trade on

verb

1. intr, preposition to exploit or take advantage of

   he traded on her endless patience

Idioms and Phrases

Profit by, exploit, as in The children of celebrities often trade on their family names . [Late 1800s]

Example Sentences

In opening trade on Friday, shares in Pfizer and Moderna tumbled more than 5%, accelerating their slide after dropping about 2% on Thursday.

From BBC

Now, politicians, newscasters, podcast hosts and white nationalists were picking up his ideas about pollution and scarcity, immigration and global warming, that fit their agendas, swirling them together with historical tropes about ecology and racist thought and conspiracy theories, not sure, necessarily, where the ideas had come from but eager to trade on their currency.

From Salon

When replicated at a larger scale, this can lead to false memories—something we see everywhere from boomer Facebook groups bemoaning the disappearance of “proper binmen” to political movements that exploit these feelings of nostalgia, which essentially trade on the false premise that everything was better in the past.

From Slate

“They can’t trade on their proximity to the most powerful person in the Republican Party forever,” Nyhan said.

From Slate

The new treaty, which Trump helped negotiate, calls for generally no tariffs on trade on the North American continent.

From Los Angeles Times