This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

By Brad Reed

The American Economic Liberties Project and Groundwork Collaborative on Wednesday released a joint report detailing how President Donald Trump’s unprecedented corruption is padding his own pockets at the expense of US taxpayers.

The report—titled “The Price of Corruption: How Trump’s Pay-to-Play Administration is Driving Up Costs for Working Families”—explains how Trump isn’t just using the presidency to enrich himself, but leaving ordinary Americans to foot the bill for his corrupt dealings.

The report notes that the TrumpRx website, which purports to offer Americans deep discounts on drugs, is actually a scheme for funneling even more money to large pharmaceutical companies.

“When Trump rolled out TrumpRX earlier this year, the administration claimed it was a way for Americans to access more affordable prescription drugs,” the report states. “Instead, the platform fails to disclose information about less expensive generic alternatives and, in some instances, charges consumers more for products that are available for less elsewhere.”

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Rather than providing real relief, the report charges, TrumpRx “serves as free advertisement for Big Pharma and may be lining the pockets of the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is on the board of prescription drug platform BlinkRX, which stands to benefit from the administration’s promotion of direct-to-patient medicine sales.”

The report also highlights the way that Trump has used his tariffs, which raise the cost of imported goods for US consumers, as a personal self-enrichment tool, such as when he slashed tariffs on Switzerland “just a few days after Swiss business leaders presented him with a personalized gold bar worth more than $130,000 and a Rolex desk clock.”

Trump levied tariffs against Brazil last year in retaliation for that country convicting a political ally, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, of plotting a coup to illegally stay in power after he lost an election to current President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva.

“Americans paid the price for Trump’s international allies breaking the law,” states the report, “as coffee imported from Brazil surged to a 40% increase in price.”

One particularly egregious instance of Trump’s corruption, the report explains, comes from the president’s unprecedented number of pardons of political allies, including hundreds of rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol on his behalf on January 6, 2021.

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Beyond the high-profile rioter cases, the report shines a spotlight on a number of white-collar criminals who have received presidential clemency, including Paul Walczak, “a nursing home executive convicted of tax evasion” who was pardoned “three weeks after his mother donated $1 million to Trump at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser,” and cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao, who received a pardon months after helping boost the Trump family’s crypto venture.

The report notes that the Trump administration has also stacked regulatory agencies in ways that directly benefit the business interests of the president’s family members, most prominently in the realm of online prediction markets tied to Donald Trump Jr.

“Over the past year, Donald Trump Jr. has served as a strategic advisor to Kalshi and a large investor in Polymarket, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—the agency overseeing these firms—has acted as their ally, rather than their watchdog,” the report says. “Both firms had actively lobbied Trump’s CFTC to block states from regulating prediction markets in the same way they regulate gambling companies.”

Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, called the report on Trump’s corruption “a reminder that we cannot afford to look away or pretend that any of this is normal.”

“The country,” Harper added, “is not Trump’s to liquidate.”

Molly Claflin, senior fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, made the case that Trump’s corruption and the economic pain being felt by Americans are inseparable.

“As working families buckle under the weight of Trump’s high prices, the president is further driving up costs by abusing his position to direct taxpayer-funded kickbacks to his family and political allies,” said Claflin. “His erratic policymaking is making daily life more expensive. Americans know they’re being ripped off and are demanding accountability.”

[KS]

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