The UAW sues Trump, Musk as IRA investments get delayed or paused In this recurring series, The Fly recaps where the top analysts on Wall Street say to put your money ahead of November's U.S. presidential election. In this edition, the UAW sued Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and Trump Media neared record lows this week following its quarterly results and the Republican presidential candidate's return to social media platform X.
IRA INVESTMENTS DELAYED OR PAUSED: Nearly 40% of the largest U.S. manufacturing investments announced in the first year of President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Act have been delayed or paused, according to a Financial Times investigation, Amanda Chu, Alexandra White and Rhea Basarkar reported on Monday. Of the projects worth more than $100M, a total of $84B have been delayed for between two months and several years, or paused indefinitely, the FT found. The delays could complicate efforts by Vice President Kamala Harris to use the administration's record on manufacturing to attract blue-collar voters in November's presidential election, according to the report. Among the largest projects on hold are Enel's $1B solar panel factory in Oklahoma, LG Energy Solution's $2.3B battery storage facility in Arizona and Albemarle's $1.3B (ALB) lithium refinery in South Carolina.
UAW SUES TRUMP, MUSK: The United Auto Workers filed federal labor charges against Donald Trump and Elon Musk for their comments applauding the practice of firing employees who threaten to strike, CNBC reported on Tuesday. Trump has been vying for the labor vote in the presidential race against Vice President Kamala Harris, though the UAW has already endorsed the vice president. "I look at what you do," Trump said to Musk during a two-hour interview on X Monday night. "You walk in, you say, 'You want to quit?' They go on strike," Trump said of Musk, who is CEO of the EV car maker Tesla and SpaceX. Musk also owns X, formerly Twitter. "I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, 'That's okay, you're all gone. You're all gone. So, every one of you is gone,'" Trump said. The UAW represents over 400,000 auto workers, including from Ford (F), General Motors (GM) and Stellantis (STLA).
HEALTH INSURANCE: President Biden's administration is set to hand out billions of dollars to private insurance companies to dull the impact of the increase of Medicare premiums for millions of Americans just ahead of the November election, Politico reported on Tuesday. The jump in premiums is a result of efforts to reduce what older Americans pay for prescription drugs, part of the IRA. The new premiums will be released in mid-to-late September and could open up the Harris-Walz campaign to a spate of negative headlines, according to the report, which adds that a sharp increase in health insurance premiums a few weeks before the election could muddy that message and give Republicans an easy line of attack, especially as inflation remains a critical presidential campaign issue.
Publicly traded companies in the health insurance space include CVS Health (CVS), Centene (CNC), Cigna (CI), Elevance Health (ELV), Humana (HUM), Molina Healthcare (MOH) and UnitedHealth (UNH).
TRUMP MEDIA: Shares of Trump Media (DJT), former President Trump's media company, neared record lows this week, following weak quarterly results and the Republican presidential candidate's return to social media platform X. Twitter suspended Trump's account in January 2021, but it was reinstated by Elon Musk in 2022 after he bought the site and took it private. As many as 1.3 million people tuned in to the lengthy conversation between Musk and Trump, which took place on X, where the pair discussed topics ranging from the assassination attempt on Trump to geopolitics and the economy. Trump also posted a campaign ad on his @realDonaldTrump account on X on Monday, only the second time he's tweeted since January 2021.
Trump Media stock has lost more than half its value since going public in March. Its market valuation is down to $4.73B from over $9B earlier this year.
