In Sam Rainsy’s April 26, 2025 article, Wall Street: The Last Force That Can Still Restrain President Donald Trump, he paints a captivating but ultimately misleading picture: that the faceless forces of financial capital — embodied in Wall Street — stand as the last check on executive overreach. He points to market turbulence following Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements, Federal Reserve reshufflings, and aggressive “America First” measures as proof that Wall Street disciplines presidential overreach when traditional political institutions fail. His argument, however well-intentioned, rests on a fatally flawed premise: that markets, driven by immediate profit calculations, can serve as guardians of democracy, morality, or global stability.
This faith in Wall Street as a restraining force is not merely naïve; it is a dangerous misdiagnosis of the deeper, systemic rot afflicting not only the United States but the global order. In fact, the enthronement of financial markets as the de facto moral compass of governance accelerates the very collapse it claims to prevent — socially, economically, ecologically, and philosophically.
I. The Market Is Not a Moral Entity
Markets react to risk, not to right or wrong. They do not mourn injustice; they price it. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has shown, markets are excellent at allocating goods but blind to moral reasoning (Development as Freedom, 1999). They do not distinguish between a tariff that devastates millions of Cambodian workers and a tariff that merely shifts portfolio allocations for Goldman Sachs traders. Wall Street does not “restrain” anything in the ethical sense — it simply seeks to protect asset values.
Sam Rainsy’s article is built upon a fundamentally flawed premise: that global capital markets — creatures of elite interests and supranational power — should serve as sovereign regulators of democratically elected governments. It betrays an alarming elitism that views financial stability as an end in itself, even when that stability has been secured at the expense of national dignity, domestic prosperity, and democratic agency.
President Trump’s approach to political economy, in contrast, represents not reckless endangerment but a necessary democratic correction to decades of market fundamentalism. His populist policies reflect the will of millions of working-class citizens who have seen their livelihoods sacrificed on the altar of global financial orthodoxy.
Thus, when Trump “adjusts” his policies in response to market collapses, it is not because Wall Street acts as a wise censor. It is because capital demands stability for itself — even if the broader society crumbles. The market’s reflexes are not aligned with human flourishing, national sovereignty, or even democratic survival; they are aligned with short-term rent extraction.
The philosopher Karl Polanyi warned in The Great Transformation (1944) that when markets are unmoored from social needs, they tear apart the fabric of civilization itself. If we treat Wall Street as our final safeguard, we have already lost the deeper war for the soul of humanity.
II. Financial Capital Is the Architect — Not the Antidote — of Global Instability
Far from restraining Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, Wall Street — and the broader international financial system — enables them. The same flows of speculative capital that pressure leaders to “correct” destabilizing trade policies also fund political movements, lobbyists, and institutions that deepen inequality, fracture societies, and fuel the very populist backlashes that empower figures like Trump.
Indeed, the 2008 financial crash — caused by reckless and predatory behavior on Wall Street — laid the groundwork for the global collapse of trust in elites, institutions, and technocratic governance. As Thomas Piketty meticulously documented in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), wealth inequality exacerbated by financialization has been the breeding ground for nationalist and authoritarian revolts across the globe.
Thus, to imagine that Wall Street can restrain Trump — when it helped create Trumpism — is to mistake the arsonist for the firefighter.
III. Markets Are Servants, Not Masters of Sovereignty
Rainsy’s central claim — that Wall Street is the ultimate “check” on Trump’s power — inverts the proper order of governance. Democratic nations exist to serve their citizens, not to serve the dictates of capital markets. As the late Harvard economist Dani Rodrik observed in The Globalization Paradox (2011), there is an unresolvable tension between hyper-globalized finance and national democracy. When investors have the ability to instantly punish governments for asserting control over trade, currency, or labor policies, democracy itself becomes subordinated to the whims of anonymous bondholders and fund managers.
President Trump’s tariff policies, widely derided by the financial elite, were an effort to reclaim industrial sovereignty — to revive domestic manufacturing, reassert fair competition, and reverse decades of deindustrialization that have hollowed out the American heartland.
To argue that markets should punish these moves is to argue that transnational capital — not voters — should determine the policies of the United States. Such thinking is the very antithesis of democracy.
IV. Wall Street’s Power Undermines Democracy Everywhere
Every human on earth is touched by the decisions of financial markets. Wall Street is not just an American institution; it is a planetary force that shapes the destiny of farmers in India, factory workers in Vietnam, schoolchildren in Bolivia, and pensioners in Germany.
When markets panic because of tariffs, the pain does not fall evenly. Emerging markets suffer currency collapses, sparking inflation that destroys the savings of the world’s poor. (See: Reinhart and Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, 2009.)
A 6% drop in the S&P 500 may shave millions off a hedge fund’s balance sheet — but a 30% devaluation of the Pakistani rupee means starvation for tens of thousands. Financial “discipline” often demands austerity measures that cut essential public services in developing nations, under the guise of stabilizing markets.
Rainsy implicitly portrays Trump’s economic nationalism as destabilizing — but ignores the deeper destabilization wrought by the very market forces he celebrates. As the late sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and economist Thomas Piketty have shown (World-Systems Analysis, 2004; Capital and Ideology, 2020), globalized financial capitalism has driven inequality within nations to levels not seen since the Gilded Age.
The “Trump Thump” — the sharp market drops after Trump’s tariff announcements — must be seen not as evidence of reckless governance, but as a healthy clash between popular democratic demands and entrenched global capital. Markets fall not because Trump’s policies are irrational, but because they threaten the profitability of a deeply unjust international system that suppresses wages, shifts manufacturing abroad, and disempowers national labor.
Indeed, the $6.6 trillion loss Rainsy cites is not money “lost” to humanity — it is money extracted from speculative financial positions, many of which are disconnected from real, productive economic activity.
President Trump’s project aims to re-anchor American prosperity in real work — factories, farms, infrastructure — rather than in fragile financial abstractions. This is not chaos; it is an attempt to restore an older, more grounded conception of political economy.
Thus, if we accept Wall Street as the final check on power, we effectively hand the fate of billions to an invisible committee of investment bankers and asset managers who answer to no electorate, no constitution, no human conscience.
V. The Illusion of Restraint: Tactical Retreats to Enable Strategic Expansion
The so-called “Trump Thump” episodes cited by Rainsy — brief market collapses after tariffs or dismissals — do not prove that Trump is being meaningfully restrained. They merely show that he is strategically retreating when necessary to consolidate power in more sustainable ways.
Markets do not punish authoritarianism per se. They punish uncertainty. If Trump (or any leader) can promise “order” and “predictability” — even if through undemocratic means — markets will often reward them.
Historical examples abound:
- After General Pinochet’s military coup in Chile (1973), financial markets soared because his regime offered stability for multinational investors — at the cost of thousands of tortured and disappeared citizens. (Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007).
- Similarly, authoritarian “stability” in Saudi Arabia is consistently rewarded by investors despite grotesque human rights abuses.
Markets are structurally biased toward policies that maximize short-term profits and capital mobility, often at the expense of long-term societal stability. They do not reward justice, national dignity, or community strength. They reward deregulation, labor arbitrage, and environmental exploitation.
Thus, Wall Street’s brief volatility in response to Trump’s missteps is not a barrier to autocracy; it is merely a demand that autocracy be competently managed. President Trump’s willingness to defy market expectations reflects not recklessness but a reassertion of the political over the financial — a necessary rebalancing after decades in which markets assumed sovereign authority.
VI. The Real Restraint Must Come from Democratic Societies, Not Capital Markets
If civilization is to survive this century, the final restraint on executive overreach must come from mobilized citizenries, reformed political institutions, and a reawakening of the ethical imagination — not from quarterly earnings reports.
The economist Dani Rodrik has repeatedly argued (Straight Talk on Trade, 2017) that markets must be “embedded” within democratic societies, not allowed to govern them. When financial markets usurp constitutional checks and balances, democracy becomes ornamental.
In other words, a bull market is not a substitute for the rule of law.
If Americans (and indeed, all global citizens) wish to restrain figures like Trump — or their future equivalents across the world — they must not abdicate their responsibility to Wall Street. They must rebuild democratic resilience: civic education, independent media, anti-monopoly laws, campaign finance reform, and a new international economic order rooted in justice rather than mere “efficiency.”
Otherwise, every nation becomes hostage to what Jacques Derrida called the “auto-immunity” of globalization: a system that erodes its own foundations while appearing to offer protection.
Rainsy portrays Trump’s tariff-driven approach as a recipe for economic contraction. Yet historical precedent suggests otherwise. From Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures (1791) to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic nationalism during the New Deal, protective policies have often been critical to the development of national industries and the stabilization of democratic societies.
As economic historian Ha-Joon Chang has argued in Kicking Away the Ladder (2002), all now-developed nations used protectionist policies at key moments in their history, only later embracing free trade once their industries matured.
President Trump’s tariffs are not designed to destroy international trade, but to renegotiate its terms to better reflect American interests — an interest historically recognized as legitimate under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Trump’s emphasis on reciprocal trade, fair competition, and supply chain security anticipates the world of multipolar rivalry that is emerging — one in which naïve faith in laissez-faire globalism will be a strategic liability.
The Real Global Crisis: Disempowered Citizens, Not Disrupted Markets
Finally, Rainsy misses the true global stakes. The danger is not that Trump’s economic nationalism will destabilize markets. The danger is that if populist demands for dignity, fair work, and national sovereignty are systematically crushed by market panic, more extreme — and possibly undemocratic — movements will rise in their place.
We already see hints of this around the world: in the resurgence of radical left and right-wing movements, in the collapse of centrist parties, and in the widespread distrust of international institutions like the WTO and IMF.
The choice is not between market stability and populist nationalism. The choice is between a democratic reassertion of political economy — as Trump represents — or the continued erosion of democratic legitimacy leading to systemic breakdown.
If financial markets continue to dictate political outcomes, we may well face a future where democratic self-government is replaced by a technocratic oligarchy — a world in which elections are mere rituals, and real power resides in invisible financial flows beyond any citizen’s reach.
President Trump, whatever his flaws, recognizes this danger. His policies reflect an attempt, however imperfect, to restore the primacy of politics over money — of voters over venture capitalists.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Democracy Through Economic Nationalism
Sam Rainsy’s article romanticizes Wall Street as the impartial guardian of global order. In truth, global finance is indifferent to democracy, blind to justice, and corrosive to sovereignty.
President Trump’s “America First” populism represents an effort to right this balance — to reclaim democratic self-determination over economic life. It is an attempt to restore the dignity of labor, the sovereignty of the nation-state, and the centrality of politics in shaping our common future.
This battle is not just America’s battle. Every society must grapple with the same fundamental question: will we be governed by the will of citizens, or by the invisible hand of markets?
In choosing the former, Trump stands not as a threat to world order, but as a harbinger of its necessary renewal.
[Photo by Tobias Deml, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
Emir J. Phillips DBA/JD MBA is a distinguished Financial Advisor and an Associate Professor of Finance at Lincoln University (HBCU) in Jefferson City, MO with over 35 years of extensive professional experience in his field. With a DBA from Grenoble Ecole De Management, France, Dr. Phillips aims to equip future professionals with a deep understanding of grand strategies, critical thinking, and fundamental ethics in business, emphasizing their practical application in the professional world.
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