Trump’s Achilles heel is the stock market

Over the last few weeks, something remarkable has been happening in the U.S. A burgeoning industry is coming forward asking for help in restricting advances in said industry. Think about how bonkers that is. Imagine railroad tycoons begging to be limited in their expansion. Think of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs asking President Bill Clinton to restrict advances to computing and the internet, or the tobacco industry telling the public before anyone else that they found out their product can kill you.

And here we are with AI. It isn’t just whistleblowers coming forward with shocking revelations and predictions about the end of the world. CEOs who are leading the charge into humanity’s greatest (and maybe last) technological advance are asking for help to rein in the technology that has made them rich beyond imagination.

The pushback from the American public had already been evident. The blowback against data centers is as non-partisan as a very partisan America can be. Students booed speakers at their commencements because they are fearful they won’t have jobs to graduate into. And plenty of Americans found themselves laid off because their companies’ claimed they were using, investing in, switching to or automating with AI.

The blowback was so bad that both Republicans and Democrats have spoken out on the campaign trail trying to position themselves as the least AI-friendly candidate. Except one.

President Trump has very forcefully proclaimed that the fears of AI destroying the world is a hoax . There does not need to be any type of moratorium, restrictions or guidelines for this new technology and he said the only thing needed was a “ High IQ” president .

Now, you can default (like many of Trump’s critics) to the “Trump is stupid” argument. How can he not see what everyone else is seeing? Why is he ignoring his own base who have howled against data centers in their rural communities? The answer has less to do with stupidity or cruelty and more to do with the fact that the “ AI bubble ” is something that has Trump spooked.

Look, right now we are dealing with high gas prices, high groceries and higher utility bills. But that’s not just it. Inflation is high, interest rates have gone up, and our debt has found a way to get even bigger. But the one economic indicator that has been positive has been the stock market.

Fueled by an AI boom, the market has survived tariffs, a war with Iran, inflation, and continued to grow. Even last week’s slide due to higher interest rates might be written off as a dip that will easily be corrected in a short time. The reason for this is AI. Plain and simple. While all these events in the world are negatively affecting Americans, AI has been pulling our economy up. Actually, it’s not AI itself. It is the speculation of what AI can do.

Although layoffs usually mean a drop in stock prices for companies, using AI as an excuse for layoffs means there are now mixed results for your stock price. Your stock might now go up, if you say the reason was an investment in AI.

The value of the stock market tied to AI is an astonishing 36 percent . And let’s be honest, a lot of that is speculation based on what people think AI can do, not what it has been shown to do. Predictions of a bubble have been around for a while, but with the bond market seeing yields rise, the party might be over.

And this would be terrible for Trump as the one economic laurel he could rest on would suddenly vanish. Remember when then-Attorney General Pam Bondi strangely yelled that the Dow was at 50,000 during a hearing about Jeffrey Epstein in February? That was a tell. The accusations of market manipulations with every Iranian ceasefire? Over 90 percent of the stock market is owned by the top 10 percent of Americans. And the top 10 companies account for 43 percent of market capitalization. And what are those companies banking on? Artificial intelligence.

A moratorium, implementation of safeguards, or restriction on AI can be catastrophic to the stock market and would affect the three groups of people Trump absolutely cannot alienate. The billionaires, CEOs and baby boomers with healthy stock portfolios would all suffer a significant amount should things turn south. He needs the billionaires and CEOs on his side. We all know just how much influence corporations have thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. And it seems inside the White House, they are worried about that leading to the announcement that there will be an AI Force to deal with the issue while not giving specifics.

No one should want the stock market to crash. It would hurt all of us and put us in a worse spot economically — and things currently stink. But for opponents of Trump, his actions regarding AI despite all the warnings and poll numbers revealed the Achilles heel that they have long been looking for. A slowdown of AI could potentially cause a correction, and Trump would lose the only economic indicator that he has been able to hang his hat on.

Joslin Joseph is a recipient of the Military Reporters and Editors award for Best Commentary-Opinion. A graduate of Harvard and Ohio State, he is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. He currently lives in Anaheim, Calif.