Trump’s already told us all he has to about his finances till after 1st year in office | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Whenever Trump complies with the disclosure requirement, the American public will still get only a broad-brush view.

The disclosures require only broad ranges of the value of an asset and lack the details of a tax return, which gives a clearer sense of how a business has performed. For example, Trump’s May disclosure revealed he had five outstanding loans valued at more than $50 million. How much more? He’s not required to say.

Three of those loans come due between 2022 and 2024, the disclosure said, in what could be a second Trump term.

The one area where Trump might have to disclose before 2018 is financial-market transactions. In his May disclosure, he said he had personal investments worth about $61 million. This is the portion of his wealth that is also easier easiest for him to step away from.

If he neither buys nor sells any stock, Trump would simply report on the value of these holdings in the next disclosure report. But if he buys or sells stock, he’d be subject to the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012. It prevents anyone in any branch of government from using nonpublic information for profit. It’s an insider-trading prohibition for government employees. Executive, legislative and judicial branch employees must report transactions involving any stock, bond, commodity or other securities within 45 days.

But there are optics for Trump to consider, too. The May disclosure showed that he held at least $22 million in common stock of numerous Fortune 500 companies such as Apple, Chevron, Ford, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. He instantly affects his own fortunes, for better or for worse, if he slaps penalties on Chinese imports, expands energy exploration, blocks an automaker’s move to Mexico or fights an increase in the minimum wage.

To avoid such inherent conflicts, most presidents and Cabinet members seek blind trusts, where their financial investments are sold off by independent stewards who then reinvest the proceeds without their direction or knowledge. Trump hasn’t said yet whether he’ll do the same.

Less clear is how he treats the roughly multimillions he holds under management of hedge funds. Those are high-risk, high-reward investment funds open only to the super wealthy.

As a candidate, Trump blasted hedge fund managers as paper pushers who don’t build things. But as of May he reported a stake valued between $25 million and $50 million in BlackRock’s Obsidian hedge fund. He also reported a stake valued between $1 million and $5 million in Paulson Credit Opportunities LP, a hedge fund run by John Paulson, who famously bet successfully against the U.S. housing market and became the subject of a book and 2015 hit movie called “The Big Short.”

“There has, in the modern era, never been a president-elect like him,” said Jay Soled, a tax law professor and expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “It does present a whole host of problems.”