SpaceX debt and the space policy

President Donald Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million in debt issued by SpaceX in August, days before the White House announced a new space-travel policy, his latest financial disclosure form shows. Two days after buying the bonds, Trump signed a memorandum setting out the policy, which is intended to strengthen space transportation, in part by backing industry so the United States can support more than 1,000 space launches and re-entries a year by 2030. SpaceX is the largest space-launch company by a wide margin, and Blue Origin is among its competitors. The purchase differs from most of Trump's other recent transactions in both scale and type, since most of those involved stocks.

Stock trades in the disclosure

The disclosure lists more than 500 transactions made through the president's financial accounts in a wide range of companies potentially affected by his policies. The trust holding his assets, which is administered by his son Donald Trump Jr., carried out 517 transactions in August. Purchases of Meta stock were the largest, between $5.1 million and $25.4 million according to the range in the filing. The trust also took smaller stakes in CoreWeave, American Tower and Cogent Communications, with the American Tower investment between $51,000 and $115,000. Bloomberg reports at least seven-figure stakes in Meta Platforms, McDonald's and Microsoft, and the trades in Nvidia stock were valued at up to $1.6 million in purchases and up to $1 million in sales in August.

Conflict-of-interest questions

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement that there are no conflicts of interest with the president's transactions. He said the portfolio is managed by third-party financial institutions in discretionary accounts that follow computer-based model portfolios replicating indexes such as the Schwab 1000. Ingle added:

“Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”

Ingle did not respond to whether the SpaceX bond purchase was executed by such an algorithm, and he did not answer who decided to buy the SpaceX debt. The trades have drawn accusations of conflicts of interest, since many of the affected companies, SpaceX among them through its contracts with the US government, are directly exposed to possible decisions by the administration. On Thursday, the same day the disclosure was published, Trump presented Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with the National Medal of Science.