President Trump has formed tight bonds with many big-name corporate executives, hosting them at White House events and even taking some of them to China.
He also, according to a new disclosure form, owns shares in many of their companies.
In the first three months of this year, Mr. Trump’s investment portfolio executed more than 3,600 trades, the disclosure form shows, buying and selling shares in big banks, manufacturers and tech giants, among other companies.
The flurry of activity has cast a spotlight on Mr. Trump’s sprawling investment portfolio, fueling criticism that his presidency has blurred the line between his private interests and the public good. It has also raised questions among critics about the timing of some trades, which coincided with the president appearing to endorse some of the companies in his public comments.
The Trump family argues that the criticism is entirely unfounded, noting that it does not actually control the trading. Instead, the family says, these were automated trades placed by outside brokerage firms.
“Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization has any role in selecting, directing, approving, influencing or soliciting specific investments,” the Trump Organization said in a statement. “They receive no advance notice of trades, cannot alter or override the managers’ strategies or models, and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio operations.”
The company created this buffer, it added, to mitigate any ethical concerns.
“This structure was intentionally designed to maintain a clear separation between President Trump and the independent third-party investment managers overseeing the accounts and avoid even the appearance of any conflict of interest,” the company said in the statement.
In the past, Mr. Trump has noted, correctly, that conflict of interest laws do not apply to him as president. But with an estimated net worth in the billions — and stakes in many of the industries that his administration oversees — Mr. Trump has often pushed the boundaries of presidential norms.
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He has, for example, made a fortune in the crypto industry, while pushing deregulatory policies that benefited his business partners. Questions about his investment portfolio also resurfaced late last week with the release of his disclosure form showing recent trades in big-name corporate stocks.
His portfolio, which last year was worth at least $236 million, added at least $1 million in shares of Nvidia, Apple and Amazon in this first quarter of this year. And of the 17 chief executives he brought to China last week, 15 of them lead companies whose shares Mr. Trump’s portfolio bought this year.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, slammed Mr. Trump for bringing the Nvidia chief executive to China after acquiring shares in the chip maker. She also highlighted that the share purchase came around the same time that the Trump administration granted Nvidia permission to begin selling one of its most powerful chips to China.
“The President’s corruption is a national security disaster,” she wrote on X.
Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, fired back, “To suggest that individual stocks are being bought or sold, at the discretion of any member of the Trump family, would be a lie.”
He added that the assets were invested in a “blind trust.”
There is no indication that a blind trust actually exists; that would require the president to have no knowledge of his portfolio contents. The Trump Organization later confirmed in its statement that the investments are in fact “maintained exclusively in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party” brokerages.
“These institutions have sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions, including asset allocation, trading, rebalancing and portfolio management,” the company said.
On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance came to the president’s defense, telling reporters that “the president doesn’t sit at the Oval Office on his computer on his, like, Robinhood account, buying and selling stocks. That’s absurd.”
Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, covering President Trump.
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