won't address it head on suggests either that he's still seeking a way of reconciling his business interests with his presidential obligations - and will unveil it later. 
 
 Or that he intends to run the risk of congress one day deciding that his conflicts of interest are so great that he has to be impeached. 
 
 Image copyright Twitter 
 
 Mr Trump's transition team spokesman, Sean Spicer, said Thursday's press conference had been postponed to make sure "proper protocols are put in place". 
 
 "With so many iconic properties and successful entities, moving the announcement to January ensures the legal team has ample time to ensure the proper protocols are put in place so his sole focus will remain on the country and achieving his ambitious agenda with the help of the world-class cabinet he has built," Mr Spicer wrote in an email statement to Associated Press. 
 
 Critics have said Mr Trump runs many businesses which all present possible conflicts of interests. 
 
 "It makes no sense to say 'no new deals," said Richard W Painter, a White House ethics adviser under President George W Bush. 
 
 "Is he going to continue to borrow money from foreign banks like Bank of China? That is a deal," Mr Painter told the New York Times. "Or collect rent from foreign government-owned companies? That is a deal. Will he still be hiring people, or having people stay in his hotels?" 
 
 Mr Trump's extensive domestic and international business interests include hotels and golf courses, including two in Scotland, as well as a variety of real estate holdings: ownerships or investments in hotels, offices and residential buildings. 
 
 Last month, Mr Trump issued a series of tweets pledged to "leave my great business in total" saying it was "visually important" to "in no way have a conflict of interest". 
 
 Image copyright Twitter 
 
 Media reports suggested that the delay in outlining how he plans to separate his business interests from his presidency was also due to his focus on a number of high-profile cabinet appointments he has been making. 
 
 Mr Trump said he was appointing Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn as his "top economic adviser". 
 
 Mr Cohn will head the White House National Economic Council, a position that will make him one of the most influential voices on economic decisions in the White House. 
 
 The Goldman Sachs president is the third person from the bank to join Mr Trump's cabinet. Steven Mnuchin - the incoming treasury secretary - and Steve Bannon - the new senior White House adviser are both former executives. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201701/1765/1155968404_5278363439001_5278358894001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump drops ‘no new deals’ pledge The top federal ethics official says Trump's conflicts of interest plan is 'meaningless.' 
 
 Donald Trump will not sell his business nor place his assets in a blind trust while serving as president, the president-elect and lawyers involved in the negotiations said Wednesday during his long-awaited news conference. 
 
 Instead, Trump’s company will not enter into new foreign deals and will appoint an ethics adviser who must approve any new domestic deals in writing, according to the ethics arrangement the president-elect laid out Wednesday. 
 
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 The lawyers also promised that Trump’s businesses and assets will be put into a trust for the duration of the presidency and added he will have “no involvement whatsoever” in the businesses. 
 
 Trump had terminated “all pending deals” and would impose “severe new restrictions” on new deals in the United States. As previously said, his two oldest adult sons will manage the company, with the help of a longtime executive of the Trump Organization. The lawyers said Trump will have “limited information rights” regarding what’s happening at the company he built over decades. 
 
 Under the new ethics plan, Trump, his children and his longtime business associates will be barred from discussing company operations and the inner workings of the U.S. government. Trump's team did not provide any details on how that ban would be enforced or verified. 
 
 The head of the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics said Donald Trump's conflicts of interest plan is "meaningless" and sets up the incoming administration for constant controversy. 
 
 "I need to talk about ethics today because the plan the president has announced doesn't meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met," OGE chief Walter Shaub said during an afternoon press conference hosted by the Brookings Institution. 
 
 Shaub initially praised Trump in November for his ethics moves but said the arrangement the president-elect just announced Wednesday doesn't address "the perception that government leaders would use their official positions for personal profit." 
 
 “Stepping back from running his positions is meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective,” Shaub said. “The presidency is a full-time job and he would have had to step back anyway.” 
 
 Trump’s team defended the arrangement during Trump's morning appearance, saying that divesting or taking the company public was not feasible, and that the current approach would eliminate the possibility of conflicts of interest without causing him “unnecessary” losses. 
 
 “President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built," said Trump attorney Sheri Dillon. 
 
 Trump himself said he was doing more than what it required. “I don’t have to do this,” he said during the nationally-televised press conference at Trump Tower in New York. 
 
 Dillon said Trump’s company had terminated 30 business deals ahead of him entering the White House, saying it had cost Trump and his children money. 
 
 The organization is interviewing candidates for the job of ethics adviser, a person who must approve new deals in writing, according to the lawyers handling the separation. The lawyers said the adviser's standards for determining new deals would include "the appropriateness of a counterparty," whether the transaction reflects the market value and other ethical concerns a deal could raise. 
 
 Separately, the Trump Organization is also creating a new position — chief compliance counsel — that makes sure the company is “operating at the highest level of integrity and not taking any actions that could be perceived as exploiting the office of the presidency,” Dillon said. 
 
 Trump himself, Dillon said, won’t be apprised of any incremental changes to his portfolio and will only have access to reports on profit and loss for his company as a whole. “He will only know of a deal if he reads it in the paper or sees it on TV,” she said. 
 
 Remaining debt will stay in place and will be paid down in the ordinary course of business, the lawyer said. 
 
 Ivanka Trump will be completely separated from the business empire, the lawyers said. 
 
 Trump also has prohibited his company from making any references in public, including on social media, to his role as president. His attorneys had previously told POLITICO that the company would not be using images of Trump in advertisements and that it also wouldn’t sell any presidential memorabilia inside his hotels or golf course pro shops. 
 
 The arrangement isn’t satisfying Trump’s critics, who say that maintaining any ties to his business poses a cascading series of conflict of interest as he governs. 
 
 “Tragically, the Trump plan to deal with his business conflicts announced today falls short in every respect,” said Norm Eisen, a former top White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama who has been among the most outspoken voices calling for a complete divestment. “Mr. Trump’s ill-advised course will precipitate scandal and corruption." 
 
 “President-elect Donald Trump has failed his ethics test. Now, America will suffer the consequences,” added Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. 
 
 Trump had previously said he wouldn’t enter into any new deals, and new domestic deals could still entangle his financial interests with the presidency. Dillon during the press conference explained that the licensing arrangements that are central to Trump’s business -- much of his profit comes from selling his name for branding, and he has publicly said his brand is “hotter than ever” -- would remain in the hands of the company. She explained that if Trump had sold his brand outside the company, he’d then be entitled to royalties that would only open him up to greater criticism. 
 
 “This would result in the trust retaining an interest in the brand without the ability to assure it does not exploit the office of the president,” Dillon said. “Whatever price was paid would be subject to criticism and scrutiny. Was it too high? Is there pay for play? Was too much paid to curry favor with the president-elect?” 
 
 His company also plans to keep ownership of a new high-end hotel in downtown Washington, which is leased by the federal government. 
 
 Critics and even some of Trump’s friends and longtime business associates expect him to continue talking to his sons about the businesses, and ethics experts have said that he will inherently know how the business is doing -- because he knows where his properties are (they are often emblazoned with his name.) And Trump knows what assets he holds, meaning he will inherently understand how new laws will benefit or hurt the trust and his sons. 
 
 The Trump lawyers also said a blind trust, selling his business or divesting didn’t make sense. “You cannot have a totally blind trust with an operating business,” Dillon said. “President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower, and the press will make sure than any new development at the Trump Organization are well publicized.” 
 
 As details emerged of Trump’s plan, critics raised questions about whether the president-elect’s new financial arrangement was extensive enough to prevent Constitutional challenges under the emoluments clause, which restricts U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments. Trump’s lawyers say the arcane provision doesn’t apply to Trump’s situation but the president-elect would nonetheless voluntarily give all profits from foreign governments to his hotels to the U.S. treasury. 
 
 Inside Trump’s government will be several potential conflict-of-interest landmines because he’ll be appointing agency leaders who have jurisdiction over issues directly relevant to their boss’s private affairs. The General Services Administration, for example, is expected to continue to lease the building that houses Trump’s new Washington hotel. The Labor and Homeland Security departments are charged with handling foreign worker visa applications and illegal immigration enforcement central issues for the hotels and golf courses affiliated with the Trump brand. 
 
 And Trump’s organization still owes hundreds of millions in debt to foreign countries, raising additional questions about whether he would be beholden to them. 
 
 “Without a full and complete divestment of financial conflicts of interests, the American people will not be able to tell where the Trump Organization ends and where the Trump administration begins,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin said in a joint statement issued ahead of the Trump press conference. 
 
 Democrats in the minority have little power to force hearings or pass legislation aimed at fighting Trump’s conflicts, though that hasn’t stopped them from demanding oversight investigations and threatening to block confirmation of Cabinet nominees. They’re also threatening more dire consequences if Trump pushes the limits of the Constitution and accepts gifts or payments from foreign governments. 
 
 In a statement, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law said the House GOP was “being naive if they don’t recognize that Donald Trump’s staggering web of conflicts and lack of ethical standards will remain, and ultimately hurt their ability to govern.” 
 
 Lawyers for Trump maintained that conflict of interest rules do not apply to the presidency, and that Trump was committed to the American people now - not the pursuit of personal profit. 
 
 Trump attorneys emphasized the “massive” nature of the Trump business empire and likened it to former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the heir to an industrial fortune whose finances were placed under intense public scrutiny during congressional hearings upon his 1974 confirmation. 
 
 Trump’s team has been scrambling since the election to address its conflicts, relying on a team of lawyers that includes incoming White House general counsel Don McGahn, former Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush counsel Fred Fielding, as well as attorneys from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. 
 
 Since the election, the lines have often been murky. Trump has said publicly it is not difficult to separate his business empire from the presidency, but aides and advisers have noted the process has taken so long because it is so difficult. 
 
 His sons have traveled across the country and world to analyze the new properties. “I think they will largely be just holding the fort down,” one person close to Trump said. 
 
 Eric Trump is expected to have particular power in the businesses, two people close to the transition say. 
 
 The Trump Organization also has dropped pending or in-progress projects in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, India and Saudi Arabia. Trump aides last month said the president-elect had sold as much as $40 million in stock holdings during the campaign. He also settled lawsuits alleging fraud at Trump University and backed off plans to build a controversial sea wall to protect his Ireland golf course. 
 
 The Trump Organization also settled two labor agreements involving more than 500 workers at its Las Vegas and Washington hotels, agreeing to four-year contracts that give food, beverage and housekeeping employees annual raises and pensions and healthcare benefits. 
 
 A New York source involved in the negotiations said Trump was personally involved in the labor talks and suggested the president-elect may still be having a hard time letting go from the business dealings he’s built his career around. 
 
 “It’s remarkable,” the source said. “In terms of separation or whatever, I think there’s zero chance that he’s not going to have his fingers in his business.”
– Donald Trump is clarifying how he'll deal with his businesses while president: He won't deal with them at all, he promises. In a series of tweets Wednesday morning, Trump said he "will be leaving my great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country." He reiterated his view that he is not obligated to do so under law, but said, "I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses." Trump said that legal documents were being drawn up to make it official, and that he would provide more details at a Dec. 15 news conference. "The Presidency is a far more important task!" he wrote. It's not clear whether his children would take over. Earlier this week, New York Times business writer Andrew Ross Sorkin made the case for an independent overseer in an open letter to the president-elect. He even floated a candidate: Kenneth Feinberg, who was in charge of the 9/11 victims' compensation fund and who told Sorkin he'd be willing to do it. Also Wednesday, former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin confirmed that he has been chosen to be Treasury secretary, and Wilbur Ross confirmed that he is the pick to be commerce chief, reports the AP. (Mitt Romney, meanwhile, had a cozy dinner with Trump as the decision on secretary of state looms.)