While many Canadian auto workers have been laid off, global companies are grappling with economic uncertainty and stock market investors have lost an estimated $10 trillion in value due to tariff announcements from the White House, there are now suggestions U.S. government insiders may have personally profited from advanced notice of potential stock market swings due to tariff rate changes.
On April 9, two Democratic senators — Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego — sent a letter to the White House chief of staff and U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer, asking for an investigation into allegations of conflict of interest over the president’s manipulation of tariff rates.
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That morning the president made a social media post saying, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”, apparently referring to the stock market.
A short while later he made another post on his Truth Social account revealing he was reducing the effective tariff rates on almost all countries, except the U.S.’s largest trading partners, China, Canada and Mexico.
The result of that second announcement was a extraordinary jump in stock prices, with the Nasdaq going up over 12 per cent and the Dow rising 7.8 per cent. Those amount to the largest single-day gains in several years.
In a short time period before the tariff announcement, stock market monitoring systems recorded a pattern of unusual trading worth millions betting on a stock market rebound, according to market watchers. Those trades generated very large profits.
The senators wrote in their letter: “This sequence of events raises grave legal and ethics concerns. The president, his family and his advisors are uniquely positioned to be privy to and take advantage of non-public information to inform their investment decisions.”
“We have never had a president before weigh in on where to buy or sell stocks,” said former chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, Richard Painter, while speaking on the German broadcasting network DW News. “In particular we’ve never had this happen when a president is about to announce such significant changes to economic policy such as the imposition or postponement of tariffs. Everyone knows tariffs have a potentially devastating impact on stock markets.”
Speaking on his YouTube video channel, Schiff added: “The question is, who knew what the president was going to do, and did people around the president trade stock knowing the incredible gyration the market was about to go through. Because, this is a president who is trading in his own meme coin. His kids are trading in their own cryptocurrency. You have people like Elon Musk who are doing their own conflicted self dealing in the administration.
“In any administration this corrupt, it is more than necessary to ask were people personally profiting from insider information, while people’s savings, their retirement accounts, were being torched.”
Insider trading accusations have been also been levelled at Democrats in the U.S. in recent years. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was accused conflicts of interest in trading stocks.
“They refused to pass a bill in Congress that would have prohibited members of Congress from trading on stocks while voting on bills that effect those stocks,” added Painter. “This has been a problem in the United States government for a long time. It’s fundamentally wrong.”
Despite calls for an investigation into the suspicious trading, it seems unlikely to ever happen. The administration has positioned sycophants into key cabinet positions that oversee the Department of Justice and the FBI. Inspectors general in various government organizations have been summarily fired along with FBI agents who participated in investigations into alleged crimes by the president or activities such as the January 6 insurrection.
In addition, law firms who have represented cases such as the Fox News defamation law suit, represented Hillary Clinton or other causes unpopular with the administration have been intimidated by the president, revoking various permissions, such allowing them to enter federal buildings, making it difficult for them to represent clients in Federal Court. They’ve also been prevented from doing case work for government agencies.
And Republicans in the Congress have been unwilling to hold the White House to account for anything.
Reuters reports the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment on the matter.
Whether or not there was any illegal activity, the president’s actions raise ethical concerns.
“He certainly shouldn’t be saying ‘buy stocks,’” said Painter. “The real question there is did he tell anybody else in advance of his putting that post up he was going to do this. That could involve insider trading laws in the United States.
“There should be an investigation of who knew what the president’s plan was on tariffs and if anybody made trades based on that information. The president has created an appearance of market manipulation.”
