If insider trading is proven true, what are potential consequences for Trump? Is such behavior a no-no even for presidents or he'll get away with it until his term ends?
In theory Congress can impeach him for it, but in practice there won’t be the votes to convict him. If there are ever, somehow, the votes to convict him, it’ll be for something worse.
After his term ends… I don’t know whether the law says that the insider trading exemption Congress has also applies to the Executive branch… but I’d fully expect the Supreme Court to say it does, if it got that far.
Isn't he legally immune for anything done in the course of his duties?
You'd need pretty solid proof he was colluding with others to place trades, and not just running his tariff policies as he saw fit with advanced notice given to his inner circle as some sort of courtesy.
I'd be surprised if anything could be made to stick.
The potential consequences is that he probably will make a ton of money. Assuming historical data might somehow resemble what will happen in the future, he'll probably get away with it after his term as well. Hopefully, the prediction is wrong though.
He might not have done it deliberately, but it’s a good method to get the tariffs through without opposition. You have a lower level set first, everyone says about how terrible they are. Then you come out with insane higher tariffs that will ruin the economy. Then you go back to a lower level and capitulate, and people are just relieved that they’re not the ridiculously high levels instead of being up in arms about the original level.
Except after he came out with the "insane higher tariffs that will ruin the economy" and then did the "go back to a lower level and capitulate" that was mostly for smaller trading partners.
At the same time he massively raised tariffs on China, and since the US imports so much from there the net result is the total tariffs on imports in the US after the "go back" step will be higher than if he had stuck with the "insane higher tariffs that will ruin the economy".
I don't think that anybody is going to forget the damage caused Trump.
I'm willing to bet that negotiations are underway between pretty much everybody outside of the US-Russia axis to try and come up with a new world trade order. Lowering the tariffs from an insane level of 20% to a slightly less insane level of 10% won't change that.
Yeah at the end of the day chaos is chaos. The end result does not clear the stench unless it ends with some amazing result, which is very unlikely to be the case.
A lot of countries also remember that Trump threw a tantrum about trade deals during his first administration, renegotiated with Canada and Mexico for basically 95% the same deals we had before, and then came back in complaining about the deals again. The very deals he negotiated.
We are an unreliable ally and trade partner. Countries are going to get sick of the whiplash if they aren’t already.
I believe that there is a general feeling that the US has been allowed to do anything thanks to the popularity they gained during WW2, but that it's now pretty much three generations ago and they've gone quite a bit too far with Trump. I realize that some of this is the exact symmetric of what Trump is claiming, e.g. that the rest of the world has been abusing the benevolence of the US, so I regard both claims with equal suspicion, but it's clear that any feeling of good will towards the US has evaporated.
I think what gets me about the US "being taken advantage of" narrative is that it just strikes me as completely disregarding the soft power we've enjoyed for so long. Those investments or "wasteful projects that don't benefit people in the US" have granted us a lot of stability abroad, relatively speaking, which does translate to a better life at home ultimately.
I don't know if these people are intellectually dishonest or just ignorant, if I can be blunt. If there is some legitimate counter argument that shows the cons outweigh the pros I have yet to hear it.
