The Art of the Steal

You’ve got to hand it to Trump – if nothing else, he knows how to play the mugs. The latest wheeze? Announce tariffs, send the markets into freefall, let his wealthy chums short stocks, then quietly row back on the whole thing once they’ve made a killing. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not a trade policy - knee-jerk tariffs are a blunt instrument that rebound – it’s a bloody scam. The man yells about Mexico and Canada, slaps on tariffs, and the stock market reacts like a fainting Victorian. Shares dive, ordinary investors panic, pensions shrink. But for the well-connected – the ones who just happen to know what’s coming – it’s Christmas morning. They short stocks, betting on a fall, and sure enough, the market obliges. Then, right on cue, Trump ‘clarifies’ – maybe Mexico and Canada have done enough (although they haven't had time to even get their pants on), maybe there’s a delay, maybe he was just saying it for leverage. And the market obligingly rebounds. And what do you know – the same insiders who shorted the fall are suddenly long on the recovery. It’s free money.

And this isn’t some one-off accident – it’s a pattern. Every time Trump so much as mumbles the word ‘tariff,’ Wall Street flinches, and the right people behave like bandits. You’d almost think the whole thing was planned. Like a rigged game at a casino where the house not only always wins but also prints the bloody rulebook.

And yet, his supporters will still lap it up – still cling to the fantasy that this is all some genius masterstroke of economic brinkmanship. It isn’t. It’s legalised looting. The kind of stunt that would have had actual mobsters looking on in admiration.

When Trump announces tariffs, the stock market doesn’t just dip – it nosedives. That means pensions take a hit, small businesses see their costs rise, and middle-class investors – the ones who were told to put their money in the markets for long-term growth – watch their savings shrink overnight. The algorithms kick in, panic spreads, and before you know it, billions are wiped off the value of stocks.

It’s essentially wealth transfer by market manipulation – and guess which direction the money always flows? The rich get richer, the average investor gets fleeced, and Trump’s supporters get left holding the bag, convinced it’s all part of some great economic chess match.