Trump officials looked the other way as the president's allies apparently cashed in at everyday Americans' expense, an economic analyst warned.
Economics columnist Catherine Rampell laid out the case in a Thursday piece for The Bulwark, arguing that what she called "beet-red flags" around a string of suspiciously well-timed trades this spring were waved away by Trump appointees.
In March, roughly 15 minutes before Trump announced he was backing off threats against Iran, traders placed billions of dollars' worth of contracts betting oil prices would drop and the stock market would climb. They were right. Federal commodities regulators opened a preliminary review, but Bloomberg reported this week that a senior adviser to the Trump-appointed chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered staff to pull back a referral that could have triggered a full investigation.
Rampell stressed that the stakes reach far beyond Wall Street. If the trades were driven by inside knowledge, she wrote, "it would not be a victimless crime." Someone took the losing side of every winning bet, and she described those people as "the chumps whom the insiders got to steal money from."
"Sure, some of those chumps might have been rich, unsympathetic Wall Street traders," Rampell wrote, "but some of them might have been your pension fund."
She argued the episode is no one-off, calling such apparent wrongdoing "one of the defining characteristics of the Trump era." She pointed to Trump Media's push to sell Wall Street firms early access to the president's Truth Social posts, a Wall Street Journal report that a White House aide championing a stablecoin bill was collecting millions from the industry's biggest player through a company he co-owns, and a leaked list, published by the Washington Post, of donors who together gave some $330 million toward Trump's ballroom.
Voters are noticing, Rampell added. She cited new AP-NORC polling showing three-quarters of Americans believe Trump has put his own financial interests and those of people close to him first since returning to office, a view shared by a majority of Republicans. She noted most Republicans also said Trump was prioritizing the country overall, a contradiction she suggested reflects their need for "some way to excuse their own despoilment."
She closed by tying the pattern to cuts in food assistance, noting SNAP enrollment has fallen by 5 million people since Republicans' sweeping tax and spending law was enacted last year. "Everywhere and anywhere, he's robbing the poor to feed the rich," she wrote.