Donald Trump has provided numerous examples of using social media to manipulate markets. But while Trump abuses his power and prominence to pad his pockets, his online outbursts can sink some of his constituents’ fortunes. South Dakota News Watch notes that one Trump post nearly cost one South Dakota farmer $10,000:
Farmer Jeff Thompson had waited months for soybean prices to rebound, and he was getting a little antsy.
Like many of the roughly 18,000 other crop farmers in South Dakota, Thompson is storing corn and soybeans in giant grain bins on his farm because he can’t sell at a profitable price due to a variety of unfavorable market conditions.
After several months of waiting – and suddenly seeking an infusion of cash – Thompson made the decision in mid-March to sell off about 15,000 bushels of beans he had been storing since the fall 2025 harvest.
But the day he hoped to sell, a single social media post by President Donald Trump caused the soybean price to fall by 70 cents a bushel, a decline that would have caused Thompson to lose more than $10,000 on the sale.
Trump’s post indicated he would delay scheduled trade talks with President Xi Jinping of China, the world’s largest importer of soybeans and a country in which the U.S. is embroiled in a trade standoff that has hurt American soybean producers.
Thompson held onto his soybeans, and the wait for better prices began anew.
“The whole geopolitical thing keeps you awake at night and you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Thompson, 64, said on a recent day at his farm in Lyons, an unincorporated hamlet located about 25 miles northwest of Sioux Falls. “Farming is risky enough on its own, fighting Mother Nature and all that, so I’m hoping things will settle down” [Bart Pfankuch, “Farm Revenues Fall as War and Market Concerns Rise,” South Dakota News Watch, 2026.04.01].
One online rant from the brat in the White House kept one Lyons farmer from getting cash he needs to plant what South Dakota Farm Bureau president Scott VanderWal tells Pfankuch is “the most expensive crop in history.” Pfankuch also hears from Yankton farm lender Nate Franzen that the most profitable year for farms in the last 20 years was back in 2011, when we had a very stable Democratic genius as President.
About $134 million of the $475 million South Dakotans have received from the new Farm Bridge Assistance program has gone to soybean farmers. But even with the bridge payments, which wouldn’t have been necessary if Trump hadn’t waged his illegal and fruitless tariff war, soybean farmers are still coming out under water, losing an average of $61 per acre on 2025 soybeans. Farmers would benefit more from a steady, unmanipulated commodities market—not to mention a cessation of Trump’s sudden, unjustified, ill-planned, diversionary shooting war against Iran that is inflating farmers’ fuel and fertilizer costs—than they do from Trump’s arbitrary vote-buying tariff reparations. (Hey, don’t market manipulation and illegal wars constitute high crimes and misdemeanors?)
Uncertainty is as bad for South Dakota farmers as it is for our standing with the global trading partners our farmers depend on for profits. For the sake of farmers and global free trade, would someone please take away Donald Trump’s Internet access?