I’ve never thought of Donald Trump as a teacher. To be honest, I never thought of him as particularly intelligent. I can name 44 other men who have served as President (all of them) I consider smarter. Yet Trump has managed to simplify the economy so that everyone in the country understands it, something no other president has done before.

Gas Prices

It used to be the common perception that presidents had little control over gas prices. Gas and the crude oil from which it’s produced are determined by factors all over the world. Some presidential actions, like releasing extra gas from oil reserves, can minimally affect prices, but presidents are generally perceived to have little control. Trump has shown us that by arbitrarily starting a war with an oil-producing nation that controls the Strait of Hormuz. A single action can raise prices worldwide.

I have an Economics degree from Fisk University. I didn’t go to college to major in economics. Economics 101 was a basic college course everyone took during freshman year. On the first day of class, we discussed a supply-and-demand chart, and on the last day, the chart was basically the same, with possibly extra lines for supply and demand (S2 or D2). The class made things simple by assuming that when any variable was introduced, everything else remained the same. This made calculations easier but wasn’t how things were in the real world where multiple variables affect the economy at once. Trump made it all simple: his war cut supply, demand went up, and prices rose.

Tariffs

I quickly found that an Economics degree without a Masters Degree or PhD had little value if I intended to stay in Economics. Even with those degrees, most of the employment opportunities were with the government, despite the simple graph introduced on the first day of class. There are hundreds of economic terms with specific meanings, and one of those is tariffs. Everybody understood taxes as they came directly out of paychecks and tax returns were due every year. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods, applied only at the border, and only on foreign goods. Tariffs are normally considered part of trade policy and not domestic fiscal policy.

Most Americans never considered tariffs to be taxes. When applied previously, tariffs were generally small and applied to specific products like steel, aluminum, textiles, or food products like dairy. Never before Trump did we apply tariffs to everything everywhere in the world (including uninhabited islands). The price of all imports went up, and Americans now clearly understand that tariffs are a tax. Even domestic products are affected if anything in the supply chain costs more because of the tariffs.

After the tariffs were declared unconstitutional, corporations that collected the tariffs and turned them over to the government were entitled to receive refunds with interest. The repayments went to the companies that collected them but not to the individuals who paid them, either through higher prices for consumers or lower dividends to investors. Despite what the Trumpm adminstration says, all Americans now know that tariffs are taxes, and the people bear the brunt of the costs.

Insider Trading is Rigging the System

It isn’t a normal assumption that the President of the United States (and his sons) will engage in insider trading. For all of Nixon’s faults, insider trading wasn’t one of them. Across the first quarter of 2026, Trump’s investment accounts executed 3,642 trades — an unprecedented volume for a sitting president. The trades totaled $220 million to $750 million in value, depending on the ranges disclosed.

These trades were concentrated in:

• Major tech firms (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD)
• Large financial institutions (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo)
• Municipal bonds and ETFs

This alone does not prove insider trading — but the timing and alignment with policy actions raised red flags among ethics experts.

Why the trades raised insider‑trading concerns

1. Trades overlapped with administration policy moves

Reporting shows a “striking overlap” between Trump’s trading patterns and his administration’s policy priorities.

Examples include:

• Heavy accumulation of semiconductor stocks (Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD) at the same time the administration was:
• imposing tariffs on Asian chip supply chains, and
• launching domestic semiconductor‑boosting industrial policies.
• Sales and purchases in tech giants (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta) during periods when the administration was making regulatory and trade decisions affecting those sectors.

This alignment does not prove wrongdoing — but it is the core reason experts flagged the trades.

2. A specific Nvidia timing issue

One of the most cited examples:

• Trump approved several Chinese companies to purchase Nvidia AI chips — a move requiring U.S. government approval.
• Before Nvidia shares moved substantially higher, Trump’s accounts accumulated Nvidia stock in million‑dollar increments.

This is the clearest instance where policy action and profitable trades appear closely linked.

Truth Social launched a paid “Truth API” that sells early access to President Trump’s posts for up to $100,000 a month. High‑frequency trading firms are buying the feed because Trump’s posts routinely move markets, and milliseconds of early access can produce large profits. The program has triggered lawsuits and ethics complaints, with critics calling it corrupt, unconstitutional, and a privatization of government information for Trump’s personal financial benefit. Insider trading relies on early information.

Lying About the Economy Isn’t Fooling Anyone

Every day, the Trump administration tells Americans the economy is “the greatest in history,” a line Donald Trump repeats with the confidence of a man who believes saying something loudly enough makes it true. But people who buy gas and groceries know better. They don’t need a press conference to tell them what the economy feels like — they feel it at the pump, at the checkout line, and in the shrinking space between paychecks and bills. When Trump insists that inflation has been “obliterated” or that prices are “coming down like never before,” it lands as theater, not truth, because the lived experience of ordinary Americans contradicts the script. The distance between the administration’s claims and the public’s reality is not ideological; it’s arithmetic.

Two of Trump’s economic claims are objectively false, not matters of interpretation. First, he has repeatedly said he “beat the affordability crisis,” even though consumer prices — especially food, rent, and insurance — remain historically high and continue rising in many regions. Second, he has claimed that gas prices are “the lowest in 20 years,” a statement directly contradicted by federal data showing average prices well above pre‑pandemic levels. These aren’t exaggerations or political spin; they’re statements that collapse under the weight of publicly available numbers. And Americans don’t need charts to know they’re untrue — they need to look at their receipts.

In one respect, we should thank Donald Trump, who has clarified economic terms and the economy itself that used to be over the heads of many Americans. On the other hand, we now know that President Trump is directly responsible for the affordability crisis, including gas prices, food prices, and a tax increase that regular Americans have to absorb. Something I thought I’d never say is that Trump has made America smarter.

Too bad he also made us poorer.