People have seen a US senator who has been pushing legislation to improve the country’s semiconductor industry, his wife, who also owns Manhattan’s Strand Bookstore, has been buying up shares in chipmakers that stand to profit.
Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, has been pushing legislation to help US chip companies since last year, including co-sponsoring the America LEADS Act and speaking out in support of the CHIPS Act, two bills aimed at promoting semiconductor design and development on American soil in the face of rising Chinese competition.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate majority leader, gave Wyden’s efforts a boost on Wednesday when he unveiled a bill that would include $52 billion in incentives for domestic chip production and research and development. Meanwhile, according to government records, his wife Nancy Bass Wyden has been buying up potentially millions of dollars’ worth of shares in American chip designers and manufacturers like Nvidia, after warning in October that the famous Strand “cannot exist” without more business after being slammed by the pandemic.
“There is bipartisan interest in building up our domestic manufacturing to bolster the availability of semiconductors and other essential components and products,” Wyden said in March 2020 when he announced his support for the CHIPS Act.
According to a Post review of publicly accessible financial disclosures, Wyden’s wife started buying shares in California-based NVIDIA, one of the country’s largest semiconductor firms, between $245,000 and $600,000. In April of last year, Bass Wyden purchased $50,000 to $100,000 in NVIDIA stock, followed by $100,000 to $250,000 in May, as well as four other transactions leading up to her husband’s co-sponsorship of the America LEADS Act in September.
According to Duke University corporate and securities law professor James Cox, “the minute you have congressmen or their family members investing in individual stocks, the odor is not very good.” “We should make it illegal for members of Congress and their families to own anything other than broad-based index funds.” However, Cox added that the Wyden family’s trades were “slim to none” likely to be illegal insider trading. On Thursday, Wyden’s office and Bass-Wyden did not respond to requests for comment.
The STOCK Act of 2012 requires senators and their immediate families to report equities transactions and other financial details. Craig Holman, a Capitol Hill lobbyist for Public Citizen, a democratic consumer advocacy organization, assisted in the drafting and promotion of the bill. “I have the utmost trust in Ron Wyden’s honesty, and I don’t believe he’s exploiting the semiconductor business,” Holman told The Washington Post. “However, I want to emphasize that it does have that appearance, and it can be a serious political issue.”
“I will advise the Senator not to trade stocks in companies that he directly oversees,” Holman said. Bass-Wyden’s investments have gotten her a lot of coverage in the past as well.
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