Trump Handed Huang and Musk Science Medals the Day a Filing Showed He Traded Nvidia and Bought SpaceX Debt

On Thursday, President Trump handed National Medals of Science to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a White House science summit. The same day, his August financial disclosure went public. It showed his accounts trading Nvidia stock and buying SpaceX debt.

The disclosure, signed on 17 September, shows Trump bought as much as $1.6 million and sold as much as $1 million of Nvidia shares in August, according to Reuters. His administration is weighing rules that shape Nvidia's fortunes, including export controls on its advanced chips.

517 trades in one month

The Nvidia trades were a small slice of a busy month. CNBC counted 517 purchases and sales in August, worth roughly $74.3 million to $273.3 million in total. Disclosures use value ranges, not exact amounts. Purchases came to at least $44.2 million.

The biggest single trade was a 21 August purchase of $5 million to $25 million in Meta stock.

The SpaceX bond and the space policy

On 18 August, Trump's accounts bought $1 million to $5 million of SpaceX senior unsecured notes paying 5.35 percent and maturing in July 2031. SpaceX has been borrowing heavily as it scales up.

Two days after that purchase, Trump signed a national space transportation policy. It calls for more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year by 2030 and opens government launch facilities to commercial users. SpaceX is a major Pentagon contractor and a NASA launch provider.

Musk and Huang were not the only honorees whose companies appear in recent trades. Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Dell's Michael Dell and AMD's Lisa Su were also honored at the summit, and their companies show up in Trump's recent trades as well.

The overlaps reach beyond tech. On 26 August the portfolio bought a small stake in Tyson Foods, the same day Trump expanded low-tariff imports of beef trimmings by 300,000 metric tons. The filing does not show which came first.

The White House says it's all automatic

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said third-party institutions independently manage the portfolio and replicate indexes like the Schwab 1000. "All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest," he said.

Recent presidents mostly avoided the question by selling individual stocks or using blind trusts or diversified funds. Trump has gone the other way. His 2025 annual disclosure showed more than 21,000 trades across eight accounts holding at least $858 million. In 2017, he reported 86 stock transactions.

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