Donald Trump will ring the bell of the New York Stock Exchange by being named Person of the Year by Time.
NEW YORK– NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump used his image as a successful New York businessman to become a celebrity, reality TV star and eventually president. He will now be able to revel in one of the city’s most visible symbols of success when he rings the opening bell of New York Stock Exchange Thursday as he was also named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
Trump is expected to be on Wall Street to mark the start of the negotiating ceremony, according to four people familiar with his plans. It will also be announced on Thursday as Personality of the Year 2024 according to Timeaccording to a person close to the selection. The people who confirmed the stock appearance and the Time Award were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
It will be a landmark moment of double recognition for Trump, a born and raised New Yorker who sometimes treated the stock market as a measure of public approval and long valued symbols of his success in the New York business world and his appearances on magazine covers — particularly Time.
Trump was named the magazine’s Person of the Year in 2016, when he was first elected to the White House. He was previously a finalist for this year’s award alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, X owner Elon Musk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kate, Princess of Wales.
Time was unable to confirm the selection before Thursday morning’s announcement.
“Time does not comment on its annual Person of the Year selection until publication,” a spokesperson for the magazine said Wednesday.
The ringing of the bell is a powerful symbol of American capitalism – and a good photo opportunity in New York. Despite his decades as a New York businessman, Trump has never done this before.
It was unclear whether Trump, a Republican, would meet with New York’s embattled Democratic mayor. Eric AdamsWHO warmed up to Trump and does not rule out changing political parties. Adams was charged with federal corruption crimes and accused of selling influence to foreign nationals; he has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump himself was once a symbol of New York, but he gave up living full-time in his namesake’s Trump Tower in Manhattan and moved to Florida after leaving the White House.
CNN first reported Trump’s visit to the stock market on Wednesday, and Politico reported that Trump is expected to be unveiled as Time’s Person of the Year.
The Stock Exchange regularly invites celebrities and business leaders to participate in market opening and closing ceremonies. During Trump’s first term, his wife, Melania Trump, sounded off to promote his “Be Best” child welfare initiative.
Last year, Time CEO Jess Sibley rang the opening bell to reveal the magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year: Taylor Swift.
After the November 5 elections, the S&The P 500 rose 2.5% for its best day in almost two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1,508 points, or 3.6%, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 3%. All three indexes surpassed the records they had set in recent weeks.
The US stock market has always tended to rise whichever party wins the White House, with Democrats achieving higher average gains since 1945. But Republican control could mean big changes in winning and losing industries, and investors are increasing their earlier-built bets on what the higher tariffs, lower tax rates and lighter regulation what Trump favors will mean.
Trump has long courted the business world because of his own status as a wealthy real estate developer who gained additional fame as the star of the TV show “The Apprentice,” in which his competitors tried to impress him with their skills in business. He won the election in part thanks exploiting Americans’ deep anxieties on an economy that seemed incapable of meeting the needs of the middle class.
The broader business community applauded his promises to cut corporate taxes and reduce regulation. But there are also concerns about his stated intention to impose sweeping tariffs and possibly target companies he sees as not aligning with his own political interests.
Trump spends most of his time at his Florida home, but he was in New York for weeks this spring during his secret trial. He was convicted, but his lawyers are pushing for the case to be dismissed in light of his election.
While spending hours each day in a Manhattan courthouse during his criminal trial, Trump took his presidential campaign to the streets of the overwhelmingly Democratic city, holding a rally in the Bronx and visiting venues intended to working class New York: a bodega, a construction site and a fire station.
Trump returned to the city in September to meet with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in his Manhattan tower and again in the latter part of the presidential campaign when he held a rally at Madison Square Garden that drew immediate blowback when speakers made crude and racist insults and inflammatory remarks.
At the stock market, ringing bells has been a tradition since the 1800s. The first guest to do so was a 10-year-old boy named Leonard Ross, in 1956, who won a quiz by answering questions about the stock market.
Many times, publicly traded companies would ring the bell at 9:30 a.m. to commemorate their initial offers at the start of negotiations. But appearances have become an important marker of culture and politics — something Trump hopes to capture by promising historic levels of economic growth.
Anti-apartheid activist and South African President Nelson Mandela rang the bell, as did Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone and his comrades from the film “The Expendables”. So are actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jeremy Renner for an “Avengers” movie and Olympians Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin.
In 1985, Ronald Reagan became the first sitting U.S. president to ring the bell.
“Through tax reform and budgetary control, our economy will be free to grow to its full potential, returning the bears to permanent hibernation,” Reagan said at the time. “We are going to free the bull.”
The crowd of traders on the floor chanted: “Ronnie! Ronnie! Ronnie! »
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose in 1985 and 1986, but suffered a decline in October 1987 in an event known as “Black Monday.”
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Long reported in Washington. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
