The New York Times publishes a report on Trump’s fiduciary duty:
Simply put, a person who is a fiduciary must act in the best interests of another person, putting that person’s interests ahead of his or her own. But in the context of Mr. Trump’s personal tax returns, legal experts said, the argument that he has a fiduciary duty to others is, well, laughable.
“There is no such thing as a fiduciary duty as a businessman to oneself,” said Richard W. Painter, a professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota and former chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House from early 2005 to mid-2007. “That’s called greed. And greed is not a component of the law of fiduciary duty anywhere.”
Then the report connects this to corporate inversions, wherein a company changes its official residence to another country in order to lower its tax rate:
These moves, known as corporate inversions, have become immensely popular in recent years. And when companies make them, their leaders often proclaim that they are doing so out of a responsibility to their shareholders because profits will rise as a result.
This, too, is questionable, and the Obama administration has been working to curtail this type of corporate behavior.
“I’ve never heard a court say that a corporate officer or director has a fiduciary duty to move operations out of the U.S. to reduce taxes for the publicly held company,” Mr. Painter said. “Companies that move overseas saying they had a fiduciary duty to shareholders to do it are just wrong.”
Seems to me that such a move is just one option in the strategy of business, and other components may have a higher priority, such as social stability and resource availability. Sounds to me like these officials are just trying to hide from the criticism which will come their way. It’s not so much a duty as an option for increasing profitability, but one which may bring its own host of problems.
And Trump having a fiduciary duty to himself? Ignorant.
