Transportation Secretary Duffy Sold Stocks Before Trump's Tariff Announcement

ProPublica reporting found that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold stock in nearly three dozen companies on February 11, 2025, two days before President Trump announced plans for sweeping reciprocal tariffs on February 13. The sales, worth between roughly $75,000 and $650,000 combined, came near a market peak, just before stocks began sliding on tariff concerns and later fell further after Trump detailed the tariffs on April 2.

A Transportation Department spokesperson said an outside investment manager executed the trades and that Duffy had no input on their timing, a defense ethics experts generally regard as one of the stronger available responses to insider-trading suspicion. There is no public evidence Duffy had advance knowledge of the tariff announcement's contents.

The episode drew scrutiny because Duffy has described himself as an intellectual architect of the administration's trade agenda, even though transportation secretaries do not typically set tariff policy. Ethics observers say the timing, even if coincidental and fully disclosed, illustrates the broader pattern of cabinet officials trading around market-moving administration announcements.