In a move reminiscent of a stock market guru, US President Donald Trump's operation on social media laid bare the covert ties between White House policies and Wall Street's capital markets. Branding himself as the "businessman president" under the banner of "Make America Great Again," Trump not only exploited policy shifts for personal financial gain but also unraveled the pretense of fairness in financial markets. His actions exposed the structural corruption at the heart of the US system, where political power is deeply intertwined with capital interests.
On April 9, local time, Donald Trump suddenly posted on his self-created social platform Truth Social: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT." Mere hours later, the White House announced it would postpone imposing additional tariffs on some economies for 90 days. Following the news, the S&P 500 index surged by 9.5%, while shares of Media Tech Group (DJT), in which Trump holds a 53% personal stake, soared by 21.67%—boosting his personal wealth by over $300 million in a single day. This calculated maneuver, akin to a precision trade, seemed like a scene straight out of a Hollywood thriller.
This is no coincidence. Data reveals frequent interest connections between Trump's family businesses and policy shifts during his presidency: During the 2017 tax reform, for example, Trump's real estate companies reduced effective tax rates to 0.005% via offshore profit-shifting. Similarly, during the 2020 vaccine development, his son-in-law Jared Kushner's family fund significantly increased biotech holdings ahead of vaccine contract announcement, while a tax provision Kushner helped draft secured $130 million in tax breaks for family-linked projects. These "coincidental" windfalls exemplify the pervasive practice of information arbitrage among Washington's elite—where insider knowledge of policy shifts is weaponized for financial enrichment.
Democratic Senator Adam Schiff acutely pointed out: "I'm going to do my best to find out, family meme coins and all the rest of it are not beyond insider trading or enriching themselves. I hope to find out soon." However, such questioning in Washington seems more like a political performance than a real reflection. In fact, while the 2012 STOCK Act explicitly bans members of Congress from trading on nonpublic information, federal prosecutors have never initiated a single criminal prosecution against a sitting member of Congress in the over a decade since its enactment. During the 2020 pandemic, at least 78 members of Congress sold stocks after attending closed-door briefings on the pandemic, yet no one was held accountable.
The Trump team's response is even more arrogant: White House spokeswoman Kush Desai justified the policy manipulation as "It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security," beautifying it as "market stabilization." This logic of privatizing public power lays bare the deep-seated flaw in America's political economy—when policy signals become navigation tools for capital harvesting, and regulators turn a blind eye to "legal arbitrage," the so-called "free market" has long since morphed into a private hunting ground for elites.
The deeper crisis lies in how this systemic corruption is hollowing out the ethical foundation of capitalism. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz once long cautioned that when markets are reduced to instruments for elite arbitrage, the twin pillars of economic fairness and innovative vitality are imperiled—a risk central to his critique of modern capitalism.
During the 2024 US. presidential election, Tesla CEO Elon Musk channeled over $2.5 billion into super PACs supporting Donald Trump and leveraged his X platform to amplify pro-Trump narratives. In the two months following the election, Tesla's stock price soared 63%, adding over $3 trillion to its market cap—far outpacing industry averages. This stark alignment between political donations and stock market surges epitomizes crony capitalism: corporate valuations are no longer determined by innovation or market demand but by strategic bets on political favoritism.
At this moment, the calls from Democratic lawmakers for an investigation into Trump are less about upholding justice and more about the routine drama of the two-party power game. What really needs to be questioned is: in a system where politicians can transform national policy into personal financial instruments, how much "legal corruption" remains shrouded in secrecy? When the White House press room functions in perfect harmony with the electronic screens of the New York Stock Exchange, has the American founding ideal—"all men are created equal"—been rewritten as "information is privilege"?
Perhaps the only value of this incident is that it has torn open the gorgeous packaging of the "American Dream," allowing the world to see the deep-seated class solidification and institutional hypocrisy at its core. In this sense, Trump is not a rule breaker but a mirror reflecting the deep contradictions embedded within the American political and economic system.
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