Since the beginning of 2025, a series of coordinated events between Trump’s inner circle and specific financial market moves have outlined the contours of a new state scandal. Each bombastic declaration by the former president – now officially running for re-election – appears to be followed, sometimes preceded, by large-scale, highly lucrative financial operations. Informed traders, aligned funds, discreet networks of former advisers… The hypothesis becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss: Donald Trump is manipulating financial markets as part of a speculative, electoral, and mafia-style strategy. Not merely to profit from it, but to destabilise democratic institutions under the guise of economic chaos.
A suspicious timeline for a manufactured chaos
On 18 March 2025, Donald Trump posted a message on Truth Social declaring that he would, “upon returning to the White House”, impose a 60% tax on Chinese electronics imports. Just hours before the post, abnormal volumes of put options on the Nasdaq were recorded. The next day, the index dropped 3.8%. The biggest winners of these movements? A tight group of hedge funds connected to well-known figures in the radical Republican network, such as Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone) and financial satellites of billionaire Peter Thiel, already involved in the 2020 campaign funding.
This scenario repeated itself several times throughout spring: on 28 March, Trump announced a punitive tax on foreign steel, triggering a sharp fall in automotive and European supplier stocks. Once again, massive sell-offs occurred just before the announcement. The Wall Street Journal referred to a “strategically exploited volatility” but stopped short of calling it insider trading. Yet the signs are there. And the silence of the SEC, largely reshaped during the last Republican presidency, speaks volumes about institutional capture.
A pact between power and finance
What Trump is implementing is not mere market manipulation – it is a model. A system in which presidential speech becomes a speculative weapon, handed to insiders in exchange for political and financial support. This model relies on a core of advisers and lobbyists present across all economic decision-making centres. Hardline libertarian think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, networks like Turning Point USA, lawyers and consultants from former firms like WilmerHale… all contribute to building an environment where instability becomes profitable.
The economy is no longer guided – it is deliberately shaken, following a political agenda. And this chaos strategy benefits those closest to the source. Trump’s 2025 campaign is bankrolled by figures who, in the weeks leading up to announcements, generate staggering profits from fluctuations they appear to have anticipated with surgical precision.
A historical parallel: Nixon, Berlusconi – and now Trump
There are precedents. Richard Nixon, in the 1970s, secretly used monetary policy changes for political ends, notably preparing the end of the gold standard. More recently, Silvio Berlusconi, the businessman-turned-prime minister, repeatedly used his position to steer tax policy in favour of his corporate interests. But what Trump is deploying surpasses these models: it is a systemic privatisation of executive power for the benefit of premeditated speculation, executed by a circle of insiders.
What is new here is the brazenness. Trump no longer hides. He announces, threatens, and watches the markets tremble. His supporters scoop up the spoils – or rather, the billions.
Wall Street as electoral battlefield
The threat is absolute. Trump is wielding the economy as a tool of political domination, integrating financial markets into his electoral strategy. It is not just about enriching allies – it is about creating a state of permanent instability, where only the insiders thrive, and ordinary citizens lose their bearings, their investments, and their trust.
The heart of the capitalist system has become a symbolic battlefield, where tweets replace bombs, and speculators act as shadow generals. If this strategy is not exposed, denounced, and dismantled, America will not merely slide into authoritarianism – it will become an open-air stock exchange, governed by a don serving private interests...
G.S.
