The Trump Corruption Tax

You are being punished because you do not have the ability to invest in Trump's crypto scheme. For those who can afford to throw money his way, the outlook appears much brighter.

Worried about buying your daughter a doll (or thirty dolls) this Christmas?

You should be. Because you have not purchased millions of dollars in Donald Trump’s crypto venture and Mattel, the maker of Barbie, presumably has not either — at least not yet. That means you are left to figure out how to afford Christmas this year, with Trump’s punishing tariffs hitting just as suppliers are getting ready to place orders for the holiday season. There is no way to sugarcoat it: everything is going to cost more.

But maybe not. Because smart companies — or at least those that can afford it — are blatantly buying their way into Trump’s good graces. Here’s the HuffPost:

An international trucking logistics firm is buying as much as $20 million worth of President Donald Trump’s crypto coins to influence the administration’s trade policy — the precise sort of corruption that experts warned Trump was encouraging when he unveiled his venture.

Freight Technologies Inc. CEO Javier Selgas said in a Wednesday news release that buying Trump coin would be “an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced and free trade between Mexico and the U.S.”

The release was attached to a filing that same day with the Securities and Exchange Commission explaining why Freight Technologies was issuing bonds. “The company will use the net proceeds from the offering to purchase TRUMP coins,” the company told the SEC.

After Freight Technologies announced its intention to acquire TRUMP coins, its penny stock more than doubled. Clearly, investors are responding to the obvious: companies that are enriching Trump personally should expect better treatment than those that do not.

Trump’s foray into crypto now represents nearly 40% of his net worth. In addition to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, the Trump family also owns a majority stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto exchange that launched a few weeks before the November election. CBS reports that, “According to the company's public reports, a Trump family entity also holds 22.5 billion of the $WLF tokens — and takes an additional 75% in net revenue from future token purchases.”

It’s not just small domestic companies that are handing over their money to Trump. Foreign actors are getting in on the action too. An Abu Dhabi-backed firm will invest billions of dollars in World Liberty Financial. An Emirati firm will purchase $2 billion in a product offering from World Liberty Financial.

Yesterday, MAGA, Inc, a Trump-aligned political action committee, hosted a $1.5 million per plate “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner,” featuring Trump and venture capitalist/podcaster David Sacks, the White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar. (Keep an eye on the South African-born Sacks. Much more to come on him in a future newsletter but suffice it to say for now that he is part of the so-called “PayPal Mafia,” along with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. He is also one of the biggest pro-Putin boosters in Trump’s orbit.)

Later this month, Trump will monetize his office at another event — this one benefitting not his political action committee but his own pocketbook. According to CNBC:

The second gala dinner will be held at Trump National, the president’s private club in the Washington, D.C., area, later this month. The guest list will be decided by a blockchain-based contest run by the creators of the $TRUMP meme token. Instead of cash, entry is based on how many tokens a user holds, with the top 220 promised dinner with Trump himself. The contest runs through May 12.

The gala, which is black tie optional, offers a “VIP White House Tour” and special reception to the meme coin’s 25-biggest holders. The website hosts an active leaderboard displaying the usernames of the coin’s top buyers.

The Trump Organization and its affiliates control about 80% of the $TRUMP token supply. $TRUMP sells no underlying service and has no underlying value. It is purely a “meme” coin. Yet in the two days after announcing the Trump dinner contest, the president and his partners earned nearly $900,000 in trading fees. CNBC adds that, “Because crypto wallets are pseudonymous, unless a holder has publicly disclosed their wallet address, it is difficult to independently confirm the identities of the top token holders currently leading the contest.”

It’s not difficult to imagine that foreign governments and their proxies are enriching Trump and his family directly by investing in their crypto assets. It is also possible that Trump’s plan to levy tariffs on most of the world’s nations is an opening gambit — not to negotiate better trade deals for the United States but to see who wants to pony up money through these crypto ventures.

We can guess that at least one country may be making good use of this new paradigm. In announcing his sweeping global tariffs on “Liberation Day,”Trump left Russia off the list, along with its allies Belarus, North Korea and Cuba. The official explanation for this was laughable. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Russia was excluded from crippling tariffs because existing sanctions already “precluded any meaningful trade” between the Russian Federation and the United States. But, of course, that is specious. The United States still trades more with Russia than with other nations that were subject to the April 2 tariffs, including Mauritius and Brunei.

Is it a stretch to believe that there is significant Russian investment in Trump’s crypto schemes? We cannot know for sure but the president has set up a moneymaking venture that has left him open to these kinds of questions.

Almost as soon as Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on April 2, he suspended most of them to allow for a 90-day negotiating period. But is he negotiating in the interest of the United States, or giving nations, either directly or through proxies, three months to invest in his crypto ventures?

Notably, the Department of Justice last month disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which was established under the Biden Administration to “address the challenge posed by the criminal misuse of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.” It is open season, with little oversight, for anyone who wants to make the president and his family that much more wealthy.

Think about all this when you go shopping and notice that the price of — well, everything — is skyrocketing. You are being punished because you do not have the ability to invest in World Liberty Financial, in $TRUMP or $MELANIA meme coins or in whatever other moneymaking scheme the president has set up to enrich himself while in office.

For those who can afford to throw money his way, the outlook appears much brighter.

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Further Reading:

NBC News: Read the full transcript: President Donald Trump interviewed by 'Meet the Press' moderator Kristen Welker

Huffpost: Company Boasts Spending Up To $20 Million On Trump Crypto Coin To Buy Influence

Bloomberg: Tiny Logistics Firm’s Shares Surge on Plan to Buy Trump Coin

CBS News: Trump family's net worth has increased by $2.9 billion thanks to crypto investments, new report says

The Washington Post: A podcast star rallied Silicon Valley to back Trump. Now he’s the nation’s tech czar.

CNBC: Trump set to raise millions from crypto and meme coin this month

CNBC: Trump’s memecoin dinner contest earns insiders $900,000 in two days

Axios: Trump's tariffs list is missing one big country: Russia

The Washington Post: Justice Dept. scales back crypto cases in line with Trump directives

The Department of Justice: National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team