Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss President Trump's tariffs.
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00:00You have some other concerns about these tariffs, too, and you voiced them to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a bicameral letter with Senator Adam Schiff.
00:09And I want to read part of the letter. The letter asks the White House Chief of Staff this for a, quote,
00:14full accounting of the periodic transaction reports for all senior White House and executive branch employees since the start of the administration.
00:22Can you talk to us specifically about why you're asking for this information?
00:25Well, Brittany, since I started in Congress, I believe that members of Congress should not be trading individual shares of stock.
00:33We should never be putting money in our own pockets on the basis of non-public information that we get as members of Congress.
00:42The same should be true, in my view, for the administration.
00:46They get access to non-public information all the time about what the president may or may not be planning to do.
00:51And, you know, I'm going to keep working very hard on a member stock trading ban, and I'm going to keep working on accountability and transparency.
01:00And so the days of April 8 and April 9 were very concerning to me.
01:06You may remember April 9 at 9.37 in the morning, the president posted on True Social that today is a great time to buy.
01:14Offering stock advice is not what the president of the United States should be doing in any event.
01:19Then about four hours later, 1.18 p.m., that's when the announcement was made of a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs.
01:27And what I want to know is what did members of Congress do?
01:31What did members of the administration do leading up to that tweet at 9.37 a.m.?
01:38And then between 9.37 a.m. and 1.18 p.m.?
01:41In other words, did members of Congress have access to non-public information, whether it be from their conversations with the president or others?
01:48Did members of the administration have non-public information and then use it to trade stock?
01:56And if so, I think it's a violation of the public trust, and Americans have a right to know about it.
02:01And I think it would be a gross disservice to keep all that information from the public.
02:07To that point, pre-9.37 post where President Trump said, essentially, it is a good time to buy,
02:14is there any evidence of congressional insider trading or anyone in the Trump administration involved in insider trading?
02:20Is there anything like that that you know of so far?
02:23Well, it's circumstantial.
02:25We know that the president did have a dinner the prior evening with members of Congress.
02:29And I'd love to know which, if any, members of Congress traded pre-market before the announcement at 9.37 a.m.
02:40I'd like to know what members of the administration did as well during that couple days.
02:46And I really think between April 2nd and April 9th is the operative time
02:50because you saw the markets really negatively impacted on the Thursday and Friday before.
02:56And then, of course, a lot of middle-class people, a lot of seniors, a lot of retirees that did not have the risk tolerance, they may have sold.
03:06I remember speaking to my own dad and telling him, you know, do not panic.
03:09And I encouraged him to hang in there.
03:11But he was very concerned that Thursday and Friday before when the markets were down, you know, around 3,000 points, as I recall.
03:18Then, of course, the day on April the 9th, when the president did make his announcement of the pause,
03:25I think the markets went back up, you know, and made up maybe two-thirds of what it had lost the prior week.
03:31So seeing what happened that entire week from the 2nd to the 9th is really important.
03:35But on a go-forward basis, one thing that does give me great hope is that in the wake of all this,
03:40there's been a renewed push on a bipartisan basis for a stock trading ban for members of Congress.
03:47And we've got Republicans from Chip Roy to Josh Hawley who have talked about it.
03:52You've got Democrats now like Hakeem Jeffries that are for it.
03:56And you've got President Trump who was for it back in 2022 and then said again that he would sign a stock trading ban if it got to his desk.
04:06So the only thing holding it up at this point, in my view, is Speaker Mike Johnson.
04:12And I hope that he will recognize it's important we move this forward.
04:16And I'm going to be continuing.
04:17I just wrote him as well.
04:19And I'll continue to be writing him and asking him to hold a vote on the stock trading ban.