Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy dumped stock worth tens of thousands of dollars just before a key portion of President Donald Trump’s market-crashing tariffs became public, according to a new report.
Duffy, who claimed partial credit for influencing the president’s reciprocal tariff plan dating back to his time as a Republican lawmaker, sold securities in almost three dozen companies on Feb. 11, said a disclosure form obtained by ProPublica.
Sales reportedly amounted to between $75,000 and $600,000, and the securities were dumped when the U.S. stock market was near its peak. Two days later, markets suffered a significant dip in reaction to an announcement that Trump planned to slap foreign nations with the same tariff rate they have on American-made goods.
A Duffy spokesperson told ProPublic that their boss did not participate in insider trading, which can be considered a crime. Instead, they told the site that Duffy, 53, had “no input on the timing of the sales” and that an outside manager made them.
Trump was not secretive about his plan to implement tariffs if re-elected—something the Duffy spokesperson pointed out when asked about insider trading.
“President Trump has been discussing tariffs since the 1980s,” the spokesperson said.
Trump’s public tariff plan was scattershot before Feb. 13, when the White House said it planned to vary tariff levels based on factors like trade deficits and matching other countries’ tariff rates on U.S. goods. The White House said this would “correct longstanding imbalances in international trade and ensure fairness across the board.”
Markets reacted negatively to the news. ProPublica reported that the S&P 500, a broad-based index, fell 13 percent on the White House’s announcement. It would crater a month and a half later on April 3, a day after Trump’s much-hyped “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced after market close.
Duffy’s spokesperson told ProPublica that some of the stock sell-off was because he was required to dump shares in companies that could be considered a conflict of interest in his cabinet role, like owning stock in an airline. However, the site reported he was not required to sell off all the stock that he did, and his deadline to sell on transportation-related companies was not until late April. Duffy’s spokesperson told ProPublica he gave his account manager a copy of the ethics agreement on Feb. 7.
ProPublica reported that Duffy sold shares in companies walloped by tariffs but also in some that did not suffer the brunt of the import tax.
Duffy sold shares in the food delivery company DoorDash, which was not hard hit by Trump’s tariffs. Still, it could struggle if a rise in import duties leads to an economic decline, which would force consumers to ease their spending.
The official also sold shares in Shopify, whose merchants were impacted by tariffs, and in John Deere, the agricultural machinery manufacturer that could lose hundreds of millions to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
Duffy is not the only cabinet member to raise eyebrows with their trading. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media on April 2, hours before Trump announced his full tariff rollout, ProPublica reported last week.
Bondi, 59, was required to sell her shares in the Trump social media company, but had 90 days after her swearing in to do so. However, an attorney general does not typically advise the president on policies like implementing tariffs, and it is unknown if Bondi was privy to the scope of Trump’s tariff plan before selling.
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