Just two days prior to initiating an initiative aimed at reducing regulatory burdens for commercial space transportation, President Donald Trump last month acquired bonds valued at up to $5 million issued by SpaceX, a significant federal contractor led by Elon Musk, as revealed in ethics filings released on Thursday. The SpaceX bond buy was among 517 trades Trump executed in August, transactions that highlight concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest that have persisted throughout his presidency. In addition to the liabilities associated with SpaceX, it has been reported that Trump acquired as much as $25 million in shares of Meta, approximately $6 million in Microsoft stock, and a lesser quantity of Oracle shares, according to regulatory filings. Those trades took place weeks prior to Trump’s gathering of Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and other AI leaders for a summit at the White House.
Trump notably resisted demands for a regulatory crackdown aimed at addressing safety concerns, choosing instead to advocate for a more lenient approach. “There is a conflict of interest. I’m not saying he’s doing anything illegal, but this really gives the appearance of corruption,” Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told on Thursday. Painter, currently a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, observed that the president, vice president, and members of Congress are exempt from federal conflict of interest laws. The White House maintains that Trump was not personally engaged in the recent surge of trades. “President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” Davis Ingle said in a statement. “All holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000.”
Ingle added that neither Trump nor “any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.” And “All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest,” the White House spokesperson said. However, the timing of the large-scale purchases of Meta and SpaceX securities is noteworthy. The filings indicate that on August 18, Trump purchased between $1,000,001 and $5 million of senior unsecured SpaceX bonds due July 2031, which carry a 5.35% interest rate. Two days later, the White House announced that Trump signed a national security presidential memorandum intended to expedite the “golden age” of America’s space transportation.
SpaceX is positioned to benefit from the new policy, which seeks to facilitate over 1,000 launches and reentries on American soil each year by 2030, partially through the acceleration of permitting and environmental review processes. Asked how he would have advised Bush about making a similar purchase of securities in a federal contractor, Painter said: “No effing way. Don’t buy the bonds. Don’t do that.” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren stated: “Rather than bringing down the cost of gas and groceries, President Trump is using his office to enrich himself. That’s corruption, plain and simple.” And “It’s long past time for Congress to act and ban stock ownership and trading by members of Congress and the president,” Warren said.
