usdaed

The administration’s grand plan to lure pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the U.S. reads like a quest from a particularly bureaucratic fantasy novel. President Donald Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs on “any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product”²-delivered via Truth Social-targets companies that outsource drug production and import it for sale. It’s as if the Office of the Grand Inquisitor³ has declared war on the Guild of Alchemists and Venture Capitalists.⁴

Lithium Americas stock leapt over 20%, a leap that might have startled a lesser beast. Why? The U.S. government, that great archivist of paradoxes, has staked a claim in the lithium miner. One imagines the Department of Energy (DOE) as a somnolent dragon, roused from its slumber to part with $435 million in a loan-a mere trinket compared to the $2.3 billion promised. In return, the DOE will receive 5% stakes in both Lithium Americas and its joint venture with General Motors, a transaction that smells faintly of incense and paperwork.

Oklo, distinguished by its compact nuclear reactors, has hitherto secured three contracts under the DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program. The new appointment entails not merely the construction of these innovative reactors but extends to the delicate art of establishing a supply chain for the requisite nuclear fuel-a task both ambitious and fraught with subtle responsibility.

ON Semiconductor, with its elegant grasp on power and sensing solutions, caters predominantly to the automotive industry, claiming 55% of its 2024 revenue from this sector. It is here, amid the whirring of electric motors and the hum of autonomous vehicles, that ON has made its mark. Its portfolio, an intricate tapestry of power semiconductors, intelligent sensors, and integrated circuits, paints a vivid picture of tomorrow’s technology. The company’s influence extends beyond mere automotive applications, finding its way into industrial automation, machine vision, and even the smart infrastructure that promises to grace our cities.

Such proclamations, delivered via Truth Social-a platform where facts are less a currency than a curious footnote-arrived mere weeks after the same individual mused aloud about reclassifying marijuana federal status. A curious volte-face, given that the Controlled Substance Act has treated the plant as a menace akin to a fire-breathing houseplant since time immemorial³.

Mathieu Robilliard, an analyst ensnared in the Sisyphean task of deciphering market signals, observed that SpaceX and T-Mobile had already inaugurated a text-only direct-to-cell (DTC) service at $10 monthly-a system operating with the ruthless efficiency of a machine whose gears grind the dreams of competitors to dust. AST, by contrast, remains in a state of prenatal development, its commercial offerings still gestating in the womb of regulatory purgatory.