President Donald Trump is facing allegations of insider trading after he temporarily stopped a series of tariffs that led to a surge in stock prices.
Adam Schiff calls for an investigation
What we know
Senator Adam Schiff urged Congress to investigate whether President Donald Trump participated in insider trading or market manipulation following his pause of the tariffs.
Timereported that Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego joined Schiff in signing a letter sent to the White House Thursday morning for an inquiry into whether Trump, his family, or administration engaged in insider trading.
Schiff and Gallego are requesting that the Office of Government Ethics review and produce transaction reports filed by government officials familiar with Trump’s tariff plan. Schiff’s push for this action comes after the S&P 500 jumped over 9% Wednesday after Trump announced the tariff pause.
RELATED:Stocks soar as Trump announces 90-day tariff pause—China excluded; Dow jumps 2,000 points
Moments after the stock market opened on Wednesday, Trump wrote on hisTruth Social platform “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
In response to Trump’s social media post, Schiff shareda video on his X page Wednesday saying, “So the question is between that tweet and Donald Trump’s announcement that he was reducing the tariffs on most other nations apart from China, the question is who knew what the President was gonna do and did people around the president trade stock knowing the incredible gyration the market was about to go through?”
What we don’t know
Whether this type of investigation takes place remains to be seen since it would need to be held by congressional panels like the Senate Judiciary Committee or the Senate Finance Committee, which are chaired by Republicans, Newsweek reported.
Trump’s tariff pause
The other side
President Donald Trump, in aTruth Social post, announced a 90-day pause and “substantially” lower reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday. He also raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 125%.
RELATED:Trump tariff summary: Where things stand after pause
FOX Businessreported that all countries, besides China, will temporarily go back to the 10% baseline tariff rate, which went into effect on April 2, known as “Liberation Day,” and applies to all imports to the U.S.
Trump explained to reporters on Wednesday about pausing the tariffs saying, “Well, I thought that people were jumping a little out of line, they were getting yippy… they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”
Why is Trump imposing tariffs?
The backstory
The Trump administration has implied that tariffs, taxes on imported goods, may have multiple purposes, like increasing federal tax revenue to counteract tax cuts, encouraging the reshoring of manufacturing or as a negotiating tool to lower tariffs among U.S. trading partners.
According to FOX Business,tariffs that are leviedand eventually removed through negotiations resulting in lower trade barriers create lower tax revenue and remove the incentive for reshoring. Moreover, if companies move operations to the U.S. to avoid tariffs, the government would collect less tax revenue.
The Source
Information for this story was provided by Time, Newsweek, FOX Business, and social media posts from Adam Schiff and President Donald Trump related to the tariffs. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.
