There’s no rule Donald Trump won’t violate to his own benefit, and a federal rule prohibiting executive branch members from previewing the monthly jobs report before its public release proved no different on Friday morning.
“Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” Trump tweeted on Friday, more than an hour before their release. Stock traders appear to have rightly placed their bets on a rosy outcome—the economy added 223,000 jobs added in May, solidly beating the expected 190,000 jobs economists had originally forecast. The Washington Post writes:
Treasury yields moved sharply higher within seconds [...] Bloomberg News data also showed that the value of the U.S. dollar moved sharply higher after the Twitter post compared with previous trades the mornings jobs data are released.
Trump was briefed on the numbers Thursday night by his chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow, who insisted post-tweet that Trump’s reveal hadn’t had any effect.
"I don't think he gave anything away," Kudlow said during an appearance on CNBC.
But Trump’s preview poses two major problems. The first is, traders will now be looking to his feed every month (and likely daily) for hints about economic news to come, then acting accordingly.
The second is, Trump easily could be letting a tighter circle of his friends in on the news before anyone else.
“President Trump was sent the jobs numbers in advance,” said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in Obama administration. “Sharing them with the public is destabilizing and inappropriate. A bigger concern is if he was bragging about them privately to his friends last night — friends who could make millions on the information.”
If Trump, his family or his friends stand to benefit, it’s a good bet he’s spilling the beans. And any benefit to his family or friends will ultimately flow back to Trump, otherwise he wouldn’t bother.