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In Vietnam’s communist system, all land is owned by the people and managed or leased out by the state. Most of the property for the golf project is still controlled by families with long-term rights of use. In the Khoai Chau district of Hung Yen province — where the Trump project will take up nearly four square miles along the Red River — a sense of betrayal has been rumbling.

At town-hall meetings in early April, officials told hundreds of residents that the best they could expect was about half of what their land would have sold for even before the golf project was announced in October.

Amid a chorus of outrage at one meeting, nearly everyone stormed out. Word of the offered rate spread through streets and into the fields. Opposition has hardened as farmers fear losing investments in saplings that take years to mature, and the security that the land has provided for generations.

“They’re not listening to us,” Le Thi Thanh, 57, said on a recent fever-hot afternoon, squatting to graft young custard apple trees. “They just come here and impose their will.”

At the groundbreaking, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh seemed sensitive to the possibility of public backlash in a country where, despite the power of a one-party state, people are not afraid to protest over being forced from where they live and work.

Raising his voice to a crowd of bankers, generals and Trump invitees in suits or shimmering stilettos, Mr. Chinh instructed the provincial authorities to ensure that those who sacrificed property would “have a new livelihood and new home better than their old ones.”

He also said the project would “receive maximum support” to “further strengthen the relationship between Vietnam and the U.S.” He promised that it would be completed in 2027.