It’s just a faint, distant memory now, but way back in the halcyon days of 2016, a billion seemed like a lot. A decade later, we now have more than a dozen publicly traded trillion dollar companies (with a few more likely headed down the pipe later this summer), one of which just officially minted history’s first trillionaire in Elon Musk (you might have heard of him). There’s no doubt something to be said here about the Cantillon effect and the inexorable erosion of fiat currency driving headline figures that become increasingly unfathomable (O/U first quadrillionaire by 2040?), but there’s also much to be said about what the rise of SpaceX represents, not just for the American spirit but also as an illustration of the unrivaled depth of American capital markets and the kinds of innovations they can be marshaled to enable. That degree of capital formation is, for now, still the exclusive purview of the American empire (don’t look now, but CQQQ is red YTD and on a 5-year lookback), and SpaceX’s rise and legitimately impressive set of technical accomplishments testify to the fact that that deep liquidity can still fund bleeding-edge physical projects that truly push the frontier of human capability rather than just the nth delivery app or prediction market.

None of this is to say that SpaceX is necessarily a buy here (mind the lockup expiration schedule), nor is it to suggest that America’s rivals aren’t quickly making meaningful strides of their own. But if the current administration, or whatever faction of the Deep State is presently operating the controls, is truly determined to use every trick in the book to win back the critical physical supply chains that have left the US uncomfortably dependent on foreign counterparties, then SpaceX is a meaningful indicator that the old dog can still hunt. That “giant sucking sound” you hear is a half-century of foreign trade surpluses reversing, of dollar rails ceasing to be a public good subsidized by the beneficence of the taxpayer, and of industrial policy starting to gain real momentum. To be sure, history suggests that this will bring federal backstops, government grants, fiscal largesse, expanding deficits, and (in some form) money printing, so we continue to think it wise to consider how that flood of liquidity may flow to certain highly scarce assets over time (particularly assets where Americans already have a favorably skewed ownership share vs the world at large).

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