Donald Trump’s tariff chaos leads to corruption accusations

Donald Trump’s institution of large tariffs, and then temporary delay on some of them, has thrown the market into chaos, and some, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, have claimed that the Trump administration may have been using insider information to trade the chaos.

On April 2, Trump announced a 10% tariff on all countries, as well as various other tariffs that were calculated based on apparent trade deficits, resulting in a number of bizarre situations like applying tariffs to islands with no permanent human residents.

There were additional large tariffs on China that brought the total tariff quantity on the country to approximately 125%.

These tariffs sent the markets into a steep decline until Wednesday, when Trump announced that the 10% baseline tariff and the China tariff would remain in effect, but others would be delayed for 90 days — or until he changes his mind.

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This apparent change briefly allowed the market to rally, though today it has declined again following Trump’s announcement that he intends to add new “sectoral” tariffs, including on imported pharmaceuticals.

Interestingly, several hours before the u-turn in his tariff policy was announced, Trump took to Truth Social, the social media platform connected to him, to tell his followers, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”

DJT is both Trump’s initials and also the stock ticker for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. Promoting his own stock would be an incredible breach of presidential norms and open hucksterism from the Oval Office.

Senator Warren asked in the Senate, “Was this market manipulation? Was this corruption in plain sight?”

Read more: CHART: Wasn’t Trump supposed to be good for crypto?

After this rally in the market, Trump hosted several figures from key Wall Street firms at the Oval Office.

While they were there, he pointed around the room and called out how much different individuals made during the rally, stating, “he made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million.”

The financial executives can be heard chuckling as Trump notes these dollar amounts.

Read more: Who is behind World Liberty Financial, Trump’s new crypto?

Donald isn’t the only Trump family member who has encouraged followers to buy assets before insider information is revealed. His son Eric, who is “Web3 Ambassador” for Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial, previously posted on X, “In my opinion, it’s a great time to add $ETH. You can thank me later.”

After this post, World Liberty Financial started moving large portions of its ether (ETH) portfolio to Coinbase.

Eric later removed “thank me later” from the post, and ETH is down 45% since he posted.