Trump Weekly: President launches meme coin, delivers fresh tariff threats

Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President-elect Trump with this weekly recap compiled by The Fly:

TRUMP MEMECOIN: The memecoins launched by President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump are damaging the industry’s reputation and risk a backlash from investors, Nikou Asgari, Arjun Neil Alim, and Stephen Morris of The Financial Times report, citing crypto executives. $TRUMP launched on Friday evening followed by $MELANIA on Sunday.

The total nominal value of both tokens originally surged, with the president’s reaching $14.5B and Melania’s hitting nearly $3B. However, they have since lost more than half their value, which has led to accusations of conflicts of interest and concerns retail investors were sucked into trading tokens more volatile than bitcoin. Publicly traded companies in the cryptocurrency space include Bit Digital (BTBT), Bitfarms (BITF), Coinbase (COIN), Core Scientific (CORZ), Greenidge Generation (GREE), Mara Holdings (MARA), MicroStrategy (MSTR), Riot Platforms (RIOT), Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG) and TeraWulf (WULF).

NEW MEME COIN: Donald Trump’s newly created cryptocurrency soared on Monday to nearly $11B in market value, drawing in billions in trading volume, while bitcoin hit a record high just hours ahead of the U.S. President-elect’s return to the White House, Reuters’ Rae Wee and Elizabeth Howcroft report. Launched on Friday, Trump’s meme coin, also known as $TRUMP, stood at $52.71 by 12.30 GMT on Monday, giving it a market capitalization of about $10.7B, according to CoinMarketCap, which ranked it as the 18th biggest cryptocurrency, the authors note.

STARGATE AI INVESTMENT: Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk said OpenAI, Oracle (ORCL) and Softbank (SFTBY) “don’t actually have the money” to back up their pledge to invest $500B in U.S. AI infrastructure after President Donald Trump touted the joint venture, dubbed the Stargate project, on the first full day of his second term, CNBC’s Kevin Kevin Breuninger reports. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk said. On Wednesday morning, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman replied directly to Musk, saying that while he genuinely respects “your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time,” Musk’s claim about Softbank’s liquidity was “wrong, as you surely know.” Musk’s post about Softbank was “far off base,” according to a person familiar with the AI project.

Also discussing “Stargate,” a “new American company that will invest $500B at least in AI Infrastructure in the United States,” BofA notes that the project is focused on building AI infrastructure with initial equity funders OpenAI, Softbank, Oracle and MGX. OpenAI, which will have “operational responsibility,” reported on X that they will “begin deploying $100B immediately,” adds the firm, which notes that key initial technology partners also include Arm (ARM), Microsoft (MSFT) and Nvidia (NVDA). OpenAI added on X that it “will continue to increase its consumption of Azure as OpenAI continues to work with Microsoft with this additional compute to train leading models and deliver great products.” Stargate will likely be well positioned to power U.S. government AI usage, as healthcare was cited as a target vertical, and will possibly be competing with Amazon’s (AMZN) AWS for other AI workloads, the firm says.

BofA believes the partnership provides potential scale benefits to Oracle, but adds that details and terms for the agreement were not provided and says it is “unclear where funding for an investment of this scale would come from.” The firm, which also notes that Microsoft stated in a blog that the key terms of the Microsoft OpenAI partnership are unchanged, does not view this joint venture as “a major loss to Microsoft.” Microsoft stated that as part of a new commitment by OpenAI, the companies have made changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal, adds BofA, which keeps a Buy rating and $510 price target on Microsoft shares.

In a separate research note to investors, UBS notes that initial technology partners are Nvidia, Microsoft, ARM, Oracle, and OpenAI, and while investors have become increasingly concerned about peak compute demand, this should go a long way to ease these concerns and potentially adding growth runway for Nvidia beyond 2026. The firm believes the project will at least initially rely very heavily on Nvidia compute and hardware solutions and notes that AMD (AMD) is absent from all announcements and blog posts. The firm has a Buy rating and $185 price target on Nvidia shares.

AI EXECUTIVE ORDER REVOKED: President Donald Trump has revoked a 2023 executive order signed by former President Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that AI poses to consumers, workers, and national security, Reuters’ David Shepardson reports. Biden’s order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government before they were released to the public, though the 2024 Republican Party platform vowed to repeal the order that it said hinders AI innovation and added “Republicans support AI development rooted in free speech and human flourishing.” Publicly traded companies associated with artificial intelligence or AI, and other possible AI infrastructure firms include Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir (PLTR), Broadcom (AVGO), Tesla, and Intel (INTC).

TARIFFS: U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to hit the European Union with tariffs and said his administration was discussing a 10% punitive duty on Chinese imports because fentanyl is being sent from China to the U.S. via Mexico and Canada, Reuters’ David Lawder and Andrea Shalal report. Trump voiced his latest tariff threats in remarks to reporters at the White House a day after taking office without immediately imposing tariffs as he had promised during his campaign. Financial markets and trade groups exhaled briefly on Tuesday, but his latest comments underscored Trump’s longstanding desire for broader duties and a new Feb. 1 deadline for 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico, as well as duties on China and the EU, the authors note.

Publicly traded steel companies include ArcelorMittal (MT), Steel Dynamics (STLD), Nucor (NUE), and U.S. Steel (X), with copper companies including Southern Copper (SCCO) and Freeport McMoRan (FCX), and iron companies including BHP (BHP), Rio Tinto (RIO), Vale (VALE), and Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF). Publicly traded solar companies that may be impacted include Array Technologies (ARRY), Emeren (SOL), FTC Solar (FTCI), First Solar (FSLR), Maxeon Solar (MAXN), Shoals Technologies (SHLS), SolarEdge (SEDG) and SunPower (SPWR). Publicly traded rare earths companies include MP Materials (MP), Energy Fuels (UUU), and NioCorp (NB).

EU TARGETING TECH COMPANIES: President Donald Trump scolded European Union regulators for targeting Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOGL), and Meta (META), describing their cases against these American companies as “a form of taxation,” Lynn Doan and Samuel Stolton of Bloomberg report. The E.U. has established a reputation for aggressive regulation of major technology companies. “These are American companies whether you like it or not,” Trump said at the World Economic Forum. “They shouldn’t be doing that. That’s, as far as I’m concerned, a form of taxation. We have some very big complaints with the EU.”

TIKTOK: President Donald Trump said he is open to Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok as part of a joint venture with the U.S. government, Alexandra Levine and Stephanie Lai of Bloomberg report. “I have the right to make a deal,” Trump said at an event at the White House, according to Bloomberg. “So what I’m thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States of America, half, and we’ll give you the permit, and they’ll have a great partner.” ByteDance has publicly refused to sell TikTok, but prospective buyers hope the Supreme Court’s ruling in support of the national security law will push the company to reconsider. Companies in the social media space that compete with TikTok include Meta, Alphabet’s YouTube, Pinterest (PINS), Reddit (RDDT) and Snap (SNAP).