Financial disclosures reveal that hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in Eli Lilly on Donald Trump’s behalf earlier this year, as the US drugmaker benefited from his administration’s move to expand access to blockbuster obesity treatments.
Ethics filings showed several thousand trades on the US president’s behalf tied to stocks and bonds in the first quarter of 2026, with a cumulative value of between $220m and about $750m. The forms included securities linked to some of the largest US companies, including Apple, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Nvidia.
Among the trades were seven acquisitions of shares in Eli Lilly worth up to $680,000 between 6 January and the end of March, while federal agencies rolled out initiatives that benefited the drugmaker’s weight-loss drugs. These include a pilot program expanding access to GLP-1 medications for Medicare patients and the launch of TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer drug sales website that initially featured Eli Lilly products.
The Trump Organization has denied that the president “plays any role” in selecting the stocks in his investment portfolio, stating that trades are executed through independently managed discretionary accounts. The number of transactions disclosed “far exceeds” Trump’s trading activity during the first year of his second term, according to the Financial Times.
The filings come amid scrutiny of Trump’s growing wealth from real estate, cryptocurrency, and other ventures, while many Americans continue to face financial strain. When asked whether Americans’ financial situation was motivating him to end the war in Iran, Trump replied: “Not even a little bit.”
