Kiss the Ring (Trump's Imperial Rule and the Rise of Crony Capitalism)

The inside story of how Donald Trump sacked and pillaged the U.S. economy.

The New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent reveals how Trump has personally profited billions while reducing American business leaders to fawning cronies; burning down the global trade order; undermining faith in the U.S. dollar; eroding the independence of the Federal Reserve; and dismantling regulatory oversight.

How did the greatest economy in history devolve into a place where one man claimed the power of a mob boss, determining who wins and who loses, while steering much of the gains to his own family?

As 2025 dawned, most American business leaders assumed they could safely ignore the inevitable chaos of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Instead, they have seen their companies shaken by Trump’s assault on the global trading system, his attacks on the independence of the Fed, and his menacing of the rule of law itself. He has reduced some of the wealthiest, most powerful people on earth—Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Jensen Huang—into supplicants seeking his favor.

Kiss the Ring tells the story of how Trump adopted the guise of a mob boss, turning the American business world into a protection racket. Wielding tariffs, executive orders, and other armaments of imperial rule, Trump has reconfigured the federal government into an instrument of his personal concerns. He has pulled the levers of authority to enrich himself, his relatives, and his allies while punishing his enemies. And he has done so with the complicity of major business leaders, whose loyalties to shareholders and their own fortunes have outweighed any sense of civic responsibility.

Goodman exposes the roles of key people at the center of this extraordinary refashioning of American power: Peter Navarro, Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk, Bezos, and Dimon. It dissects how Trump and his family have personally profited from control of the executive branch. And it explores a fundamental vulnerability for American society as business leaders navigate an inherent conflict between bottom-line concerns and the preservation of democratic norms.

Here is how leading executives in a country long celebrated as an exemplar of freedom wound up marching in the parade toward authoritarian rule.