Trump's US$65,000 Moderna trade is untouchable by law — a Canadian minister would need a blind trust for that

The exact dollar gain isn’t public; however, U.S. disclosure rules require officials to report the purchase range for all publicly traded investments. As a result, official documentation shows a Moderna equity purchase by Trump on March 2 in the range of US$15,000 to US$50,000. A second purchase was recorded March 17, the range of US$1,001 and US$15,000.

Based on a rough calculation, a 225% gain would turn the low end of those combined purchases (about US$16K) into more than US$52,000. On the high end, a US$65K purchase would’ve turned into US$211,000. It’s a paper profit of somewhere between US$36,000 and US$146,000.

To be clear, nothing President Trump did is considered illegal. Merck and Moderna’s announcement was public, and that triggered the equity price surge. However, this situation does highlight a structural difference between Canada and the U.S.

In America, Trump is legally free to hold and trade individual stocks, like Moderna, all while sitting in office.

In Canada, cabinet ministers, Prime Ministers and elected officials in equivalent positions of power generally must give up their investment holdings, or place their accounts in a blind trust. The core reason is conflict of interest: someone who can influence government policy shouldn’t be able to make investment decisions based on — or profit personally from — decisions they help make.

The rule that makes this legal

In America, the main conflict-of-interest statute — 18 U.S.C. Section 208 — barring federal officials from acting on matters tied to their own financial holdings explicitly exempts the president and vice-president.

According to documentation, Congress carved out that exemption because the president’s responsibilities touch too many industries and interests to realistically require recusal from all of them.

Under current U.S. law, presidents are not required to place their holdings in a blind trust or divest them. Almost a decade ago, a bill that would have imposed exactly that requirement, the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, was introduced in Congress but never passed.

That doesn’t mean U.S. president and other senior officials don’t have to follow rules. Insider-trading is still illegal, and each elected official must disclose their holdings and trades, in accordance with the STOCK Act.

The STOCK Act requires covered officials, including the president, to publicly report securities transactions over $1,000 within 45 days. However, the disclosure allows those reporting to disclose a dollar range, not an exact amount; the act also explicitly affirms officials aren’t exempt from insider-trading laws. Prior to 2012 and the introduction of this disclosure requirement, it wasn’t fully clear those laws applied to Congress at all.

In practice, it means that all trades must be disclosed publicly, but the public may learn about the trade more than a month after it happens.

To be clear, the Trump Organization has said the president’s accounts are managed independently and without his input.

How Canada does this differently

Canadian federal politicians work under a stricter framework.

Under the Conflict of Interest Act, cabinet ministers and the prime minister are generally required to either divest controlled assets like individual stocks or place them in a blind trust within 120 days of taking office, with a trustee who cannot consult the office-holder about day-to-day decisions. Prime Minister Mark Carney, for example, moved his holdings into a blind trust before the legal deadline required it.