The Bermuda Triangle in the United States

"When capital speaks, Washington listens: How Silicon Valley and Wall Street overruled Trump’s economic nationalism."

Artwork: Monique Westermann

Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" didn't exactly inspire liberty. Instead, it unleashed a wave of economic chaos, almost as if Washington had turned into the Bermuda Triangle of financial policy—where logic, stability, and $10 trillion in global market value mysteriously vanished overnight.

As John Maynard Keynes once observed, uncertainty leads to a rise in liquidity preference. Investors retreat into safe, unproductive assets like short-term bonds. Manufacturers and traders cancel contracts. The result? A historic global sell-off: $10 trillion wiped out from stock markets, with Wall Street bearing the brunt. The Nasdaq, Dow Jones, and S&P 500 all posted record losses.

Even billionaire supporters of Trump—Bill Ackman, Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk, Ken Griffin—began publicly voicing their panic. Tax cuts, they thought, would pad their portfolios. But destabilizing the global economy? That’s bad for business. When even Fox News starts airing voices of dissent, you know something's gone awry.

In response, the Trump administration blinked. The much-hyped tariff policy was quietly "paused" for 90 days—except for China. Around the world, policymakers scrambled to negotiate with Washington. Meanwhile, the U.S. and China continued escalating tariffs until Chinese officials warned that virtually all U.S. exports to China could soon become unsustainable.

But what about the real ruling class—the tech billionaires and asset managers? What happens to Silicon Valley and Wall Street when the supply chains they depend on begin to fracture?

Answer: they made the White House blink again.

In a quiet but strategic reversal, Trump’s team exempted consumer electronics and semiconductor manufacturing equipment from the tariff regime—products that account for a quarter of U.S. imports from China.

So much for economic nationalism. The exemption confirms what many already suspected: the triangular power structure linking Silicon Valley (tech), Wall Street (finance), and Washington (policy) doesn’t just adapt to crises—it shapes the terms of global capitalism itself.

Let’s start with Apple Inc. — valued at nearly $3 trillion. To put that in perspective, only seven countries in the world—the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, India, the UK, and France—have a nominal GDP higher than Apple’s market capitalization. That means Apple alone is economically larger than most sovereign nations.