Trump’s Market-Moving Tariff Announcement Sparks Manipulation Concerns

President Donald Trump’s sudden reversal on tariff policy Wednesday has ignited a firestorm of criticism from Democratic lawmakers who suggest his early-morning social media posts might constitute market manipulation.

Hours before announcing a significant pause on many planned tariffs, Trump posted cryptic messages on his Truth Social platform, writing at 9:33 a.m.: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” Minutes later, he added: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”

Approximately four hours after these posts, at 1:18 p.m., Trump formally announced a 90-day suspension of many tariffs for countries that haven’t retaliated against the United States. The policy revision maintains a 10% baseline tariff while notably excluding China from the reprieve. The Trump administration later clarified that Chinese goods would face a steep 145% tariff when exported to the U.S.

The announcement triggered one of the largest single-day market rallies since World War II. The S&P 500 surged 9.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 3,000 points, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 12.2%.

Democratic lawmakers quickly raised alarms about who might have had advance knowledge of the policy shift. Senator Adam Schiff, along with Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), sent a formal letter to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the White House chief of staff calling for an investigation into potential insider trading.

“Sadly, you can’t foreclose that possibility that people in the administration were cashing in, even as Americans have been losing their retirement savings,” Schiff told Spectrum News on Thursday. “It’s a real concern that there’s insider trading going on and stock manipulation going on, and people are enriching themselves at the expense of the public.”

Schiff expressed particular concern that White House officials and Cabinet members have allegedly not been filing mandated reports on their stock trades. “People outside the administration go to jail for doing that. There are federal laws that prohibit this, and we want to make sure that they’re enforced,” he added.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was equally direct in her assessment: “I don’t think that it was a coincidence. I don’t think that Trump just coincidentally said buy stocks and then shortly later made an announcement that dramatically inflated and dramatically raised these asset prices.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) highlighted the chaotic nature of the administration’s tariff policy on social media, noting that frequent position changes create “ample opportunity for any individual who has early access to information about the White House’s change in position to make boatloads of money.”

Representative Mike Levin (D-Calif.) called for transparency, urging all members of Congress to disclose their stock trades from the past week. “I want to know who knew about the decision was going to make. We know [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick was in the room, for example. Who else knew about the pause decision? When did they know it?” Levin questioned.

The concerns reached official government proceedings when Representative Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) confronted U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during a House Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing. “Is this market manipulation?” Horsford asked. “If it was a plan, if it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation?”

Greer rejected the characterization, stating, “It’s not market manipulation. We are trying to reset the global trade system.”

The White House has pushed back against the allegations. Spokesman Kush Desai defended the president’s actions, saying: “It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering.”

When questioned about the tariff suspension at an unrelated White House event Wednesday afternoon, Trump said, “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know? They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.” He later added that he had been considering the decision for several days, and that the changes “came together early this morning.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission, when contacted about the president’s social media posts, declined to comment on the matter.