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Longtime columnist and commentator John Avlon issued a critical warning for Wall Street: ignore President Donald Trump's assault on free markets at your own risk.

Writing for Rolling Stone, Avlon questioned what would happen if a Democratic president started a trade war with U.S. allies while getting humiliated by the Chinese Communist Party. Further, he asked what would unfold if that same Democratic president decided that the U.S. government would take possession of parts of privately held companies.

Avlon made it clear that Wall Street money-movers would rage loudly while Republicans seethed, spouting "Milton Friedman shibboleths about free trade, free people, and fiscal responsibility."

This has already unfolded under Trump, and now his Justice Department is pushing for a grand jury probe into Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell after he repeatedly refused to follow the president's demand to cut interest rates.

Today, the "titans of American industry" are quiet, Avlon's column continued. They've "abandon[ed] long-held free market beliefs and line[d] up to perform ornate acts of supplication to the president. Apparently, if you have an unhinged would-be autocrat in charge of the national economy and so much business is wrapped up in government spending, the right thing to do is kiss his a—— in the public square and say it smells like roses, later claiming that you did it all for the shareholders."

After all, he explained, "It is better for the balance sheet to be in the mad king’s good graces."

Avlon recalled the prosperous 1990s when then-President Bill Clinton because the last U.S. leader to deliver a budget surplus. The far-right alleged he was "an amoral communist." Former President Barack Obama submitted "literally a Heritage Foundation proposal" as a solution for healthcare with individual mandates. He was labeled "a Marxist Manchurian candidate."

The attacks were amplified by donations from billionaires claiming that maintaining free markets motivated their involvement.

Avlon wrote that he has a friend working in the hedge fund industry, who said that the stock market could be used as an informal rating for how old, rich, white men felt about politics. It's clear after the Monday slump and rebound that nothing Trump does can sink the markets.

He further quoted Berkshire Hathaway chair Charlie Munger, who said before he died that in the short run the markets are a voting machine — but like a scale in the long run.

"By this logic, Trump’s efforts to turn the U.S. economy into a low-tax, high-tariff regime with a side-hustle government-run shakedown operation — in which foreign policy is conducted for business and the U.S. government owns a stake in those businesses — will end badly for everyone involved," said Avlon. "That’s because in the long run, the weighing machine will matter — just as in the long run, deficits and debts do matter, even if we should all now understand that Republicans only give a damn about deficits and debt when a Democrat is president."

The real fear is that Trump's actions could result in such a lack of trust in the United States' economic stability that countries stop considering the U.S. dollar as the global "reserve currency." It would "begin an overnight economic apocalypse" in the country, Avlon described.

Still, Wall Street continues operating as if all is normal.

Read the full column here.

President Donald Trump's tariff announcement last week has not only rattled financial markets, but even a group of far-right billionaires who have a history of supporting Republican causes.

The Guardian reported that both a far-right group funded by both multibillionaire Charles Koch and the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo is now suing to stop Trump's new trade duties on China from taking effect. The New Civil Liberties Alliance argued that Trump's invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to justify his unilateral imposition of new tariffs is illegal, and that the courts should intervene based on precedent that requires Congress weigh in on certain policy-related matters.

“This statute authorizes specific emergency actions like imposing sanctions or freezing assets to protect the United States from foreign threats,” the organization stated. “It does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. In its nearly 50-year history, no other president – including President Trump in his first term – has ever tried to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs.”

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"His attempt to use the IEEPA this way not only violates the law as written, but it also invites application of the supreme court’s major questions doctrine, which tells courts not to discern policies of ‘vast economic and political significance’ in a law without explicit congressional authorization," the statement continued.

Mark Chenoweth, who is president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said that by filing the lawsuit in Pensacola, Florida court, the judge would have to abide by the aforementioned precedent, or else it would ultimately "transfer core legislative power." And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — who recently voted with Democrats to limit Trump's tariff powers on Canada — opined that his colleagues in the Senate Republican Conference are also likely very uneasy about the president's latest new import taxes,

“They all see the stock market, and they’re all worried about it,” Paul said. “But they are putting on a stiff upper lip to try to act as if nothing’s happening and hoping it goes away.”

The lawsuit also signals an escalation from the various arms of the Koch political machine. His Americans for Prosperity organization threw its weight behind former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, only for her to bow out and eventually endorse Trump after Trump won the Super Tuesday primaries.

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Click here to read the Guardian's full report.

US economics editor Simon Rabinovitch said the financial blast of “Liberation Day” would not have happened in President Donald Trump’s first administration.

“This time around, he clearly is surrounded by people who, in part, agree with him, people like (presidential counselor) Peter Navarro and others who are enabling him, who are not standing in his way, in the way that happened in Trump 1.0, so this is really the basest, worst instincts of Donald Trump, completely unencumbered by anybody reasonable,” Rabinovitch told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur. “And I think the market reaction that we're seeing today is simply proof of that.”

At the time of Rabinovitch’s interview, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had hit a low of -3.8%, down 1,600 points. It soon closed at -3.9%, down 1,679. Some critics expressed relief that it closed when it did, and within hours of that same interview, tariff-related layoffs hit five U.S. auto plants supplying car factories in Canada and Mexico. Auto parts maker Stellantis announced it had “paused production,” laying off 900 U.S. hourly employees, many in the Midwest, who were making make vehicle powertrains and stampings.

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The international community was equally hurt, equally fast. Stellantis also announced its assembly plant in Ontario, employing 4,500 Canadians, would be closed for two weeks starting Monday.

Even as stocks tumbled on Thursday, with $2 trillion effectively wiped from Wall Street, Trump assured America was “going well,” and compared the current pain to the inconvenience of medical surgery.

“It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing,” Trump told reporters. “I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.”

He also predicted, seemingly without sarcasm, that the economic situation is “going to be unbelievable.”

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The president had instituted tariffs in his first administration as well, but Rabinovitch said the world had benefited from smarter people in Trump’s circle in his first term.

“In his first term, (tariffs) went from roughly 2% to about three or 3.5% over the course of two years. It was driven by a process run by (former United States Trade Representative) Robert Lighthizer,” Rabinovitch said. “Companies had a couple of years to anticipate it. This time around, in the space of two months, we've gone from an effective tariff rate of 3% to about 25%. There's no process, no feedback, no, possibility of exemption—according to Donald Trump himself. This is utter chaos, utter madness. he's raised the tariff level beyond what it was during the Great Depression and putting America on the road to economic ruin.”

Watch Rabinovitch's comments below, or by clicking this link.

- YouTubeyoutu.be