SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
multinational corporations
Entities Behind Trump Crypto Coin Made Up to $100 Million in Trading Fees in Under 2 Weeks
"Trump and his cronies get rich while the little guy gets fucked," said one critic.
Feb 03, 2025
Reutersreported Monday that the entities behind U.S. President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency token "generated between $86 million and $100 million in trading fees" from the mid-January launch to the end of the month, sparking a fresh flood of criticism and accusations of grift.
Trump announced the $TRUMP meme coin on the Friday night of the first-ever Crypto Ball in Washington, D.C., ahead of his Monday inauguration. Its market value swiftly soared that weekend, but has since dropped dramatically. Reuters had Chainalysis, Merkle Science, and a third blockchain analytics firm whose founder requested that it not be identified review the blockchain, a public ledger that shows transactions involving the coin.
Merkle Science estimated that three crypto wallets earned $86 million in trading fees from January 17 to January 30, while Chainalysis put it at about $94 million for the same period. The third firm found that by January 29, it was roughly $100 million.
According to Reuters:
One of the entities behind the crypto coin is a company owned by Trump, called CIC Digital. The official website for $TRUMP says CIC Digital will "receive trading revenue derived from trading activities" of the meme coin. Reuters could not determine what portion of the fees so far, if any, had accrued to Trump personally, nor the ownership of the other entities behind the coin.
The creators of the meme coin receive a share of the trading fees from Meteora, a little-known crypto exchange where the $TRUMP coins were first sold, the blockchain analyses showed.
At least 50 of the largest investors in the coin have made profits in excess of $10 million each on the $Trump coin, according to Chainalysis. At the same time, some 200,000 crypto wallets, most with small holdings, lost money on $Trump on the exchange, it said.
Responding to the reporting on the social media platform Bluesky, an account called Trumpflation Tracker declared that "Trump and his cronies get rich while the little guy gets fucked, same story different year."
Software engineer Jonathan McHugh similarly said, "His entire life is one giant grift, most often of people who can least afford it."
Rodrigo Fernandez, a senior researcher at the Amsterdam-based Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), said that "the conflict of interest if obvious—but he managed to flood the zone to such an extend that this detail will go unnoticed."
The White House did not address Reuters' questions about the trading fees; instead, it sent a fact sheet about Trump's executive order on digital financial technology. The news agency noted that the president "has pledged to put his assets in a trust managed by his children on entering the White House" and his son Eric Trump did respond on behalf of the Trump Organization.
Eric Trump told Reuters that he is proud of what "we continue to accomplish in crypto. $TRUMP is currently the hottest digital meme on Earth." Echoing his previous comments on the coin, the president's son added that "we are just getting started."
Late last month, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich wrote about the $TRUMP coin—as well as the first lady's $MELANIA coin that soon followed—and tied both to the president's related executive order "protecting and promoting" the crypto industry.
"In effect, Trump is writing the rules for a business venture from which he and his family are personally profiting. It could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars," he stressed. "The real significance of such blatant profiteering off the highest office in the land is what it reveals—not just about Trump but about the entire oligarchic enterprise he fronts for. It is likely to contribute to a vast wave of public alarm and disgust."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Minnesota Dems Advance Bill to Ban Election Interference by Multinational Corporations
"The Democracy for the People Act will help put power back in the hands of citizens," said one campaigner.
Apr 14, 2023
Campaigners who have long pushed cities and states to adopt bans on foreign corporate interference in elections applauded Friday after the Minnesota House of Representatives passed legislation that would make the state the first to prohibit foreign-influenced corporations from spending money on electoral campaigns.
The provision is part of the Democracy for the People Act, which passed 70-57 along party lines late Thursday night after several hours of debate.
The national nonprofit organization Free Speech for People successfully advocated for Democrats in the state House to include the new rule, which would prohibit companies with at least a 5% ownership stake by multiple foreign owners or a 1% stake by a single foreign owner from spending money in Minnesota state and local elections. The companies would also be barred from donating to super PACs.
"Multinational corporations are corrupting representative democracy by drowning out the voices of the people," said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, campaign director at Free Speech For People. "The Democracy for the People Act will help put power back in the hands of citizens."
The organization pushed lawmakers in Seattle to pass similar legislation in 2020, and Hawaii, California, Washington, New York, and Massachusetts are all considering state-level bans modeled on a proposal developed by Free Speech for People.
The group worked closely with state Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL-63B) to pass the legislation.
"This package of commonsense solutions rests on a simple premise," said Greenman during the debate over the bill, "that our state works best when Minnesota voices are at the center of our democracy."
\u201cRep. Emma Greenman [@emmagreenman] talks about what the Democracy for the People Act would mean for Minnesota. #mnleg\u201d— Minnesota House DFL Majority (@Minnesota House DFL Majority) 1681418475
The legislation now heads to the state Senate, where the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL)—the state's affiliate of the Democratic Party—has a majority of seats. Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) has said he supports the bill.
We Choose Us, a statewide grassroots coalition of advocacy groups and unions, conducted polling last November and found that 80% of Minnesota voters back the provision barring election interference by multinational companies.
"Minnesota has long been a leader in democracy and so it's no surprise that the House voted today to put Minnesota on the path to becoming the first state to prohibit foreign-influenced corporations from spending in our elections," said Lilly Sasse, campaign director for We Choose Us. "It's clear to the people of Minnesota that prohibiting foreign-influenced corporations from spending in our elections is good for our democracy. And after today, it's clear that we're on the path to signing it into law."
The group also found broad support for other provisions in the Democracy for the People Act, including automatic voter registration, backed by 73% of Minnesota voters.
The legislation would also permit 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote, establish a statewide vote-by-mail system, protect election workers and voters from harassment, and require voting instructions and ballots to be provided in non-English languages.
"Minnesotans want to ensure that voters always will have the biggest say in the decisions that will impact their lives," state House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-34B) told the ABC affiliate KSTP. "Our legislation will strengthen the freedom to vote, protect our democratic institutions and Minnesota voters, and empower voters, not corporations or wealthy special interests in our elections.”
Free Speech for People is also backing a federal proposal by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to bar multinational corporations from interfering in elections.
"By banning multinational corporations spending unlimited sums of money to influence our elections," said the group, "we are upholding the letter of the law and getting us one step closer to a democracy that is truly by and for the people.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rightwing vs. Leftwing Populists on Global Trade
Jul 01, 2016
It must have given the earnest wonks at the Economic Policy Institute a bit of a start when Donald Trump touted their research in a speech courting white, working-class voters by criticizing NAFTA and U.S. trade policy with China.
EPI president Lawrence Mishel was moved to respond in a blog post titled "Trump's Trade Scam."
"If he is so keen to help working people, why does he steer the discussion back toward the traditional corporate agenda of tax cuts for corporations and the rich?" Mishel wrote, hastening to distance himself from Trump.
Progressives who have long criticized trade deals that favor multinational corporations, suppress wages, accelerate outsourcing, and replace local democracy with unelected tribunals shrink from keeping company with the racist, isolationist right.
This is equally true in Trump's America and Britain, which is newly divorced from the rest of Europe. Guardian columnist Gary Younge concurs with Michel on the fraudulence of rightwing anti-globalism, and particularly the immigrant-bashing Brexit campaign:
"The very people who are slashing resources--the Tory right-- and diverting what's left to the wealthy are the ones rallying the poor by blaming migrants for the lack of resources," Younge wrote.
"Not content with urinating on our leg and telling us it's raining, they have found someone to blame for the weather."
Rightwing populists are making a lot of noise about the weather lately--that is, the lousy economic climate brought on by trade deals that favor corporations at the expense of labor. As a result, they are making inroads with an anxious working class.
"Progressives can't afford to cede economic populism to the man who could prove to be the most effective white nationalist campaigner of our generation," Tarso Luis Ramos, executive director of the rightwing watchdog group Political Research Associates, put it to me recently, when I interviewed him about Donald Trump.
I spoke with Melinda St. Louis, International Campaigns Director for Public Citizens' Global Trade Watch to get a progressive view on globalization. St. Louis has spent her career working on fair trade.
She is optimistic about a global movement for economic justice.
"I don't think we're ceding talking points on this," she says, pointing to the campaign to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which she calls "kind of exciting."
Both major parties pushed multinational corporations' agenda in big trade deals for years. But not this year. Growing public ire over NAFTA, especially in the Rust Belt, which has seen more than 57,000 factories offshored, has changed the political debate. St. Louis points out:
"Now the candidates are fighting over who hates the TPP more. That is a prudent response since all of the trade unions, environmental groups, LGBT organizations, women, retirees--the entire progressive base is opposing TPP.
It's not about trade or not trade, it's about who writes the rules and who benefits."
Human rights advocates see no reason for the TPP to make it easier for Malaysia, which has a problem with human trafficking, to access U.S. markets. LGBT activists don't want to roll out the red carpet for Brunei, which is bad on LGBT rights.
Overall, the trouble with the TPP is that it "doesn't learn the lessons of NAFTA," St. Louis says. "It expands incentives for offshoring and creates more opportunities to challenge environmental and health and safety laws through secret tribunals."
The public is increasingly unhappy with such deals.
St. Louis notes the TransCanada corporation's recent Keystone claim against the United States under NAFTA's rules. "Obama listened to activists, who pointed to the environmental and economic damage, and now we, the taxpayers, could be on the hook for $15 billion because of an unaccountable trade deal. Why on earth would we want to expand that through the TPP?"
Perhaps the biggest difference between left and right-wing views of global trade is that while right-wing populists blame immigrants and foreign workers, progressives see workers across borders making common causes.
"I worked in Central America during the Central America Free Trade Agreement negotiations, and the people in Central America said at the time, 'This is going to decimate us,'" says St. Louis. "Sure enough, we've seen an increase in inequality and instability in the region since CAFTA passed."
St. Louis speaks with feeling about "the brightest, most entrepreneurial people" leaving Southern Mexico and Central America to make the dangerous trek North, not because they think the streets in the United States are paved with gold, but because there are no other opportunities for them:
"To see these families in a place where family is so important being broken up for years--parents sending money to their children, but not seeing them for fifteen years--it's devastating."
Scapegoating these immigrants is particularly outrageous, she says, since economic and trade policies have been a major contributor to their plight.
Take the two million Mexican farmers who lost their livelihoods under NAFTA when U.S.-subsidized corn flooded the market at lower prices than the production cost.
Despite the bad economic news and the ominous rightwing backlash, St. Louis is optimistic about the global movement for economic justice:
"When there is this level of overreach of corporate greed people do mobilize and beat it back. A couple of years ago it was unthinkable that the TPP would be a major issue in the presidential campaign."
There have been other victories. Massive opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas--a proposed NAFTA expansion--killed that plan. Likewise, citizen organizing helped kill the Multilateral Agreement on Investments.
Liberal economists, including Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, and Robert Reich, have moved away from their pro-NAFTA positions and begun to support the call for fair trade. St. Louis sums it up:
"There is a populist response from the left and the right. Elites should pay attention."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular