Insider trading? The allegations against Donald Trump amid tariff pause | Business News
Just hours before he announced the 90-day tariff pause, US President Donald Trump posted messages on his social media platform, Truth Social, that seemed to be a stock tip for his followers: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” Trump wrote, signing off with his initials “DJT”. DJT incidentally is also the stock symbol for his company, the Trump Media and Technology Group Corp.
This came at a time when stocks were still in negative territory over an intensifying trade war, especially with China.
Also, Trump signed off the post with his initials—something that he generally does not do in his posts. After the announcement of the tariff reversal on Wednesday, Trump Media and Technology Group saw its stocks shoot up over 20 per cent, as did other stocks.
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“BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” Trump had said in yet another Truth Social post as the markets opened Wednesday, just a few hours before he posted his decision to pause his tariffs for 90 days.
These posts are now at the centre of a stock manipulation charge levelled by opposition Democrats, who say the post, coming just hours before the Trump administration’s decision to pause, was tantamount to insider trading.
“We need to get to the bottom of the possible stock manipulation that is unfolding before the American people, including what if any advanced knowledge did members of the House Republican Conference have of Trump’s decision to pause the reckless tariffs that he put into place, there are several members of Congress who will be aggressively demanding answers and transparency, particularly as it relates to stock purchase decisions that may have occurred over the last few days, there will be several avenues that we will be able to pursue and will do so aggressively,” Hakeem Jeffries, House of Representatives minority leader and leader of the House Democratic Caucus since 2023, said in a conversation with reporters in Washington DC.
Reporting obligations
The question really is, whether these charges will stick? There are two aspects to this: one, the release of privileged information itself and if that falls foul of procedures. Secondly, and more importantly, if someone made money from that.
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According to current US congressional rules, members of the House of Representatives will have to disclose any stock trades that they have made 30 days from the date of those trades, and this has to be done no later than 45 days as the outer limit. So, that information is anyway set to come out in the public domain.
No real precedent
There is no historical precedent of a sitting US President weighing in on when to buy or sell stocks, especially when the administration is about to announce such significant changes to economic policies that could have a stock impact globally.
But the crime here would not be merely posting the statement, but if Trump or the White House insiders told anybody else in advance of his putting that post up, that he was going to do this. That could potentially involve the insider trading laws in the United States. The White House did refer to a meeting that happened involving Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, that eventually led to the decision for the 90-day pause. The timelines of that meeting are unclear.
The Democrats, though, do not have a particularly strong case here politically, because they had vociferously defended the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she and her husband was trading in stocks, and they refused to pass a bill in the US Congress that would have prohibited members from trading in stocks while voting on bills that affect those stocks.
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It remains to be seen where this latest charge goes.
