Two days before President Donald Trump announced Dramatic plans for “mutual” tariffs As for foreign imports, Transport Secret According to the records considered propublica.
The sales volume on February 11 took place near the historic peak in the stock market, just before it started sliding amid concern about Trump’s tariff plans and ended up fell After the president presented the details of the new tariffs on April 2.
He sold from $ 75,000 to $ 600,000 two days before Trump’s announcement on February 13, and up to $ 50,000 more.
Transportation secretaries are usually little linked to tariff policy but the Duffy is there submitted myself As one of the intellectual ancestors of the current Trump trade program. As a congressman in 2019, his last government post before Trump accepted him as a cabinet, Dafa submitted the bill he called “The Law on Mutual Trade.” The proposed legislation, which has not passed, largely reflects Trump’s mutual tariff plan. Duffy worked on this bill with Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarre. Trump tariffs were the “culmination of this work” Posted on the InternetReferring to your own bill in the house.
Trade in government officials informed by non -public information studied during their official duties may violate the law. However, it is unclear whether the DAFF had information about the terms or scale of Trump’s mutual tariffs before the public.
Trump has repeatedly promised to create significant tariffs throughout the company. But during the first weeks of their term, the investors did not sell the panic, believing that Trump would not have taken far -reaching fees that led to the market collapse after the “release” announcement.
In response to the propublica questions, the press -secretary of the Department of Transport stated that the manager on the border and DAFA “did not invest in the time of sales” -the defense that experts on ethics are usually considered one of the strongest issues of trade in non -state information.
His shares “are part of the pension account and are not directly guided by the secretary. Account managers must follow the recommendations of the ethics agreement and they have done it.”
“The secretary strongly supports the president’s tariff policy, but he is not part of the decisions of the administration at the level of tariffs,” the press secretary said.
The press secretary has rejected the opinion that the knowledge of Trump’s arrivals can create insider knowledge as “President Trump has been discussing tariffs from the 1980s”.
Duffy is the second secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers who sold the stock at a convenient time.
Last week PROPUBLICA reported that the Attorney General Pam Bondi sold from 1 to $ 5 million On April 2, the shares of Trump Media, a presidential campaign on social media. The state ethics agreement requires Bondi to sell the stock within 90 days after her confirmation, the term that would give her before early May, but why she sold it to that date is unclear. After the market closed this day, Trump introduced his tariffs, sending the market.
After the history of Propublica, at least two Democratic Congress members called for investigations. Bondi has not yet answered questions about whether she knew something about Trump’s tariff plans before the public did. The Justice Department did not answer questions about the transactions.
Forms of disclosure of information for government officials do not require them to indicate the exact number of purchased or sold, and instead provide a wide range for the results of each transaction.
Decisions Discoin Dispressions show that it sold 34 stocks worth 90,000 to $ 650,000 on February 11 and February 13. For an agreement on ethics He signed up to avoid conflicts as head of the transport department, he needed to sell shares to seven of these companies during the first three months. The members of the cabinet tend to be required to get rid of the financial interests that intersect with the role of their department’s supervision, which in the case of DAFF includes US roads, aviation and the rest of the country’s transport network. The ethics agreement was dated on January 13, and the Duffy was confirmed by the Senate on January 28, which means that he needed to sell by the end of April. His press secretary said he had provided the head of the account on February 7.
The shares he sold in the other 27 companies were not subject to an ethical agreement. According to records, these actions were estimated at some $ 27,000 to $ 405,000. Among them were Shopify, on which traders are influenced by tariffs, and John Dir, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery that predicts hundreds of millions of dollars In the new costs from the Trump tariff.
Other Duffy companies have sold, such as gambling and food delivery service, less directly vulnerable to tariff interruptions. But even these companies will be affected if the Americans spend less cash. Few rallies were not affected by Trump’s “Liberation Day”. The S&P 500, a wide index, decreased by almost 19% by weeks that followed the DAFA sales, and 13% specifically after Trump presented the details of his mutual tariff plan. As Trump unexpectedly returned back, most of these initial tariffs, the market bounced.
There is no sign that the cash cash from the Duffy sales was immediately reinvesting. He seems to hold on parts of his portfolio, including the Bitcoin Foundation, the Treasury, the American company Biopharma Madrigal Pharmaceuticals. (Dafa also acquired several Microsoft shares, one of the stocks forbidden to hold, days earlier on February 7, just sell them on February 11 with other sales.)
Trade in government officials, informed by non -public information studied through their jobs, may disrupt the termination of trading for knowledge in Congress or promotions. The 2012 Law said that the executive and legislative branch could not use the government’s non -public information and requires them to open their transactions.
But according to the law, the case has never been made, and some legal experts doubt that it will look after the courts, which in recent years usually narrow what is an illegal insider trade. The current and former officials also expressed concern that the Trump Justice Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission will not be aggressively investigated activity of Trump or his allies.
The choice of President Duffy to head the Department of Transport was somewhat unexpected. The Dauph, which fell on glory when he was shot in reality, “real world” in the late 1990s, last held public positions in 2019 during Trump’s first term when he served as Wisconsin’s Congress.
As a legislator, Dafa introduced a bill that would easily facilitate Trump or any president to recover new tariffs, a role that has long been given to Congress. The bill would allow the president to impose additional tariffs for imported goods if he determined that the other country used a higher rate on the same goods when they came from America.
The bill was not adopted, but Trump essentially believed that the authorities, justifying new tariffs as necessary for national security or in response to an emergency. His February 13 is the announcement He urged his advisers to come up with new tariff rates on goods coming from the world, based on a number of restrictions he stated that these countries are placed on American products – not only through tariffs, but also from their exchange courses and industry subsidies.
Even the public crackdown on the Duffy and Trump bill were similar. Tales released the spreadsheet Showing how other countries raised certain goods at a higher speed than in the US, Trump also used an electronic table during his crackdown to show that his new tariffs were the same or lower than trade restrictions that other countries placed on US goods.
Most recently, the Duffy was a Buster of Trump’s trade policy.
‘Liberation Day !! He wrote on Twitter Two days after Trump introduced his mutual tariffs on April 2. “This week @potus has taken a historical step to stopping other countries from tearing off an American worker and restoration of fair trade. In Congress, I helped head the US mutual law with @realpnavarro and @whitehite to expand the president’s tariff powers in his first term. This creativity, and the image, to release, and the image that conducts the tariff powers with my family this week.
