Trump deal with TAE is very curious

Even though Trump posts government announcements (among other things) on it, Truth Social has a tiny user base of about 6 million. Elon Musk’s X has well over 400 million.

In fact, Truth Social’s performance has been so disappointing that TMTG has chased other lines of business in search of revenue and earnings.

It has piled into crypto, including a launch of a bitcoin treasury, expanded into financial services via Trump exchange-traded “America First” funds, launched predications betting markets products and, now, is buying into fusion.

It needed to do something. Its current portfolio lost it $US54.8 million in the September quarter and $US106.5 million in the nine months to end-September. That’s before the impact of the crash in crypto assets that started in early October hits its accounts.

Bitcoin’s price has tumbled about 23 per cent since September 30 and is down about 30 per cent from its October peak.

What TMTG has, and TAE needs, is $US166 million of cash or near-cash and, after raising $US2.5 billion earlier this year, it owns $US1.5 billion of digital assets and more than $US1 billion of other short-term investments.

TAE has reportedly been struggling to pay its bills, so an infusion of cash is required if it is to keep pursuing the so-called “Holy Grail” of nuclear technologies, fusion.

(Conventional nuclear energy involves splitting atoms to create energy, and radioactive waste, fusion involves combining them to produce a heavier atom, replicating the process that powers the sun. It requires massive amounts of energy to initiate fusion, but produces only small amounts of short-lived radioactive waste).

TMTG will supply the cash TAE needs – $US200 million up-front and another $US100 million on completion of the deal – which presumably means that it will have to sell some of its bitcoin or other assets, given that it doesn’t have $US300 million of cash.

It does, of course, also have the capacity to raise more capital, as its big raising earlier this year proved.

Trump’s MAGA faithful followed him onto the TMTG register and he also the ability to call on financial support from the oil, tech, media and gambling billionaires who have backed, and benefited from, his radical assault on regulation and the bureaucracy and hefty cuts to corporate and income taxes.

TMTG will also supply political capital, given that its major shareholder and arguably its key asset is a president who has shown only superficial interest in the normal conventions for managing conflicts of interest.

The US, in Trump’s second term, has rolled back Joe Biden’s incentives and subsidies for renewable energy, instead promoting fossil fuels and nuclear.

Trump has removed some of the safety rules around new nuclear facilities to fast-track the building of new reactors, with a goal of having at least three new test plants built by July 4 next year, America’s 250th birthday. He also wants a number of decommissioned plants brought back into service.

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The US needs more generation to cope with the extraordinary demand for energy being driven by the artificial intelligence-inspired scramble to build energy-hungry data centres.

Without new sources of energy supply, and with the growth in renewables curtailed by the dramatic shift in energy policy, the existing grid in the US won’t be capable of meeting that demand and the cost of energy for businesses and households will soar.

Fusion, which promises to deliver vast amounts of clean energy, could provide a solution if it can be generated commercially.

After the larger part of a century of research and billions of dollars of investment globally – including by various rich list-backed firms in the US and a 33-member global consortium that includes the US, China, Russia, India and South Korea which is investing tens of billions of dollars to prove the feasibility of fusion at an industrial scale – that goal has yet to be met.

In October, the Trump administration launched a national strategy to accelerate the development of fusion and, in November – presumably while TMTG was negotiating with TAE – created a new Office of Fusion.

There is an expectation that the US nuclear program will have access to government funding, which could provide another point of conflict for the Trump family, given that Trump has demonstrated that he, personally, decides government policies and can dictate how the public purse can be accessed.

Donald Trump Jr, a director of TMTG and David Nunes, its chief executive since launch, will be on the board of the merged entity, with the president its largest shareholder.

For TAE, which after more than a quarter of a century of fusion research wants to build a utility scale power plant, that combination of financial and political capital compensates for being brought next to Trump’s loss-making social media and crypto businesses.

TAE plans to build a 50 megawatt plant initially, producing its first power in 2031, with far larger 350 to 500 megawatt plants on its drawing boards. It will need government approvals, and a lot more financial capital, to realise its ambitions.

“We’ve got the tools ready to go,” its chief executive, Michl Binderbauer, said last week.

“The capital is a big deal and it’s a multi-billion dollar undertaking,” he said. The merger would provide a co-owner with the capital and the “forward-leaning attitude to go all-in” on fusion.

TMTG was a vehicle searching, without much if any success, for a profitable business. Its major asset is Trump himself – TMTG is a meme stock, with a value unrelated to any concept of the actual value of its assets – his seemingly unrestrained presidential powers, his contact list and a MAGA audience that will seemingly buy anything he’s selling.

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Has TMTG found that business in TAE? TMTG shareholders won’t know until TAE is able to build its first plant and show that it can produce commercially viable energy from its fusion technologies, which will be well beyond the end of Trump’s second term in the White House. His record in business doesn’t inspire confidence.

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