In 2016, Trump agreed with that reasoning. He did a whole song and dance about leaving his businesses to his kids. In 2025 he didn't even pretend to hide it.

In 2016, Trump agreed with that reasoning. He did a whole song and dance about leaving his businesses to his kids. In 2025 he didn't even pretend to hide it. No one is saying that public officials should own nothing, but the concern is that if they own stock in an individual company, they will have an incentive to vote to benefit that company to drive up the stock price. For example, if I owned a ton of stock in Lockheed Martin, I might be incentivized to vote to declare a war that isn't necessary in order to get a bump in my income. This doesn't mean that they actually would do this, it's possible that the politicians would have integrity and vote their actual positions, but I think for things like this the appearance of impropriety is almost as bad as actual impropriety. We need to have some level of trust in our political leaders, and having things that look unseemly is almost as bad as actual corruption. Even if you could prove that Trump now maintaining his businesses has no effect on his political decisions, it would still be bad, because it still gives an appearance of corruption, and that erodes trust in our institutions. I don't think most people would have a huge problem with politicians having stocks in broad mutual funds, especially if they don't directly know what's being invested in. This would encourage them to make the entire market grow, instead of just individual stocks.