Fun With Numbers: Who Got Rich Over Trump’s Tariff Cave?

Sometimes simple arithmetic can tell us a great deal about the world. The big jump in the stock market following Trump’s announcement that he was walking back the tariffs could be one such case. The point here is an obvious one: people with advance knowledge could have made a fortune.

Trump’s walk back sent the stock market soaring, creating roughly $5 trillion in stock wealth. Suppose the hedge fund boys and other rich people in Trump’s orbit got advance notice from their friendly president. Let’s say they got 10 percent of this haul. That would be $500 billion.

That’s real money even in Washington. That’s about 200 times the savings that Elon Musk and the “super-high IQ” DOGE boys have been able to rack up. It’s roughly equal to five times the entire annual food stamp budget. It’s more than half the military budget and equal to around 7 percent of the total budget.

Now did Trump share his little secret with his friends? I have no idea, but does anyone think that Trump would have any qualms about sharing such a secret? Does anyone think that the people around Trump would have any qualms about trading on the ultimate inside information? I leave that to your judgement.

I will add that Musk and Trump have fired just about anyone in a position to investigate whether there was any insider trading and would likely fire anyone still employed who tried. And the Republican Supreme Court would say that’s fine.

And one thing of which we can be absolutely certain, Elon Musk will not let his chainsaw get anywhere close to this one.