The Business Canvas

US President Donald Trump has been under scrutiny for a number of reasons. It is safe to say that his recent as well as past decisions, politics and businesswise, have given plenty of valid reasons for the critics to speak their minds.

Trump is currently under fire for the very serious allegations of market manipulation to ensure the benefit of his own personal portfolio. The $9.7 Billion deal between Pentagon and Dell Technologies Inc has raised many eyebrows due to its shady nature and the direct involvement of the White House.

The Dell Backstory

The “Personal” Investment

It all started during the early phase of 2026. Donald Trump’s trust decided to invest anywhere between $1 million to $5 million. One may ask, what’s the problem here? The president is entitled to invest wherever he wants as it is his personal portfolio. Well, the issue starts to become much clear when we take a look at the subsequent chain of events.

MAGA Leverage

While Trump may have purchased the Dell stocks without any ill will of manipulation, what he did next leaves very little room for anyone to give him the benefit of the doubt.

After the investment made by his firm, the President publicly came out to praise Dell on three separate occasions. Not only that, he openly asked the public to “Go out and buy a Dell Computer” during rallies in Texas and Georgia, as well as at the White House Mother’s Day Event on May 8th.

The Pentagon Deal

The Pentagon, mere days after this whole fiasco, announced a huge $9.7 billion deal with Dell Federal Systems to essentially buy and manage all of their software for them, rather than the former doing it themselves.

This contract will span five years, from June 2026 to May 2031, and is expected to save a lot of taxpayer money.

While the deal may be beneficial, its eerie timing certainly raises pretty solid doubts regarding whether it was all coordinated in advance to make sure that one man or a select group of so-called ‘elites’ get to make a huge amount of profit by manipulating the public.

Dell’s Stock Trend: The Ultimate Proof?

Trump’s repeated public praisings of Dell as well as the high-profile Pentagon deal with the computer giant ensured that Dell’s stock absoluely broke all expectations to skyrocket in a very short amount of time.

One brief look at the graph over the past month reveals an upward trend that many companies of Dell’s scale can only dream to achieve.

While the stock price hovered around $213 near early March, its currently sitting at $420.91. This shows that amidst all these events, the company experience a near 100% surge in its stock price in a mere span of 3 months.

Is this a Standalone Case?

No, it isn’t.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Donald Trump or his family has been accused of manipulating the stock market to their advantage.

We are all familiar with the tariff games that the President often loves to play. Putting highly unreasonable tariffs on almost every nation in the name of putting America first has done the global market a lot of damage.

Sources claim that those in power used this volatility to their advantage. Claims of insider trading and market manipulation became quite widespread, although nothing could be proven in the investigations conducted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The thing is, although intentional manipulation is highly illegal, what Trump is allegedly does with the tariffs falls rightfully under his presidential powers, making it next to impossible to prove any wrongdoing.

The Case of Nvidia and Palantir

Apart from the tariff controversy, Trump’s trust also bought a significant amount of Palantir stock. When the company faced a slight dip in share prices, the commander-in-cheif quickly came to its rescue, praising it for having exceptional ‘war fighting capabilities’, leading to an immediate recovery.

Trump is also accused of profiting from Nvidia’s growth by methods that can highly be called fair towards the free market. As usual, his trust made hige investment into the US based company soon after a deal was concluded regarding microchip sales to overseas markets.

Trump also added to his investments when after Nvidia secured a processing power deal with Zuckerberg’s Meta.

Conclusion

This kind of alleged market manipulation is not just limited to the United States or the Republican Party. Even the Democrats, as well as several of those in power across the globe have used their positions to gain an unfair advantage in the free market.

It should be the duty of the watchdog agencies anywhere in the world to keep a keen eye out for such malpractices, and prevent them or atleast take some strong and meaningful action regardless of the accused’s position so that the integrity of the market can be maintained.

As far as Trump’s case goes, it will all remain hollow talk until someone in the system decides to do their job and take some action based on the established legal framework.