Trump Trade: White House announces ‘Golden Dome’ missile-defense shield

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:

GOLDEN DOME: President Donald Trump is announcing the path forward for his plan for a “Golden Dome” missile-defense shield, Reuters’ Mike Stone and Doina Chiacu report, citing a U.S. official. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are set to make the announcement at 3 pm on Tuesday, the White House said in an update to the president’s schedule. Golden Dome is estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars and take years to implement, as the program faces both political scrutiny and funding uncertainty.

Truist notes that the White House has announced the selection of a $175B concept for the Golden Dome defense system. $25B of initial funding has been allocated in the current Reconciliation Bill working its way through Congress. The CBO has estimated the program could cost as much as $831B over 20 years, offering both a challenge to approval and potential upside to the contractors involved. During the press conference, L3Harris (LHX) was specifically called out by name twice, the firm notes. In addition to L3Harris, Lockheed Martin (LMT) and RTX (RTX) were also referenced in discussing the roll of the traditional defense industry in the project. In describing the selected concept, the White House emphasized the role of Silicon Valley and a diverse range of contractors that would ideally participate in the program. SpaceX, Palantir (PLTR), and Anduril have all been widely rumored as likely participants in the program as well. Within Truist’s coverage Northrop Grumman (NOC), Leonardo DRS (DRS), Kratos Defense (KTOS), Moog (MOG.A), and Mercury Systems (MRCY) have all called out potential opportunities from Golden Dome.

TRADE TALKS: The European Union is expected to share a revised trade proposal with the U.S. as it seeks momentum in talks with President Trump’s amid lingering skepticism that a transatlantic deal can be reached, Alberto Nardelli of Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The new proposals take into account U.S. interests, including international labor rights, environmental standards, economic security and gradually reducing tariffs to zero on both sides for non-sensitive agricultural products as well as industrial goods, sources told Bloomberg.

U.S. EXPORT CONTROLS: Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said U.S. export controls limiting the sale of advanced chips to China have been a failure and commended President Trump for reversing a part of the Biden administration’s policy, Liza Lin of The Wall Street Journal reports. The controls have made China push ahead with building its own AI technology and Nvidia has lost market share to domestic competitors in the country over the past four years, Huang added, according to the Journal.

DRUG PRICING ORDER: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is taking “immediate steps to implement” President Trump’s Executive Order, “Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients,” a central component of the Administration’s strategy to lower health care costs in the United States. “For too long, Americans have been forced to pay exorbitant prices for the same drugs that are sold overseas for far less,” said Secretary Kennedy. “That ends today. We expect pharmaceutical manufacturers to fulfill their commitment to lower prices for American patients, or we will take action to ensure they do.” The department added: “HHS expects each manufacturer to commit to aligning US pricing for all brand products across all markets that do not currently have generic or biosimilar competition with the lowest price of a set of economic peer countries. The MFN target price is the lowest price in an OECD country with a GDP per capita of at least 60 percent of the U.S. GDP per capita. These targets will drastically bring down U.S. drug prices, which are often three to five times higher than prices abroad, while preserving innovation by simply ensuring that Americans bear no greater burden than patients receiving the same drugs in other countries.” Publicly traded drugmakers include AstraZeneca (AZN), Bristol Myers (BMY), Eli Lilly (LLY), GSK (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck (MRK), Novartis (NVS), Pfizer (PFE), Roche (RHHBY) and Sanofi (SNY).

GSE PRIVATIZATION: RBC Capital notes Bill Pulte, the Director of Federal Housing FHFA, stated that the Trump administration plans to explore ways to better support manufactured housing in the U.S., with the FHFA examining title insurance and mortgage insurance to reduce costs for borrowers. He expressed concerns about FICO‘s costs, urging them to be more economical, and mentioned discussing the issue with the title lobby. Furthermore, Pulte stated that the decision to privatize the GSEs ultimately rests with the President. The firm notes that FICO stock is trading lower on Pulte’s comments for two key reasons. First, privatization of the GSEs — Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC) — would result in increased competition for FICO’s mortgage credit score. Second, a shift from tri-merge to bi-merge would result in lower Scores volumes. RBC says it remains a buyer on FICO weakness, as it does not believe GSE privatization will have a material impact on the business. The firm has an Outperform rating on FICO (FICO) with a price target of $2,170.