WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump sold all of his stocks in June as he plunged into the costly general election campaign, his transition team abruptly announced Tuesday. His advisers provided no proof of the transactions and would not explain the apparent sell-off.
The announcement comes amid swirling questions about potential conflicts of interest between Trump’s expansive financial holdings and the decisions that will reach his desk as president. Some details of Trump’s finances are unknown given that he never released his tax returns during the presidential campaign, breaking decades of precedent.
On Tuesday, Trump said the government should cancel its multibillion-dollar order with Boeing for new Air Force One presidential planes. Asked on a conference call with reporters whether Trump had investments in Boeing, spokesman Jason Miller said the president-elect had sold all of his stocks in June.
Trump’s campaign did not announce the sell-off at the time, despite the fact that it could have been politically advantageous for the businessman to be seen taking steps to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Miller, as well as other transition officials and lawyers from the Trump Organization, did not respond to requests from the Associated Press to provide evidence of the transactions.
As of May, Trump reported owning millions of dollars’ worth of individual stocks, though he had more money in company specific investments through bonds, mutual funds and private equity investments, according to his 104-page public financial disclosure, which all presidential candidates are required to file. It’s not clear whether the comments Tuesday referenced Trump’s nonstock holdings.
Company investments
Trump reported in May an investment in Boeing worth between $50,000 and $100,000. Other investments were in companies — such as Ford Motor Co., V F Corp. and Thermo Fisher Scientific — that in recent years have moved jobs outside the U.S., a practice that Trump heavily criticized during the campaign.
The disclosure also showed Trump held a small amount of stock in Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and at least $100,000 in the energy company Phillips 66, both of which are involved in the disputed Dakota Access oil pipeline. Trump supports construction of the pipeline, and aides say he will review the project after taking office.
All presidents since Ronald Reagan have filed public financial disclosures in their first year in office, though they weren’t required to do so until their second year. For Trump, that means he won’t have to file another disclosure until mid-2018 unless he chooses to file earlier.
At the time of Trump’s apparent June stocks sell-off, the businessman was immersed in the expensive general election campaign. He’d poured more than $47 million of his own money into the primary campaign through a series of loans.
But in June, he adjusted his self-investment strategy, according to federal campaign finance filings. That month, Trump slowed his giving, making monthly campaign donations of about $2 million as his campaign came to rely more heavily on outside donations. He made a late $10 million investment in the final days leading up to the election.
Businessman-in-chief
Six weeks before taking office, Trump is telegraphing that he’ll take an interventionist role in the nation’s economy — as well as play showman when he sees a chance. The celebrity businessman’s declaration about Air Force One caused manufacturer Boeing’s stock to drop temporarily and raised fresh questions about how his administration — not to mention his Twitter volleys — could affect the economy.
“The plane is totally out of control,” Trump told reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower. “I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number. We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.” Earlier he had tweeted that the deal’s costs were “out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”
Not long after his first appearance, Trump returned to the lobby with Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, a massive telecommunications company that counts Sprint among its holdings. Trump pointed proudly to Son’s commitment to invest $50 billion in the United States, which Trump said could create 50,000 jobs.
Trump — who also tweeted the deal — shook Son’s hand and posed for photos, reveling as he had last week when he toured a Carrier plant in Indiana where he said he had instigated an agreement that will preserve about 1,000 jobs the appliance maker had planned to move to Mexico.