From a near-term, domestic economic perspective, the riskiest aspect of Donald Trump’s agenda is the extent to which market volatility associated with the trade war reverses the equity wealth effect.

A lot of regular people own stocks, and you don’t want to torpedo their 401(k)s just for the hell of it. “Remember, I’m Jesus Christ!” might suffice to pacify the base (which demographically speaking doesn’t own any stocks anyway), but it’s not going to placate middle-income voters aghast at their quarterly brokerage statements. 401(k) drawdowns are a recipe for bear markets in consumer sentiment and that, in turn, can prompt retrenchment on Main Street.

Beyond that, even a small pullback — i.e., a 10% correction on Wall Street — works out to a huge paper loss for the rich, who own the vast majority of US equities. But why should anyone care whether the richest Americans take a temporary, on-paper hit to the value of their stock portfolios?

The short answer to that latter question is that no one should care. Because f-ck the rich. Eat ’em. (Not literally. They’re not Ohio house cats.)

Allow me a brief aside. None of us are rich. You’re not rich and I’m not rich either. Rich is hundreds of millions of dollars. At least. I’d wager a thin majority of my readership has a net worth in excess of a million, and a plurality in excess of, say, $3 million. But I’d be surprised if I have even half a dozen centi-millionaire readers.

If you have more than $100 million, congratulations. But also apologies, because that amount of money comes with a lot of hassle. It’s hard to keep a low profile as a centi-millionaire. If you have that kind of money, everyone you know will know about it, and they’ll all come asking for something. Family, friends, everybody. No one will see you anymore. They’ll just see the money.

So, if the question’s whether I want to be any “rich”er than I am currently, the answer’s definitively “no.” All I want to do at this point is keep up with inflation. Not life advice, but if you have everything you need and everything you might reasonably (note the emphasis) want, don’t covet money and material possessions for the sake of them. It’ll never be enough. Worse, the incremental joy you get from ever-“nicer” things will diminish or even go negative, where that means you’ll start to regret new purchases not from classic “buyer’s remorse,” but rather because you start to encounter absurd outcomes you didn’t expect.

That’s a real thing, by the way. I’m not just sermonizing. Last month, I traded my E-350 Mercedes for a GLC AMG, only to discover that the AMG models tend to resist being driven normally, which is to say the car basically forces you to speed, and worse, the brakes throw off so much dust that you have to wash the wheels every time you leave the house. Poor me, right? Actually, yes. It’s miserable. This car can only be driven short distances, and only if you’re willing to wash it every, single day. I knew it was a toy, but no one told me at the dealership that AMG models can’t be daily drivers. It was a vanity purchase, it was among the stupidest things I’ve done in quite a while and far from adding to my enjoyment of life, it detracted from it. Imagine how absurd that sort of dynamic probably is for actually rich people with real luxury cars like, say, Ferraris. (“Ferris, he never drives it. He just rubs it with a diaper.”)

But here’s the thing: If you just let the rich and their Ferrari Californias go by letting stocks fall, you risk the spending impulse, and that’s all the de-industrialized US economy is: Consumer spending. Have a look at this chart:

That’s the running gain in the value of household equity holdings since the pandemic crash lows in late March of 2020 (the five-year anniversary of the COVID bear market was this week, by the way) plotted with nominal retail sales in the US.

In late 2020 and 2021, the spending impulse was more egalitarian thanks to “stimmy,” but after that, it skewed towards higher-income households and eventually to the richest, as middle- and lower-income savings buffers evaporated, leaving the rich to shoulder the consumption burden, which they were (more than) willing to do as long as the value of their assets continued to inflate. Assets like stocks.

The figure below’s familiar. It shows the same cumulative wealth effect, but also the breakdown by quarter.

In Q4 of 2024, the value of Americans’ stock holdings rose by “just” $264 billion, the least since Q3 of 2023, the last quarter during which that figure showed a decline.

Well, guess what? That figure’s likely to show a decline for Q1 of 2025, given that US equities are down for the quarter. In the latest installment of his popular weekly “Flow Show” series, BofA’s Michael Hartnett guesstimated the drop at $3 trillion.

The figure below shows the same Fed data (i.e., the quarterly change in the value of US household equity wealth) plotted with the quarterly gain (or loss) in the value of BofA’s private client stock holdings.

Those two series map pretty well for obvious reasons. This is one case where Hartnett can safely extrapolate.

“Big US consumer spending was aided by big US equity gains, but using BofA private client equity data, we estimate US household equity wealth could fall $3 trillion in Q1 2025,” Hartnett wrote, adding that “US fiscal, monetary and trade policy is currently hawkish not dovish.”

The implication is that absent a turnaround in stocks, the spending impulse could wane, thereby dragging the overall economy. Maybe Trump can suffer the cognitive dissonance between his American renaissance messaging and an economy that’s contracting for a quarter or two. But I doubt seriously he’ll stick with the “patience is a virtue” talking point once the recession headlines start piling up.

Perhaps there’s no “Trump put” for now. But at the end of the day, this is a president who equates virtue with wealth and merit with material possessions. The idea that such a man’s truly on board with a “plan” that entails killing the golden goose in pursuit of a “golden age” is far-fetched. Even if Trump has the mental fortitude to stick with what his administration swears is a program, a lot of voters might not.