Several top Trump administration officials sold off stock market holdings in the days leading up to the president’s announcements of sweeping tariffs that sparked fears of a global trade war and rattled financial markets.
Sales by top officials, including Cabinet members, their deputies and senior White House officials were clustered in two 10-day periods leading up to President Donald Trump's major tariff announcements Feb. 13 and April 2, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 20 officials’ publicly available transaction forms. Of the stock and stock fund sales administration officials reported between Jan. 20 and April 30, 90% fell within 10 days of the tariff announcements.
The Feb. 13 announcement had little immediate impact on the markets, but stock prices plummeted after April 2. The markets have recovered since April 9 when Trump paused the tariffs, and the S&P 500 index was up about 7.5% for the year as of July 21.
“It is concerning and begs the question of whether these public officials knew something that informed their trading,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.
