Trump Trade: U.S. weighs curbing software exports to China

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 Donald Trump with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

SOFTWARE EXPORTS: The Trump administration is considering a plan to curb software exports to China to retaliate against China’s latest round of rare earth export restrictions, Alexandra Alper, Michael Martina, Jeffrey Dastin and Karen Freifeld of Reuters report, citing a U.S. official and three people briefed by U.S. authorities. The plan follows through on Trump’s threat to bar critical software exports to China by restricting global shipments of items that contain U.S. software or were produced using U.S. software, Reuters says.

QUANTUM COMPUTING: The U.S. Commerce Department is in discussions with several quantum-computing firms to take equity stakes in exchange for federal funding, a move signaling the Trump administration is broadening interventions in what it deems as critical segments of the economy, the Wall Street Journal’s Amrith Ramkumar reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Companies including IonQ (IONQ), Rigetti Computing (RGTI), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), Quantum Computing (QUBT) and Atom Computing are in talks about the government becoming a shareholder and are discussing minimum funding awards of $10M each.

LONG-RANGE MISSILES: Ukraine used a British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missile on Tuesday to strike a Russian plant in Bryansk after the Trump administration lifted a key restriction on Ukraine’s use of some long-range missiles provided by Western allies, reported The Wall Street Journal‘s Lara Seligman, Michael R. Gordon and Alexander Ward, citing U.S. officials. Ukraine’s renewed use of Storm Shadows isn’t a game changer on the battlefield as they have a far shorter range than U.S. Tomahawks, but the missiles do enable Ukraine to expand its attacks inside Russia, the report noted. RTX Corporation’s (RTX) Raytheon division is the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile, which President Trump has not allowed Ukraine to buy or employ.

TRUCK TARIFFS: President Donald Trump stated in a post to Truth Social, “Mary Barra of General Motors (GM), and Bill Ford of Ford Motor Company (F), just called to thank me for putting Tariffs on Mid Size and Large Size Trucks. Their Stock has gone through the roof! They told me that, without Tariffs, it would be a very hard, long ‘slog’ for Truck and Car Manufacturers in the United States. I told them, it’s very simple, this is a National Security matter. With the Tariffs, we have a strong and powerful Economy and Country. Without them, we have the exact opposite!”