Lawmakers Traded Stocks Heavily as Trump Rolled Out 'Liberation Day' Tariffs - WSJ
WASHINGTON—As markets tanked in the wake of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in early April, members of Congress and their families made hundreds of stock trades, shining a spotlight on a controversial practice that some lawmakers have pushed to ban.
From April 2, when Trump launched the sweeping tariffs, to April 8, the day before he paused many of them, more than a dozen House lawmakers and their family members made more than 700 stock trades, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of disclosure filings. Top stocks purchased in that “Liberation Week” period, by the number of trades listed in the disclosures, included MKS Instruments and JPMorgan Chase, while the most sold stocks included Honeywell International and Visa.
Two lawmakers who have called for stock-trading bans in the past—Reps. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Rob Bresnahan (R., Pa.)—reported the most transactions by themselves or family members, the analysis found.
The trading took place during one of the wildest stretches for global financial markets of the past decade. The S&P 500 tanked more than 4.5% for two consecutive sessions shortly after Liberation Day and recorded the biggest fall since the March 2020 market crash. More than $6 trillion in market value vanished. The upswing after Trump announced his 90-day pause was dramatic, too. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shot up 12% in a single session on April 9, its best day in 24 years. Stocks have largely kept rising since—staging a U-turn that has helped major indexes recoup April losses.
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Disclosure rules only require members to report wide ranges of transaction values, not specific amounts or the price. For most members who both bought and sold, that makes it impossible to tell whether their overall trading activity that week made or lost money. For instance, a typical purchase disclosure would say a member bought between $1,001 and $15,000 of a stock on a given day, leaving the exact size of the investment and the price paid unknown. Congress has considered various proposals to ban lawmakers and their families from trading individual stocks, instead requiring them to move investment money into mutual funds or put their portfolios in the hands of a financial manager who controls investments through a blind trust.
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A small group of House lawmakers including Magaziner and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), along with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Chip Roy (R., Texas) and others, are completing negotiations on a new bill that they say amounts to the first realistic shot at stock trading-based ethics reform in more than a decade. The most active traders, as measured by the number of trades, during the week following Liberation Day were Khanna and Bresnahan, as well as Reps. Jefferson Shreve (R., Ind.), Julie Johnson (D., Texas) and Michael McCaul (R., Texas). Lawmakers are required to make filings showing trading by the lawmakers as well as close family members.
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