Connect with us

Economics

Truth Social is a mind-bending win for Donald Trump

Published

1 year ago

on

Since shares in Donald Trump’s media firm began trading publicly on March 26th, their value has slid by more than half, prompting headlines, and some crowing from the left, about the decline. Which still seems less newsworthy than that anyone is buying at all: even at roughly $26 per share, investors are prizing Mr Trump’s social-media platform, Truth Social, at a heroic value relative to its performance or apparent potential.

One must write “roughly” $26 per share because even the Wall Street Journal has struggled to ascertain just how many shares are outstanding. Other possible red flags for investors include the company’s independent auditor reported on March 25th that its “operating losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern”. After forecasting sales of $144m for 2023, Truth Social delivered just $4.1m, and a loss of $58.2m.

Truth Social says it is contending with such entrenched giants as Facebook and Amazon, but it does not disclose its audience numbers. In a regulatory filing it tried to make a virtue of this by arguing that “adhering to traditional key performance indicators” such as traffic or advertising results—the sorts of results that typically obsess media investors—could “potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation” of its business. For March, the analytics firm Similarweb found Truth Social had about 7.7m unique visitors, or roughly 0.05% of Facebook’s traffic.

Maybe such realities will suddenly drag down the stock. But it has a long way to fall to depart the reaches of faith for the realm of reason. John Rekenthaler, a vice-president of Morningstar, an investment research firm, has estimated that if people valued Truth Social as they did the initial offerings of such firms as Tesla, Google and Facebook, the shares would be selling for 50 cents.

Investors in Truth Social, compared with those in other startups, are clearly not relying upon the same sort of analysis or even indulging the same sort of dream. They are not even playing the same game as the very online investors who drove up such meme stocks as AMC and GameStop to irrational valuations that were also relative fractions of the paper value of Mr Trump’s company.

Something else is happening here, a tremor in market logic, even a rupture with common sense. Maybe investors believe that Mr Trump will win in November and, as the first president with his own social platform, insist on making all his pronouncements upon it. Maybe they adore him and want to multiply his billions. Whatever their motives, the performance of Mr Trump’s stock so far represents the purest demonstration of his power not just to bend reality, but to convert illusion into reality—and also, maybe, of how Americans are coming to confuse the two.

For years Mr Trump has used his mastery of the virtual world—the controversy and excitement he generates online—to increase his political power. He has just 7m followers on Truth Social, compared with 87m followers on X. But by taking ownership himself of the virtual events he is so skilled at provoking, he has created tremendous paper value, and he appears to be on his way to turning that virtual value into real wealth. Mr Trump holds 78.8m shares in the company, or about 57% of the total, and he is due to receive 36m more if the share price stays above $17.50 until late April. Under a “lockup” agreement Mr Trump cannot sell for six months, until September 25th, unless the company’s board releases him from the restriction.

What Mr Trump has called “truthful hyperbole”, and others call lying, has been central to his success. When he built Trump Tower it had 58 floors, but in numbering them he skipped ten to claim 68 instead. This tactic has occasionally caught up with him, most severely in the $355m penalty imposed on him in February after a New York judge found Mr Trump had lied for years to secure loans and make deals—trebling the size of his penthouse apartment, for example, and valuing his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida based on its potential for residential development, though he had surrendered the rights to develop it as anything but a club.

Yet Mr Trump’s trademark hyperbole is the very foundation of Truth Social. Its value rests on his participation—his agreement with the company constrains his posting elsewhere—and his posts are full of exaggerations if not lies, whether about the criminal cases against him, President Joe Biden, or the state of the country. Is that some sort of fraud? Or is it just life online, and how value is best created there, to be exchanged for an offline currency via advertising, the stockmarket or the ballot box?

There is no spoon

Virtual reality always seems to be a step away. Alternative digital worlds like “Second Life” have not caught on, and clunky AR headsets have proved more aversive than immersive. But Americans may not recognise the degree to which reality online—a reality that did not exist for most just a generation ago—has washed back into the real world, distorting their politics, their relationships, their apprehension of what is true or what has value. The rules governing all of this have changed, and it is not clear what the new rules are. Mr Trump and others are still inventing them.

Officials in the administration of President George W. Bush used to deride what they called the “reality-based community” and insist they could “create our own reality”. They were pikers compared with Mr Trump. It seemed like a joke, during his campaign for president in 2016, when he referred to his political following as a “movement”. Now it is reasonable to call him the most consequential figure in American politics since Ronald Reagan. Maybe Mr Trump will lose the election in November, and maybe that will cause stock in Truth Social to crash, if it does not collapse before then. But it does not seem like a crazy act to buy a few shares now, just in case. ■

Read more from Lexington, our columnist on American politics:
Are American progressives making themselves sad? (Apr 4th)
The case of Stormy Daniels echoes past scandals (Mar 27th)
Binyamin Netanyahu is alienating Israel’s best friends (Mar 18th)

Also: How the Lexington column got its name

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Economics

Gavin Newsom is ready for his close-up

Published

1 day ago

on

June 13, 2025

By

NORMALLY, GAVIN NEWSOM is loose. The Democratic governor of California talks with a staccato cadence, often flitting from one incomplete thought to the next. When he talks to journalists or asks a guest on his podcast a meandering question, he tends to use a lot of meaningless filler words: “in the context of” is a frequent Newsomism. But on June 10th he was clear and direct. “This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation,” he said during a televised address after President Donald Trump deployed nearly 5,000 troops to Los Angeles to quell protests over immigration raids. “We do not want our streets militarised by our own armed forces. Not in LA. Not in California. Not anywhere.”

Continue Reading

Economics

Consumer sentiment reading rebounds to much higher level than expected as people get over tariff shock

Published

2 days ago

on

June 13, 2025

By

A woman shops at a supermarket on April 30, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.

Sha Hanting | China News Service | Getty Images

Consumers in the early part of June took a considerably less pessimistic about the economy and potential surges in inflation as progress appeared possible in the global trade war, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday.

The university’s closely watched Surveys of Consumers showed across-the-board rebounds from previously dour readings, while respondents also sharply cut back their outlook for near-term inflation.

For the headline index of consumer sentiment, the gauge was at 60.5, well ahead of the Dow Jones estimate for 54 and a 15.9% increase from a month ago. The current conditions index jumped 8.1%, while the future expectations measure soared 21.9%.

The moves coincided with a softening in the heated rhetoric that has surrounded President Donald Trump’s tariffs. After releasing his April 2 “liberation day” announcement, Trump has eased off the threats and instituted a 90-day negotiation period that appears to be showing progress, particularly with top trade rival China.

“Consumers appear to have settled somewhat from the shock of the extremely high tariffs announced in April and the policy volatility seen in the weeks that followed,” survey director Joanne Hsu said in a statement. “However, consumers still perceive wide-ranging downside risks to the economy.”

To be sure, all of the sentiment indexes were still considerably below their year-ago readings as consumers worry about what impact the tariffs will have on prices, along with a host of other geopolitical concerns.

On inflation, the one-year outlook tumbled from levels not seen since 1981.

The one-year estimate slid to 5.1%, a 1.5 percentage point drop, while the five-year view edged lower to 4.1%, a 0.1 percentage point decrease.

“Consumers’ fears about the potential impact of tariffs on future inflation have softened somewhat in June,” Hsu said. “Still, inflation expectations remain above readings seen throughout the second half of 2024, reflecting widespread beliefs that trade policy may still contribute to an increase in inflation in the year ahead.”

The Michigan survey, which will be updated at the end of the month, had been an outlier on inflation fears, with other sentiment and market indicators showing the outlook was fairly contained despite the tariff tensions. Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve of New York reported that the one-year view had fallen to 3.2% in May, a 0.4 percentage point drop from the prior month.

At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics this week reported that both producer and consumer prices increase just 0.1% on a monthly basis, pointing toward little upward pressure from the duties. Economists still largely expect the tariffs to show impact in the coming months.

The soft inflation numbers have led Trump and other White House officials to demand the Fed start lowering interest rates again. The central bank is slated to meet next week, with market expectations strongly pointing to no cuts until September.

Continue Reading

Economics

Reeves’ plans contending with the bond market

Published

2 days ago

on

June 12, 2025

By

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – MARCH 26, 2025: Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves leaves 11 Downing Street ahead of the announcement of the Spring Statement in the House of Commons in London, United Kingdom on March 26, 2025. (Photo credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Wiktor Szymanowicz | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Britain’s government is planning to ramp up public spending — but market watchers warn the proposals risk sending jitters through the bond market further inflating the country’s $143 billion-a-year interest payments.

U.K. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves on Wednesday announced the government would inject billions of pounds into defense, healthcare, infrastructure, and other areas of the economy, in the coming years. A day later, however, official data showed the U.K. economy shrank by a greater-than-expected 0.3% in April.

Funding public spending in the absence of a growing economy, leaves the government with two options: raise money through taxation, or take on more debt.

One way it can borrow is to issue bonds, known as gilts in the U.K., into the public market. By purchasing gilts, investors are essentially lending money to the government, with the yield on the bond representing the return the investor can expect to receive.

Gilt yields and prices move in opposite directions — so rising prices move yields lower, and vice versa. This year, gilt yields have seen volatile moves, with investors sensitive to geopolitical and macroeconomic instability.

The U.K. government’s long-term borrowing costs spiked to multi-decade highs in January, and the yield on 20- and 30-year gilts continues to hover firmly above 5%.

Official estimates show the government is expected to spend more than £105 billion ($142.9 billion) paying interest on its national debt in the 2025 fiscal year — £9.4 billion higher than at the the time of the Autumn budget last year — and £111 billion in annual interest in 2026.

The government did not say on Wednesday how its newly unveiled spending hikes will be funded, and did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment about where the money will come from. However, in her Autumn Budget last year, Reeves outlined plans to hike both taxes and borrowing. Following the budget, the finance minister pledged not to raise taxes again during the current Labour government’s term in office, saying that the government “won’t have to do a budget like this ever again.”

Andrew Goodwin, chief U.K. economist at Oxford Economics, said Britain’s government may be forced to go even further with its spending plans, with NATO poised to hike its defense spending target for member states to 5% of GDP, and once a U-turn on winter fuel payments for the elderly and other possible welfare reforms are factored in.

Additionally, Goodwin said, the U.K.’s Office for Budget Responsibility is likely to make “unfavorable revisions” to its economic forecasts in July, which would lead to lower tax receipts and higher borrowing.

“If recent movements in financial market pricing hold, debt servicing costs will be around £2.5bn ($3.4 billion) higher than they were at the time of the Spring Statement,” Goodwin warned in a note on Wednesday.

‘Very fragile situation’

Mel Stride, who serves as the shadow Chancellor in the U.K.’s opposition government, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday that the Spending Review raised questions about whether “a huge amount of borrowing” will be involved in funding the government’s fiscal strategies.

“[Government] borrowing is having consequences in terms of higher inflation in the U.K. … and therefore interest rates [are] higher for longer,” he said. “It’s adding to the debt mountain, the servicing costs upon which are running at 100 billion [pounds] a year, that’s twice what we spend on defense.”

“I’m afraid the overall economy is in a very weak position to withstand the kind of spending and borrowing that this government is announcing,” Stride added.

UK is in a 'very fragile situation,' Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride says

Stride argued that Reeves will “almost certainly” have to raise taxes again in her next budget announcement due in the autumn.

“We’ve ended up in a very fragile situation, particularly when you’ve got the tariffs around the world,” he said.

Rufaro Chiriseri, head of fixed income for the British Isles at RBC Wealth Management, told CNBC that rising borrowing costs were putting Reeves’ “already small fiscal headroom at risk.”

“This reduced headroom could create a snowball effect, as investors could potentially become nervous to hold UK debt, which could lead to a further selloff until fiscal stability is restored,” he said.

Iain Barnes, Chief Investment Officer at Netwealth, also told CNBC on Thursday that the U.K. was in “a state of fiscal fragility, so room for manoeuvre is limited.”

“The market knows that if growth disappoints, then this year’s Budget may have to deliver higher taxes and increased borrowing to fund spending plans,” Barnes said.

However, April LaRusse, head of investment specialists at Insight Investment, argued there were ways for debt servicing burdens to be kept under control.

The U.K.’s Debt Management Office, which issues gilts, has scope to reshape issuance patters — the maturity and type of gilts issued — to help the government get its borrowing costs under control, she said.

“With the average yield on the 1-10 year gilts at c4% and the yield on the 15 year + gilts at 5.2% yield, there is scope to make the debt financing costs more affordable,” she explained.

However, LaRusse noted that debt interest payments for the U.K. government were estimated to reach the equivalent of around 3.5% of GDP this fiscal year, and that overspending could worsen the burden.

“This increase is driven not only by higher interest rates, which gradually translate into higher coupon payments, but also by elevated levels of government spending, compounding the fiscal burden,” she said.

Continue Reading

Trending