President Trump has raised fresh questions about his willingness to separate himself from his family's business activities after he launched a furious tirade on social media against one of America's leading department stores.
Nordstrom is one of several top shops in the US that have recently dropped Ivanka Trump's fashion line….a business founded by the President's daughter, although she claims no longer to have a financial skate in it.
The President's intervention caused shares in Nordstrom to dip briefly on the New York markets….and left the White House Press Secretary scrambling for an explanation.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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It wasn't that long ago that Ivanka Trump was the face and voice of her fashion brand.
All the way through the Presidential election campaign she was eagerly flogging her wares in television advertisements, online offers and at a wide variety of department stores including Nordstrom….one of the most familiar shops on the American high street.
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But for Ivanka Trump the shopping hasn't been quite so happy of late.
Nordstrom is just the latest department store to drop her fashion line….along with with the very high-end Nieman Marcus.
They mostly seem to have made the decision due to sluggish sales.
But there's also been a vigorous campaign fueled by the President's opponents for consumers to boycott business that sell his family's products.
That seems to have stuck in the President's craw…..and he took to Twitter to voice his fury with Nordstrom.
"My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly" he wrote, describing Nordstrom's decision as "Terrible".
The Tweet appeared not just on his own personal account, but on the official US Presidential Twitter feed as well.
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At the daily White House briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer - described by one Washington Post columnist as the man with the worst job in Washington - tried to explain why the President criticised Nordstrom…a move that sent the company's share price downwards, though it later recovered on the New York markets.
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But there is no evidence at all to support the view that Nordstrom's business decision was in any way connected to a political view on the President's policies.
The company says it dropped the brand because the Ivanka fashion line wasn't selling.
And anyway….asked reporters….the President's daughter isn't supposed to be involved in the company at all while she and her husband are helping Donald Trump govern.
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The whole issue has once again suggested that the President still doesn't entirely separate the business of America from the business of his family.
And by the end of the day there was more bad news for him: discount houses Marshalls and TJ Maxx had also downgraded Ivanka Trump fashion products on their shop floors.
And in the case of TJ Maxx, employees were specifically instructed to throw materials advertising the Ivanka fashion line into the garbage.
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