Michael Alexander Smith is a Democratic candidate for state treasurer.
Donald Trump’s company has found a new way to monetize the president’s market-moving statements.
Trump Media has reportedly pitched banks, hedge funds and high-frequency traders a premium Truth Social data feed, costing as much as $100,000 a month. The product, called Truth API, delivers posts from Trump and other influential accounts directly to trading systems in milliseconds. The posts may be public, but firms wealthy enough to pay could process them and place trades before an ordinary investor has even seen the alert.
Trump Media’s own pitch says it plainly: “Markets already move on Truth Social posts.”
I refuse to accept that as the new normal.
While earning my master’s in economics, I read Michael Lewis’ “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,” a critique of high-frequency trading and the speed advantages powerful firms can buy. I later analyzed HFT markets as an economist. The technology has evolved, but the question remains: Do our markets give everyone a fair chance or reward those who can afford the fastest pipeline?
Most Delawareans do not have high-frequency trading desks, private wealth advisers or teams of accountants. They have paychecks, pensions, 401(k)s, college savings accounts or index funds, plus reasonable expectations that the rules will not be deliberately tilted against them.
And I want to be clear that this is not an isolated action but part of a broader and aggressive shift in power.
Nasdaq has adopted a “fast-entry” rule that lets qualifying newly listed companies enter the Nasdaq 100 after only 15 trading days, potentially triggering automatic purchases by funds that track the index before a company, like SpaceX, has spent much time under the discipline and scrutiny of public markets.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s Department of Labor has proposed legal safe harbors that would make it easier for 401(k) plans to include private equity, cryptocurrency and other alternative assets. These investments can involve substantial fees, limited liquidity, difficult valuations and complexity that ordinary workers are poorly positioned to investigate on their own.
One move sells a speed advantage. The second can direct index fund dollars toward massive new listings faster. And the third opens workers’ retirement accounts to more complex and opaque products, while limiting accountability for those who sold them these risky products.
Each is marketed as “innovation” or “expanded access,” but they substantially change the rules for ordinary investors. Taken together, wealthy firms and insiders gain more ways to profit, while working people are asked to absorb more risk.
As an economist, I understand why speed, liquidity and access matter in financial markets. As the son of working-class parents who struggled with unemployment during the Great Recession, I also understand who pays when those markets fail.
Families like mine did not have wealth managers protecting them. They had their savings and the belief that working hard and playing by the rules would be enough.
That is why the Office of State Treasurer cannot be treated as a business-as-usual job.
I have heard the criticism that I have too many ideas for the office. I believe the greater danger is having too few ideas for the moment we are in as a state and country.
Maintaining Delaware’s credit rating, responsibly managing public funds and administering existing savings programs are essential. But they are the floor, not the ceiling, of the treasurer’s responsibility at this moment in history.
The treasurer is also a voting member of the State Employee Benefits Committee, which oversees healthcare and other benefits for active state employees, retirees and their families. Those votes affect the financial security of workers who devoted their careers to serving Delaware.
That is one reason I am so proud to have earned the endorsement of the Delaware State Education Association. Educators know that this is not an abstract financial office. They want a treasurer who will fight for workers — and I will.
As treasurer, I will use every vote, board seat and public platform that comes with the office to stand up for Delawareans.
In the savings and investment programs under the treasurer’s authority, I will demand clear reporting on fees, liquidity, valuation, performance and conflicts of interest before complex assets are allowed anywhere near workers’ money.
And, when Washington or Wall Street rewrites the rules to favor people who can buy special access, I will say so loudly and clearly. I will also work with Delaware’s attorney general, congressional delegation and other state treasurers to demand fair markets and stronger protections for ordinary investors and retirement savers.
A state treasurer cannot singlehandedly stop every bad federal policy. But silence is a choice, and so is complacency.
Some candidates may think the office should keep its head down and pretend like the federal government and Wall Street aren’t actively stacking the deck against working people, but that is not leadership.
Not when the president’s company is selling Wall Street a faster pipeline to his market-moving posts. Not when workers’ retirement savings are becoming a target for complex, high-fee financial products. Not when the rules workers and retirees have relied upon for decades are being rewritten to burden them with risk, just to help some of the richest people in our country get richer.
No Delawarean should need a $100,000-a-month data feed, a wealth manager or a fancy accountant to get a fair shot.
Working people deserve a treasurer who sees what is happening, sounds the alarm and fights back. That’s the treasurer I commit to being.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
