Trump’s Tariffs Whiplash Is Open Corruption. He Admitted It Himself.

Trump may have accidentally confessed to insider trading and market manipulation on Truth Social. 

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” the president wrote on Wednesday, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. 

Insider trading is a very illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself an advantage in buying and selling stocks. Someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would be posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened. This particular situation looks like the opposite of a pump and dump: a poop and scoop. This is when an exclusive group of people with private knowledge do whatever they can to drive stock prices down—like announcing debilitating global tariffs—and then buy stocks up strategically before the price goes up again. And with this administration, the corruption is completely out in the open. 

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs. These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell  stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House—the public has a right to know.”

“Trump’s Truth Social now basically promotes veiled insider trading on upcoming announcements,” wrote health and economics expert Eric Feigl-Ding. “Trump’s benefactors are gleefully watching.”

The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin called it two days ago on CNBC. *

“Given what the government’s been doing, and what this administration’s been doing, it would not shock me—and I hate to speculate—if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders … ultimately sold stocks last week, or potentially worse than that, shorted the market.” 

The Trump administration—after crashing the global stock market and eroding U.S. legitimacy—is attempting to spin this as a win. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

* This article originally misstated Sorkin’s first name.

Donald Trump is once again the laughingstock of the internet after his shocking decision Wednesday to issue a 90-day pause on some of his sweeping tariffs—with the exception of China—after the White House insisted for days that the president had no intention to hit the brakes. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as she tried to spin Trump’s sudden reversal as part of a long-unfolding plan to either boost domestic manufacturing or something else entirely—actually, it’s become kind of unclear. 

Online people were quick to make what have now become running jokes about Trump’s so-called “art,” and the Trump administration’s mind-boggling insistence that his tariffs are at once a brilliant negotiation tactic and a legitimate policy meant to bolster the U.S. economy. 

“Oh my god she did the meme,” wrote Tahra Jirari, the director of economic analysis at the Chamber of Progress, on X.  

“The Art of the Deal is panicking and reversing course less than 24 hours after tariffs go into effect?” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post on X. 

Pod Save America host Jon Favreau also took aim at Trump’s deal-making prowess, writing, on X, “Art of the Deal: 1) Impose massive tariffs on nearly every country that crash the markets and create the conditions for global economic collapse 2) Make zero deals with zero countries 3) Pause tariffs 4) VICTORY!!”

While Trump bragged about the scores of foreign leaders who’d come to kiss the ring, many foreign officials said that they’d received no reply to their requests to make a deal with the Trump administration, according to Politico. 

With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s hollow claims that Trump’s decision was not a response to the last week’s tumultuous stock market, many struggled to understand Trump’s rationale in power-checking foreign countries. 

Meanwhile, others suggested that Trump, having urged his followers on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy” earlier Wednesday, was attempting to create a window for his allies to buy low, knowing he was about to rescind his tariffs.

But Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there was likely no method to Trump’s madness at all. 

“OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY AND IS JUST A NEGOTIATING TACTIC BUT IT IS ALSO GOING TO BE PERMANENT AND WE WILL BE THE WORLD LEADER IN TEXTILES AND NOW THERE IS A PAUSE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL BUT ALSO WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN AAAAAAHHHHHH,” Schatz wrote in a hilariously candid post on X.

Donald Trump’s reversal on tariffs Wednesday afternoon seems to have caught his administration off guard.

The president announced on Truth Social that tariffs would return to a baseline 10 percent level in most countries, while staggering 125 percent duties would be imposed on China. But his own officials couldn’t explain why. When a reporter asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if he could, he replied, “No.”

“Again, President Trump created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said, adding, “We have just been overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the response mostly from our allies who want to come and negotiate in good faith.”

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as usual, took a combative approach, telling reporters, “Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal, you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”

It’s obvious at this point that Trump has never had a plan for his tariff scheme, and is making it up as he goes along. Wednesday’s reversal was likely prompted by growing criticism from his own supporters and normally fawning right-wing media and by a government debt sell-off, showing weakening confidence in the American economy. But Trump’s own sycophants aren’t going to admit that the president would ever back off.

As Donald Trump’s tariff plan slams the stock market, investors are beginning to wonder if the president doesn’t have some broader economic agenda—but rather if he’s just mentally ill.

“In the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers,” wrote Tom Lee, the head of research at the financial analysis firm FSInsights.

“And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology,” Lee continued. “A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.”

Lee placed the blame for any economic fallout squarely in Trump’s lap, arguing that Trump’s decisions behind the Resolute Desk lead to a “binary outcome,” though they don’t always make sense.

“Multiple officials have stated they do not want nor expect a recession. And there are enough economy-savvy advisors that they are aware of this. Moreover, the two-to-three percent fiscal stimulus needed to reverse a recession would negate any promised cuts to government spending,” Lee wrote, underscoring that “this is a rational view.

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and unexpected tariff reversals gave the market whiplash on Wednesday. China and the U.S. volleyed for most of the day, with Trump eventually claiming that he would spike levies on the nation, one of America’s biggest trading partners, to 125 percent after China revealed its own reciprocal tariff rate at 84 percent on U.S. goods.

Then, in the afternoon, the White House announced that it would be instituting a pause on the majority of its tariffs (except on China), lowering the tariffs to a universal baseline rate of 10 percent.

That sent the market into a frenzy, with the S&P 500 spiking by 7 percent in a matter of minutes.

Lee’s assessment—which was published early Wednesday, before the swing—argued that prolonged stock fluctuations would lead to “tightening financial conditions.”

“Thus, the longer this volatility lasts, the greater the risk the US and the world are getting pushed into a needless recession,” he warned.

Other financial experts, including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond, have similarly assessed that Trump’s plan has pushed the U.S. to the brink of a recession.

Donald Trump has placed a 90-day pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs, despite repeatedly insisting that no such pause would take place. 

“Based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Trump refused to stop his trade war with China, however, declaring in the same announcement that tariffs on the country would rise even more, to 125 percent. 

“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” Trump wrote in the same Truth Social post.

While the 10 percent tariffs on remaining countries is a significant reduction, by the measure of just a few months ago, it’s still quite extreme.

Trump’s decision to renege on his aggressive “Liberation Day” tariffs was almost immediately met with allegations of caving at best and market manipulation at worst.  

“Wow. Trump just caved on the sweeping across-the-board tariffs, issuing a 90-day pause,” wrote Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett. “All of that chaos, trillions of dollars evaporated—for nothing at all.”

“[Trump] has put our economy in disarray and near collapse. We have small businesses and Americans who are concerned about their well-being…. We have people that are planning to send their kids to college this fall, people who are retiring whose benefits have declined,” Representative Steven Horsford asked Trump Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a hearing mere minutes after Trump tweeted out the news. “Is this market manipulation?”

“No,” said Greer.

“Why not? If it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation? 

“It’s not market manipulation,” Greer insisted again. 

“So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer? And all the while, there aren’t even any Republicans left in this hearing.” 

This story has been updated.

Lawyers for a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador slammed the Department of Justice for trying to claim that the foreign country could have its own reasons for keeping him in prison.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of many alleged gang members that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador in mid-March, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act and denying detainees’ due process. The government later admitted that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was included on the flight manifest due to an “administrative error,” and had been subject to a protective order shielding him from deportation to El Salvador because he faced a legitimate threat of persecution there.

The Supreme Court on Monday halted a judge’s order to immediately retrieve Abrego Garcia. The government has continued to claim it cannot retrieve Abrego Garcia, who is among those incarcerated in El Slavador’s notorious mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, for a plethora of reasons. In a filing Monday, the DOJ claimed one more, alleging that El Salvador’s government “may have its own compelling reasons to detain” Abrego Garcia, and “has its own legal rationales for detaining members of … foreign terrorist groups like MS-13”—which the U.S. government has yet to actually demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is.

But, in an eight-page filing Wednesday, lawyers for Abrego Garcia shot down the DOJ’s attempt to “ominously” introduce a flimsy excuse for leaving him there.

“These vague speculations are forfeited because they were never previously asserted and, in any event, devoid of factual support,” the lawyers wrote.

“There is no actual evidence that any nation has a criminal charge against Abrego Garcia. The only evidence is that he has never been charged or convicted of a crime in any country. And, of course, Abrego Garcia has not even lived in El Salvador since 2011—some 14 years ago—when he was 16 years old, rendering the Government’s claim implausible,” the lawyers wrote. “If the Government has evidence as to Abrego Garcia, it should say so. It refuses.

“The Government’s retreat to innuendo cannot bear the weight of the extraordinary relief it seeks: to perpetuate an unlawful incarceration that the United States itself engineered,” the lawyers added.

The U.S. economy is cratering, the White House has fractured some of the country’s longest-standing global alliances, and foreign nations are marking the end of American economic dominance. But speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner on Tuesday night, Donald Trump was apparently more interested in using the intraparty platform to slander and roast his first-term enemies than address or assuage concerns over America’s debilitating problems.

The end result was a hodgepodge of some of Trump’s greatest hits, begging the question if Trump is attempting to redirect conservative attention toward the rhetoric that got his base jazzed to support him in the first place. The subjects of his insults included President Joe Biden, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and several liberal lawmakers who’ve dared to speak out against the president’s agenda.

Imploring Republicans to recenter their focus on winning their respective midterm elections, Trump warned that Democrats would “try to reverse all of the progress that we’ve made” should they retake the House in 2026.

“The House will be run by the same band of radicals and lunatics,” Trump said, shouting out House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Pelosi, and “weird” Al Green, the last of whom offered the only disruptive protest during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last month.

“He’s a weird dude,” the president continued. “He should have been treated very badly for the way he behaved that night.”

Six months after he won the election, Trump also took time away from his speech to ask the crowd if they’d rather he refer to Biden as “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe.” After equally muted applause for both options, Trump laughed.

“That’s my problem, it’s like the same—they both work, they both work beautifully,” Trump said.

Trump also devoted some of the night to speaking about California Senator Adam Schiff, whom Trump has previously referred to as the “enemy from within” for serving as the lead prosecutor in the first impeachment trial against him.

“Adam Schifty Schiff—can you believe this guy? He’s got the smallest neck I’ve ever seen,” the president said. “And the biggest head. We call him Watermelon Head.”

“I’d say how can that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? How can it? It’s the weirdest thing. It’s a mystery, nobody can understand it,” Trump continued, deriding Schiff as one of the “most dishonest human beings” he’d ever seen.

“How we can allow people like that to run in office is a shame,” the orange-coded convicted felon added. “He was in charge of the witch hunt. He was in charge of the fake witch hunt with Russia, Russia, Russia.”

The lawyers tasked with defending the Trump administration at the Supreme Court are fleeing in droves.

The Washington Post reports that half of the attorneys in the Office of the Solicitor General in the Department of Justice are either leaving their jobs or preparing to do so, for reasons including disagreements with directives handed down from the White House. Now at least eight of the office’s 16-member staff are leaving, dealing a blow to its credibility.

Earlier this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi suspended attorney Erez Reuveni from the department after he admitted to a federal judge that his government clients didn’t provide him vital information in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the government mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

“He was put on administrative leave by Todd Blanche on Saturday. And I firmly said on Day 1, I issued a memo that you are to vigorously advocate on behalf of the United States,” Bondi told Fox News on Sunday. “Our client in this matter was Homeland Security—is Homeland Security. He did not argue. He shouldn’t have taken the case. He shouldn’t have argued it, if that’s what he was going to do. He’s on administrative leave now.”

Such actions have alienated some members of the solicitor general’s office, which is traditionally nonpartisan, according to the Post, except for its top two positions. In the past, its hires have come from politically diverse backgrounds to broaden legal perspectives.

“The question is, who is left?” Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said to the Post. “Who is going to argue against positions that might be good for team Trump but are inconsistent with the standards of the office—and potentially the long-term interests of the government?”

That remains to be seen as the Trump administration is repeatedly challenged successfully in court, leading to many appeals to the Supreme Court. The departure of top lawyers likely isn’t going to attract a similar caliber of hires to the office, leading to weaker arguments for the administration’s cases before the high court. But, considering the conservative bent on the court today, how much will that matter?

A new poll from Economist/YouGov released Wednesday shows that Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped from +5 to -29 points among voters under 30 since his inauguration, a 34-point tumble. Trump also fell eight points with millennials and four points with boomers, but gained a point with Gen X.

Trump’s dramatic drop in favorability with Gen Z—after enjoying fairly positive standing with them during the election season—underscores the immediate negative reactions that policies like his trade war has elicited. Confidence in the future of this country and the future of one’s own personal security is quickly eroding under Trump’s leadership. The president has given the next generation absolutely nothing to look forward to besides increased prices, market instability, and ICE crackdowns on pro-Palestine activity. It seems that even the young crypto bros who were just in it for the tax cuts have turned on the president.

The future is bleak right now. Trump’s approval rating among Gen Zers is simply reflecting that.

A recession is all perspective, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The economic adviser attempted to convince Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo Wednesday that business executives she spoke with weren’t actually worried about the future under Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan, but rather had been lamenting about the past.

“I spoke with one CEO over the weekend; he said we are already in a recession,” Bartiromo said. “So how do you deal with that as you are trying to implement all these new policies, like deregulation, when you’ve got the market expecting a sharp slowdown in economic activity, Sir?”

“Well, Maria, I think what the CEO may have alluded to, and I said it in the past, that the manufacturing sector under the previous administration was in a recession,” Bessent said.

“So what we’re doing is what I call ‘reprivatizing’ the economy,” he continued. “We are also getting the deficit under control, rightsizing the federal workforce, and then on the other side we are going to re-lever the private sector through smart, safe, and sound bank deregulation. And then, as this CEO said, they can come out of recession because the—I expect that long-term interest rates should come down as we get the budget under control, inflation under control, energy prices come down, and then the private sector will have room to grow.”

But Republicans are not getting the deficit under control. Instead, their efforts to extend Donald Trump’s 2017 tax plan are expected to tack on an extra $5.5 trillion in debt, plus $1.3 trillion in interest.

And finance experts don’t predict good things should the White House push to further deregulate banks. Trump’s previous efforts to strip safeguards from regional banks during his first term created an environment that collapsed several regional banks in 2023, further consolidating assets under national umbrellas.

“The repercussions here will be wide-reaching, as the global financial system is tightly interconnected,” argued Florence School of Banking and Finance director Thorsten Beck in an op-ed for Politico Tuesday. “When Washington weakens its financial guardrails, others feel pressured to follow suit to stay ‘competitive.’ This sets off a ‘race to the bottom,’ which then risks unleashing the kind of instability last seen in 2008.”

But considering the fragile state of the current market—which is gripped by high volatility, struggling supply chains, conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, record levels of debt, and seemingly endless reciprocal tariffs that have pushed the U.S. economy to the brink of a recession—“this time, the fallout could be far worse,” according to Beck.