Add two Republican members of Congress to the growing list of lawmakers whose families made a flurry of stock trades immediately before and after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements.
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida and his wife, Erika Donalds, bought or sold between $8,008 and $120,000 worth of stock on April 10, a week after Trump’s tariff declaration, according to a NOTUS review of new congressional financial disclosures.
Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington state reported that his wife, Joan Galvin, dumped nearly four dozen stocks on April 11 worth between $47,047 and $705,000. (Lawmakers are only required to disclose the values of their stock purchases and sales in broad ranges.)
The April 11 sales came as stock indices rebounded after crashing in the days following Trump’s April 2 tariff announcements — but before spiraling downward again the next week as Trump trashed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Donalds and Newhouse join Democratic Reps. Julie Johnson of Texas and Jared Moskowitz of Florida, as well as Republican Reps. Jefferson Shreve of Indiana and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who are among lawmakers who made large, tariff-timed stock trades in late March and early April.
The offices of Newhouse and Donalds acknowledged email and phone inquiries from NOTUS but did not respond to specific questions, including whether Trump’s tariff announcements prompted the congressmen’s April stock trades.
They also did not respond to questions about the degree to which the lawmakers — as opposed to financial advisers — were personally involved in making the trades and whether the trades pose conflicts of interest.
The Donalds’ trades include purchases and sales of shares in two financial companies — Visa Inc. and Brazil-based digital banking group Nu Holdings Ltd. — at a time when Donalds sits on the House Committee on Financial Services, the jurisdiction of which includes banks and international finance. They also traded shares of communication cable company Amphenol Corporation and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
Among the stock sales Newhouse disclosed: Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Marathon Petroleum, Microsoft, Netflix, PayPal, defense contractor RTX, Starbucks, Tesla, Verizon Communications, Visa and UnitedHealth Group.
Newhouse also reported a sale of stock in agricultural equipment behemoth John Deere that he valued at up to $15,000. Newhouse is a member of both the House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development and Food and Drug Administration.
Newhouse likewise reported sales of stock in several companies that have strong business ties to or operations in China, such as apparel and footwear company VF Corporation. Newhouse is a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Congress is actively debating whether to ban federal lawmakers and their spouses from trading individual stocks and cryptocurrency altogether, particularly in light of dozens of members of Congress violating the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’s existing disclosure and transparency provisions.
Donalds, who is running for governor of Florida to replace term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, himself violated the STOCK Act by failing to properly disclose more than 100 stock trades from 2022 and 2023, Business Insider reported.
At the time, Donalds’ congressional office said “third party financial professionals” made the trades on the Donalds’ behalf. In 2022, Donalds told Fox Business News that stock trades made by Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, were “disgraceful” and that anyone violating the STOCK Act should be punished.
“That’s when you have to have sanctions, and the House has to get real,” said Donalds, who worked in the banking and finance industry before entering politics.
While federal lawmakers may still trade individual stocks, “there’s a higher standard of expectation when it comes to members of Congress, and they really need to hold themselves to a higher standard,” said John Pelissero, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“These trades are troubling at best, and at worst, there’s a level of unfairness” because lawmakers are generally privy to more business information than average stock traders, Pelissero added. “The optics of it are very bad.”
Two members of Congress — Democratic Reps. Greg Landsman of Ohio and George Whitesides of California — recently confirmed they’ve voluntarily quit trading individual stocks to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest.
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Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist.