Tomahawk Missiles Fired On Syria Cost About $60M – $88.5M and Trump may very well stand to profit from their replacement.
Several individuals in liberal and progressive circles have expressed serious misgivings regarding Trump’s motives behind this week’s missile strike on Syria, and it turns out there very likely could be reason for that concern.
Market Watch reported on Friday that “It could cost about $60 million to replace the cruise missiles that the U.S. military rained on Syrian targets Thursday night,” adding that “the latest versions of the missile that would replace those could be more costly, depending on size of the order and other factors, said Loren Thompson, a consultant and chief operating officer of nonprofit Lexington Institute.”
Market Watch talked to experts who place the replacement cost as low as $1M per missile or as high as $1.5M, the Navy’s 2017 budget’s allocation according to Todd Harrison a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That puts the replacement cost at somewhere around $59M to $88.5M.
And who profits? Those Tomahawk missiles, which have been part of the U.S. military’s arsenal for three decades, are manufactured by U.S. defense contractor Raytheon Company – the world’s largest supplier of guided missiles.
And guess who might have stock holdings in Raytheon? You guessed it: Trump.
In July of 2015 Business Insider reported on Trump’s financial disclosures which were filed with the Federal Election Commission as part of his campaign:
According to the report, Trump’s investments cross a wide spectrum of industries, with technology companies, financial firms, defense contractors, and energy are all represented in his portfolio. Trump also owns stock in many well-known companies including Apple, Nike, Whole Foods, Google, Philip Morris, Raytheon, Facebook, and Morgan Stanley, among others.
Additionally, there may be other reasons to question the timing of the missile strike. The Dallas Morning News reported in January that Ratheon was “among the defense stocks that surged the day after Trump’s election,” and Reuters reported that their guided missile systems “accounted for 29.4 percent of its 2016 revenue.”
However, as Reuters added: Raytheon “reported a 1.4 percent fall in quarterly revenue, hurt by slower sales in its units that make missile systems and the tracking and navigation sensors used in aircraft and missiles,” adding that “The company said sales in its missile systems unit… rose 1 percent to $1.90 billion in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, the slowest rise in six quarters.”
Reuters also reported that: “During a call with analysts, Chief Executive Tom Kennedy said the Trump administration’s pursuit of ISIS could boost future precision missile sales.”
Of course, in the absence of subsequent financial disclosures and Trump’s refusal to release income tax returns, there is no way to know for sure if he has any stock in the company at the present time.
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