Plus: Elon Musk Wants To Raise The Birth Rate. He’s Cutting Medical Care For Mothers And Babies. |
Good morning,
The weight loss drug market has exploded, and Kailera Therapeutics is coming for its leaders, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.The firm has licensed four promising obesity therapies from China, which is emerging as a pharmaceutical research and development powerhouse. And having ready-made drugs should enable Kailera to move fast in an increasingly competitive market. Global sales of weight loss drugs swelled 50% last year and could more than triple again by 2028, research shows. “We have probably the most advanced, diverse, late-stage pipeline that is focused exclusively on weight management, outside of Big Pharma,” says Ron Renaud, the all-star former biotech stock analyst hired to run the company.
Let’s get into the headlines, |
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| After the Trump Administration’s trade policy for electronics shifted multiple times over the weekend, China’s President Xi Jinping criticized Trump’s tariffs and called for the protection of “the multilateral trading system” in an op-ed as the Chinese leader seeks allies. Xi met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez Friday and urged the EU to “oppose unilateral bullying practices,” and is wrapping up a diplomatic visit in Vietnam where he made a similar case. Investors are turning to safe havens as President Donald Trump’s tariffs shake up the global markets, but their preferences are shifting. Gold prices hit a new record Friday, but the U.S. dollar fell to its lowest level since April 2022. “What is potentially being compromised is the post-World War II order of international finance where the dollar has been the central pillar” of the global economy, said Bhanu Baweja, UBS Investment Bank’s chief strategist. |
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| | Elon Musk Wants To Raise The Birth Rate. He’s Cutting Medical Care For Mothers And Babies. |
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When Sevonna Brown learned that Elon Musk’s quasi-governmental agency DOGE had ordered payment stopped on her more than $2 million NIH grant for maternal community healthcare, she started hitting the phones. The network of services for mothers and children that Brown had spent more than a decade building was coming to a screeching halt. Given Musk’s endless warnings that falling birthrates pose an existential threat to civilization, DOGE’s abrupt gutting of maternal health services is simultaneously ironic, and exactly what you’d expect from an effort whose blunders far exceed its claimed, but typically unverifiable, achievements. Musk has donated millions of dollars to fund research on fertility. But at this point, he has taken much more from pregnant women and new mothers than he has given. In February, DOGE threatened a seven-year, $168 million NIH initiative to improve maternal health across the state of Michigan. It suspended more than $27 million in grants to women’s health centers, laid off federal workers running programs for expecting mothers on Medicaid, and cancelled $1.6 million in funding for maternal and postpartum care at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. “We can’t claim to care about birthrates while defunding the very systems that make pregnancy, birth and parenting safe,” says Emilie Rodriguez. A medical anthropologist, doula, and co-founder of The Bridge Directory, a group of perinatal maternal healthcare providers, Rodriguez worked with Sevonna Brown on the CHAMP Center of Excellence grant.
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“The Department of Government Efficiency is supposed to be about cutting fat from the federal budget,” says Forbes senior writer Emily Baker-White. “Here, it’s cutting out vital organs: medical interventions that save lives and help pregnant women have children safely.”
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Consumer sentiment has taken a hit from the uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs, falling to its lowest level in nearly three years this month, according to a recent University of Michigan survey. The survey shows consumer sentiment down 30% in April compared to where it stood at the end of the Biden Administration in January. Trump’s trade war could have an impact on the president’s constellation of foreign properties, as the tourism industry, which is already showing cracks, could slow down worldwide. But as he paused his latest levies, all 13 countries where Trump does business have signaled at least some willingness to negotiate with the U.S. |
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WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP |
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Dutch billionaire Remon Vos, a newcomer to Forbes’ 2025 World’s Billionaires List, has grown his firm CTP into the second-largest industrial and logistics real estate developer in Europe, earning him a fortune worth an estimated $5.9 billion. And the company is likely to benefit from tariffs in the long term, as companies who want to sell to Europe will have to build their factories there to avoid higher import duties. |
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The fintech industry’s adoption of AI has been slow as a result of regulatory and compliance hurdles, but a new trend is emerging: using AI for deep investment research. It’s still hard to tell which early-stage startup will live up to the hype, but they’re all addressing labor-intensive tasks where improvements are long overdue. Tesla appeared to remove a feature on its website in China allowing customers to purchase two car models the company imports from the U.S. as the trade war between the two countries escalates. The company’s Model S sedan and Model X SUV are produced at a factory in Fremont, California, though the “Order Now” button is still accessible for Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, as they are assembled in Shanghai. |
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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is a key public face of Donald Trump’s trade policies, and those who know him say he’s “like a pig in s***.” But among the wealthy members of Trump’s cabinet, no one seems to have more on the line than the former Wall Street executive: The value of his holdings, which he appears to be handing off to his heirs, plunged $420 million in the last week, according to Forbes estimates, dropping his family fortune from $3.2 billion to $2.7 billion. |
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It’s been a volatile time for investors since President Donald Trump’s tariff “Liberation Day,” as the S&P 500 netted a more than 5% loss from April 2 through Friday. But some stocks have performed better than others: |
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90%
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The share of stocks on the S&P 500 that declined during that period
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50
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The number of above-water stocks in that time, dominated by healthcare stocks as well as bargain retailers and defense contractors
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34%
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The drop in pharmaceutical developer Charles River Laboratories’ stock, making it the worst performing on the S&P since April 2
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Investors are reeling from the fallout over President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and while it’s typical to take a “wait-and-see” approach, proactively navigating the uncertainty is possible for those who are patient and forward-thinking. Leaders should absorb that anxiety without passing it on. A manager’s ability to guide their team through turbulence and provide support for employees can help improve overall well-being. |
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