The president of the United States seems to have further increased his record level of personal enrichment during his presidency this year by purchasing shares in companies shortly before his own administration made favorable decisions for these same companies.
Donald Trump thus bought up to $1 million of Nvidia shares a few days before the company received authorization to sell advanced computer chips to China, according to a recent official disclosure. He also purchased up to $100,000 of AMD shares, another chip manufacturer, shortly before that company was also authorized to sell in China.
And a few weeks before Palantir obtained a new contract with the Department of Homeland Security to support its deportation policy, Donald Trump also purchased up to $150,000 worth of shares in that company.
Trump promises that he only serves the United States
“By trading significant amounts of shares before decisions of his administration that would directly impact the price of these shares, Trump has become the sum of all fears related to corruption: a president whose every decision must be questioned to determine if it is made in his own financial interest,” said Jordan Libowitz of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
These stock transactions, detailed in a report published this Friday, May 15 by the NOTUS website, resemble (but much more serious) the type of activity that Donald Trump had asked Congress to ban in his State of the Union address earlier this year. It should be recalled that members of Congress cannot award public contracts or make regulatory decisions. “The president has a unilateral power that no member of Congress comes close to,” Libowitz added.
Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization, Trump’s private company, responded to questions from HuffPost US. In the past, the White House had stated, in response to articles about his use of his position for personal gain, that everything Donald Trump does is in the best interest of the United States. The Trump Organization, in a statement to NOTUS, stated that the management of Trump’s stock portfolio is handled externally and that “neither the president, his family, nor the organization itself play any role in the investments and are not informed about trading activities.”
Trump has openly used his position to enrich himself personally – a clear definition of corruption – marking a spectacular break from previous presidents who had all taken care to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.
When Trump advertises with public money
This week, Trump traveled to China to meet with the country’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, and he was accompanied by 17 leaders of large American companies, several of which Trump personally holds shares in. Among them were Kelly Ortberg of Boeing and Jensen Huang of Nvidia. The two companies announced that this trip had allowed them to generate business.
Since returning to power in January, Trump has used nearly $18 million in public resources to promote his souvenir cryptocurrencies, his golf resorts in Florida and Scotland, and the golf league LIV funded by Saudi Arabia, with which he has been associated since its creation five years ago.
The money he earns from these activities and his stock transactions, however, remains low compared to the billions he would earn from the World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency exchange platform, which he founded with his sons. This creation came at the same time that Trump was getting closer to the cryptocurrency industry after having spent years calling it a “scam.”
Note: This article is a translation made by the editorial team of HuffPost France from an article published in May 2026 on HuffPost US. The original article can be read here.
