Trump, Tariffs, Market Manipulation, and Insider Trading
By Fozzie Barely | June 4, 2025
A reporter recently asked Donald Trump about the growing use of the term “TACO trade,” coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, to describe the familiar pattern of Trump’s tariff threats. The acronym — Trump Always Chickens Out — refers to his habit of lobbing sweeping economic declarations, only to reverse course days later once markets have had time to panic. Trump claimed he hadn’t heard the term and brushed off the question as “nasty” (watch here), but the moment exposed more than just his ego. It pointed to a pattern that’s become too consistent to ignore — a pattern with consequences measured not just in headlines, but in billions of dollars.
Frequently on Tuesdays, the same song comes on the radio and Wall Street does its dance. Tariffs are teased or declared, often targeting a specific nation or sector. Markets wobble. Stocks plummet. Trump-affiliated entities spike or tank. And then the pivot comes: a delay, a clarification, a denial. The bluster walks itself back, but not before someone — somewhere — has already made a killing.
On the June 3 episode of Raging Moderates, Scott Galloway said what many have suspected for years:
“I used to believe that Trump makes these irrational threats as a means to try to get nations to come to the table and I now believe that that’s not the primary objective here. I believe in the fullness of hindsight — when a light is shined on this period, we’re going to find that this incredible manufactured volatility was the vehicle or the inspiration for the most massive insider trading grift in history.”
And the grift doesn’t stop at headlines. It touches portfolios, policy, and power.
The anatomy of a TACO trade goes like this: Threaten a country or product category with sweeping tariffs. Watch related markets react — or crash. Walk it back just enough to reset the narrative. Maybe direct holdings surge, maybe insider tips pay off, and maybe some MAGA loyalists who got the early whisper cash out. It’s not just a bluff — it’s a pattern. And in the fullness of time, it may turn out to be the most lucrative grift in American history.
Consider the case of Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi. According to ProPublica:
“Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media the same day that President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that caused the stock market to plummet, according to records obtained Wednesday by ProPublica… Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ press conference from the White House Rose Garden unveiling the tariffs came after the market closed on April 2.”
Galloway again:
“The ability to move markets like this and then anticipate those moves and trade on them is billions. When you have your own Attorney General trading stocks the morning before tariffs hit… you essentially have a totally lawless administration.”
Then he adds what most Democrats have failed to articulate:
“I think that one of the failures of the Democratic Party in terms of getting people to recognize the level of grift here is that… they don’t connect that this is in fact a zero sum game. As Attorney General Bondi sells Donald Trump Media stock the morning he later that day announces sweeping tariffs to take the markets way down — there’s someone on the other side of that trade.”
And the tariff grift doesn’t even end with historic market manipulation — he’s getting creative. In Vietnam, Trump famously threatened new tariffs on Vietnamese steel and apparel. Then, magically, a $1.5 billion Trump-branded golf course was greenlit outside Hanoi (source). Is that foreign policy, or just art-of-the-deal extortion?
TACO Tuesday isn’t about lunch. It’s about leverage. Market rigging wrapped in nationalism. Economic policy as performance art — and insider scheme.
Galloway again, in full:
“The ability to move markets like this and then anticipate those moves and trade on them is billions. When you have your own Attorney General trading stocks the morning before tariffs hit… you essentially have a totally lawless administration.”
“This is his total value system.”
So if you’re wondering why Trump blew a gasket over a taco meme, it’s not just ego. It’s exposure. His sagging poll numbers — which dipped after the Liberation Day tariff stunt — have started to rebound now that he’s back at the TACO bar.
As Jon Favreau said on the May 30 episode of Pod Save America:
“Let’s talk about the politics of this. Trump’s approval was at its lowest over the past few months, after he announced the retaliatory tariffs on Liberation Day. But the approval rating’s been climbing, in the last few weeks as he keeps going back to the TACO bar… Um, I’m sorry.”
And the Trump Taco Bar? It’s real — the tacos just happen to trade on the NASDAQ and the CBOE, and they come wrapped in stocks and zero-day options.
Next up on The Grift: TrumpCoin. Because why rig just the markets, when you can mint your own?
Filed from a taco cart parked just outside the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance.
