Did Trump enable insider trading?

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Did Trump Enable Insider Trading?" The Indicator from Planet Money – NPR Release Date: April 16, 2025

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Introduction

In the April 16, 2025 episode of The Indicator from Planet Money, hosted by Darren Woods and Adrian Mad, the show delves into the contentious question: Did Donald Trump enable insider trading through his social media posts? This episode dissects the events surrounding President Trump's tariff announcements, subsequent stock market reactions, and the ensuing political uproar questioning the legality and ethics of his actions.

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Market Turmoil Triggered by Tariff Announcements

[00:11] Darren Woods opens the discussion by outlining the volatile month in the stock market initiated by President Trump's significant tariff announcements.

• Darren Woods: "It’s been a rollercoaster of a month on the stock market. At the start of April, President Trump made his big announcement that he had slapped huge new tariffs on most of the world. That sent markets into free fall. It was the steepest drop in share prices since the early days of the pandemic." [00:11]

A week following the initial announcement, Adrian Mad highlights Trump's decision to pause many of these tariffs, which led to a remarkable rebound in the market.

• Adrian Mad: "And then a week later, Trump announced that he would pause a lot of those tariffs for 90 days." [00:29]

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Trump’s Social Media Posts and Market Reaction

The episode focuses on two critical posts by President Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social, which seemingly sent conflicting signals to the market.

• Darren Woods: "Now, that morning, Trump had posted on his social media company, Truth Social. He had said that now was a great time to buy and if you'd followed that advice, you could have made a lot of money." [00:59]

These posts led to heightened scrutiny and allegations of potential insider trading, especially as stock trades surged following Trump's announcements.

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Political Backlash and Calls for Investigation

The episode explores the political fallout from Trump's social media activity, emphasizing the concerns raised by Democratic politicians regarding possible insider trading.

• Adrian Mad: "And this got many Democratic politicians asking authorities to investigate possible insider trading. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to CNN about this on Sunday." [01:20]

• NPR Host: "And it's entirely appropriate to have an investigation to make sure that Donald Trump, Donald Trump's family, Donald Trump's inner circle, didn't get advance information and trade on that information." [01:34]

Additionally, the spike in public interest is evident with Google searches for "insider trading" surging, reflecting widespread concern.

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Understanding Insider Trading: Insights from Matt Levine

To provide clarity, Darren Woods introduces Matt Levine, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist with a background in law and investment banking, to explain the nuances of insider trading.

• Darren Woods: "We will learn the outs and ins of insider trading from a former Wall Street lawyer." [01:45]

Matt Levine elaborates on the definition of insider trading:

• Matt Levine: "Insider trading is trading on the basis of material non-public information that you got in a bad way." [04:04]

He breaks down the components:

• Material Information: Information that significantly affects stock prices.
• Non-Public: Information not available to the general public.
• Bad Way: Obtained through unethical or illicit means.

Levine uses an analogy to illustrate acceptable versus unacceptable trading based on information acquisition methods.

• Matt Levine: "If you're working hard to find out new information, you should trade on your new information. If you're like cheating and stealing the information, you can't take." [05:14]

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Analyzing Trump’s Actions: Public vs. Insider Information

The discussion pivots to evaluating whether Trump's social media posts constitute insider trading.

• Matt Levine: "Insider trading is when you know something and you tell your buddy and you say to your buddy, hey, you should trade on this. If you're announcing it publicly, how can it be insider trading?" [06:28]

Darren Woods and Matt Levine assess the timeline of Trump's posts:

1. 9:37 AM: Trump posts on Truth Social, encouraging buying stocks.
2. 1:18 PM: Trump announces a 90-day pause on tariffs.

Levine suggests that the initial post did not necessarily hint at the tariff pause.

• Matt Levine: "I think the opposite of insider trading... Insider trading requires non-public, material information obtained improperly." [06:28]

Levine also mentions internal chatter suggesting the tariff pause might have been a strategic move to facilitate negotiations, adding complexity to the situation.

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Legal and Ethical Considerations

The episode delves into whether Trump's actions fall into a legal gray area, considering the nature of social media as a public platform.

• Matt Levine: "It just strikes me as sort of not ideal governance. Right? Which is not exactly a securities fraud issue." [08:47]

He notes that while the posts may not legally qualify as insider trading, they raise concerns about transparency and fair market practices.

Darren Woods acknowledges the ambiguity but emphasizes the absence of concrete evidence linking the posts to illicit trading.

• Darren Woods: "The right House denies any wrongdoing and says that morning's posts were just the president reassuring the markets." [08:12]

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Political Actions and Continuing Investigations

The episode concludes with ongoing political actions, highlighting calls for formal investigations into Trump's conduct.

• Darren Woods: "More Democratic politicians are joining the call for investigations. On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to state attorneys general to investigate whether Trump or any of his associates broke state laws to profit from the tariff change." [09:11]

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Conclusion

While Matt Levine remains skeptical about labeling Trump's social media activity as insider trading, acknowledging the lack of legal grounds, the episode underscores the broader issues of governance and market fairness. The political momentum towards investigation reflects the enduring tensions surrounding transparency and accountability in high-stakes economic decisions.

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Notable Quotes:

• Darren Woods [00:11]: "It’s been a rollercoaster of a month on the stock market... steepest drop in share prices since the early days of the pandemic."

• Matt Levine [04:04]: "Insider trading is trading on the basis of material non public information that you got in a bad way."

• Matt Levine [06:28]: "If you're announcing it publicly, how can it be insider trading?"

• Matt Levine [08:47]: "I understand why people are annoyed by it... but that doesn't strike me as insider trading. It just strikes me as sort of not ideal governance."

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Attributions:

• Darren Woods and Adrian Mad – Hosts of The Indicator from Planet Money
• Matt Levine – Bloomberg Opinion Columnist
• Senator Elizabeth Warren – Mentioned in context of political response
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – Initiating investigation efforts

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This comprehensive analysis presented in the episode offers listeners a nuanced understanding of the potential intersections between political actions, market reactions, and the legal frameworks governing insider trading, all framed within the context of President Trump's recent activities.

Transcript

[NPR Host]

Npr.

[Darren Woods]

It'S been a rollercoaster of a month on the stock market. At the start of April, President Trump made his big announcement that he had slap huge new tariffs on most of the world. That sent markets into free fall. It was the steepest drop in share prices since the early days of the pandemic.

[Adrian Mad]

And then a week later, Trump announced that he would pause a lot of those tariffs for 90 days.

[Darren Woods]

I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippee, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.

[Adrian Mad]

And thus the pause after this announcement, the stock market had a great day and a whatever the opposite of yippee is one of the highest percentage rises in one day, in fact, from yippee to yippee.

[Darren Woods]

Now, that morning, Trump had posted on his social media company, Truth Social. He had said that now was a great time to buy and if you'd followed that advice, you could have made a lot of money.

[Adrian Mad]

And this got many Democratic politicians asking authorities to investigate possible insider trading. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to CNN about this on Sunday.

[NPR Host]

And it's entirely appropriate to have an investigation to make sure that Donald Trump, Donald Trump's family, Donald Trump's inner circle, didn't get advance information and trade on that information.

[Adrian Mad]

And you know, it's not just politicians wondering about this. Last week, Google searches for the term insider trading spiked. This is the indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrian Mad.

[Darren Woods]

And I'm Darren Woods. Today on the show, were Trump's posts insider trading? If a politician were to know ahead of time about a big policy shift, can they just tweet it out? We will learn the outs and ins of insider trading from a former Wall street lawyer.

[NPR Host]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Intercom. Want to make your customer service dramatically better? With fin, you can. Fin, the leading AI customer service agent, is now available on every help desk. Fin can instantly resolve up to 80% of your tickets, which makes your customers happier. And you can get off the customer service rep hiring treadmill. Fin by Intercom named the number one AI agent in G2's winner. Report [e-mail] NPR to understand whether Donald.

[Darren Woods]

Trump's posts could be considered insider trading, we need to go through the timeline carefully. Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion column who's worked on Wall street both as a lawyer and a Goldman Sachs investment banker. Matt describes what happened at 9:33am Eastern Time on the morning of Wednesday 9th April.

[Matt Levine]

Donald Trump truthed.

[Darren Woods]

That's the verb we're using Truth.

[Matt Levine]

That's I think the verb that Truth Social and Donald Trump officially use no.

[Darren Woods]

Comment on the actual veracity of the content. But he truthed.

[Matt Levine]

He truthed. Be cool. Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before. And then a few minutes later, in another Truth Social post. This is a great time to buy. I'm trying to say it in all.

[Darren Woods]

Caps again with more passion, Matt.

[Matt Levine]

Right. This is a great time to buy.

[Darren Woods]

And at least for the stock market that day, that was the truth. At 1:18pm, President Trump posted on Truth Social again, this one was more official sounding. Trump said that he was putting on a 90 day pause for most of the recently announced tariffs. For many countries, markets like The S&P 500 shot up like a firecrac tracker.

[Matt Levine]

The S and p was up 9.5% that day. It was one of the best days in recent memory. And had you bought at 9:37 when he said it was a great time to buy, you did really well.

[Darren Woods]

Was this insider trading? First off, let's define what the term means.

[Matt Levine]

Insider trading is trading on the basis of material non public information that you got in a bad way.

[Darren Woods]

Trading on the basis of material non public information that you got in a bad way. All right, let's break down Matt's definition bit by bit. So first, material information.

[Matt Levine]

Material information means that it matters to the stock price.

[Darren Woods]

Then there's non public. So that means not behind closed doors. And finally that it's information that you got in what Matt calls a bad way.

[Matt Levine]

There is that element, right? Like if you like investigate a company and you're the first one to learn that its products are defective, you can go trade on that because you've like found out information that's valuable. If you're the CEO and you know you're doing a merger and you just like want to buy some stock for yourself to make a quick buck on the merger, you're like violating a duty to the company. And that's something that, that the, that regulators don't want. So the insider trading rule is basically, if you're working hard to find out new information, you should trade on your new information. If you're like cheating and stealing the information, you can't take.

[Darren Woods]

Alaska Airlines last year a door fell off one of its planes mid flight. Now the plane landed safely. There were only a few minor injuries, but there was some chatter online about whether someone could theoretically make money off this.

[Matt Levine]

Someone at some point posted on Reddit, like, if I were on that plane and I knew this is going to be bad for the manufacturer of the plane. Can I go short their stock while I'm on the plane? And that's like the classic case of you have information that the general public doesn't know, but you didn't do anything wrong to find it out. And I think it's fairly clear you would be allowed to short stock in that situation. You'd have to have a lot of presence of mind, but you could do it.

[Darren Woods]

So that's our rubric material non public information gained in a bad way. Let's apply this to Donald Trump's truth post last week before that particular tariff pause. If a politician posts on social media hinting about a major policy change they're involved with, is this insider trading?

[Matt Levine]

I never want to give legal advice. To me it feels like the opposite of insider trading. Insider trading is when you know something and you tell your buddy and you say to your buddy, hey, you should trade on this. If you're announcing it publicly, how can it be insider trading?

[Darren Woods]

Okay, so that part about non public information wasn't met. But Matt doubts whether Trump even had material information early in the morning when he posted to Biden by at 9:37.

[Matt Levine]

He did not announce publicly that he was pausing tariffs. And I think that a better reading of the record is that at 9:37 he was still defending the tariffs and that in fact the policy change came later that like between the truth social saying this is time to buy and the truth social saying we're pausing tariffs. He changed his mind about pausing tariffs. I'm not sure of that. That's like what the reporting suggests, but I don't have a window into his mind. So I don't think that at 9:37 he was hinting that he was going to pause tariffs.

[Darren Woods]

And yeah, we don't know for sure what was going on in Trump's head.

[Matt Levine]

Now I should say that there's noise from inside the Trump administration that this was the plan all along. This is a cunning plan to get people to negotiate. And so if you believe that, then who knows, right? Maybe there was a warning, but my impression is that that the facts actually changed between the truth social posts. It would be very interesting if he was hinting that he was going to pause tariffs. It would be very funny. But I'm not sure it would be insider trading because he was posting it publicly.

[Darren Woods]

You could argue that there's a gray zone here. Is a social media account more like a smoke filled room or an open town square. Actually the securities and Exchange Commission has made rules about companies disclosing information on.

[Matt Levine]

Social media and the basic rules you can do it. You have to give people some heads up that the CEO will be posting material news on Twitter or whatever. Similarly here I do think there's not an SEC filing, but everyone is on notice that Donald Trump does his public communications on Truth Social.

[Darren Woods]

There were some trades that were done minutes before Donald Trump's afternoon announcement on pausing the tariffs. There is no evidence whether or not these were from a White House insider or alternatively from something benign like the news of the successful treasury bond auction that had just finished. This doesn't change the fact that truthing or posting on social media isn't generally considered insider trading. The right House denies any wrongdoing and says that morning's posts were just the president reassuring the markets. Overall, though, Matt is sympathetic with the whole saga rankling people.

[Matt Levine]

I understand why people are annoyed by it. Right. It does seem like it would be winking at a change in policy before making the change in policy official, and in a way that like might seem to advantage some people over other people. But that doesn't strike me as insider trading. It just strikes me as sort of not ideal governance. Right? Which is not exactly a securities fraud issue.

[Darren Woods]

More Democratic politicians are joining the call for investigations. On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to state attorneys general to investigate whether Trump or any of his associates broke state laws to profit from the tariff change. This episode was produced by Koopa, Katz McKim with engineering by Cole Takasugi Tiernavan. It was fact checked by Cyril Juarez and edited by Julia Ritchie. Kate Concannon is the show's editor and the indicator is a production of npr.

[NPR Host]

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