Business

Biden v. Musk

Published

3 years ago

June 6, 2022

Press Room

President Biden’s misguided feud with Musk

Andrew right here.

Why does President Biden search to antagonize Elon Musk?

On Friday, Biden did it once more at a information convention at which he dismissed Musk’s worrying view of the economic system, with a zinger: “Plenty of luck on his journey to the moon.”

Biden’s beef with Musk appears to be a giant missed alternative — politically. By ignoring or poking enjoyable at Musk, he has helped flip probably the most famed entrepreneur of our time, even when erratic, from being a Biden supporter — Musk voted for him — to a vocal backer of Republicans.

Musk, who has turn into more and more polarizing as he has publicly switched allegiances, final month tweeted that he’s shifting proper, at the least for the midterms, as a result of “this administration has performed all the pieces it may to sideline & ignore Tesla.”

Biden has seemingly pushed apart somebody who ought to have been a pure ally. You don’t have to love or agree with Musk to understand the facility of his voice and potential political efficiency. And that’s true even in case you assume Musk is being petulant or his partisan shift is partly the results of different forces, and even in case you assume that he ought to be the topic of extra regulatory scrutiny. Musk has traditionally backed Democrats, and his whole enterprise relies on defending the local weather.

And Musk is may very well be an unusually highly effective enemy: Love him or hate him, he has a loyal, virtually non secular following. A few of his followers have even tattooed his title, his face and the Tesla brand on their our bodies. And he can typically management the information cycle with a single tweet.

The Musk and Biden feud began greater than a yr in the past, seemingly sparked by Biden backing auto unions, and unionization extra broadly. Biden went as far as to push a provision in a invoice that will profit electric-car makers which can be unionized on the expense of these that aren’t, specifically Tesla. He incessantly touts hiring figures by the likes of Ford, which final week mentioned it was hiring 6,000 staff, with out ever mentioning that Tesla employed almost 50,000 folks world wide within the final two years. (Biden’s newest barb got here after Musk mentioned he deliberate to chop hundreds of jobs at Tesla, which Musk later walked again.)

Is there a political calculus that there are sufficient Musk haters to make this a sound technique? There are about 14 million People who belong to unions within the nation. (Greater than half of voters in unions, on a share foundation, went for Biden). Musk has almost 100 million followers on Twitter (a lot of which, although, are in all probability bots, and much who in all probability don’t agree with Musk’s views or don’t vote, however nonetheless.)

If Biden had introduced Musk beneath his tent — invited him to the White Home with different auto C.E.O.s or praised SpaceX’s work for NASA, to call simply two examples — Musk has sufficient of an ego that he almost definitely would have been turning SpaceX launches into picture alternatives for Biden to put on his Ray-Bans.

Would Biden have been criticized by some on the left for cozying as much as a billionaire? Positive. Would some union leaders have gotten upset? Possibly.

Biden and Musk share most of the identical coverage goals: specifically, technological innovation and funding in inexperienced vitality. These are the topics of many battles with a recalcitrant Congress, and Biden has misplaced a robust, if unpredictable, backer in his nook.

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HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

Starbucks eyes exterior expertise for its subsequent chief. The espresso chain’s founder Howard Schultz, who returned to the C.E.O. position in an interim capability in April, mentioned the corporate is contemplating solely exterior candidates for the highest job. Schultz says his plan is to exit Starbucks’s government ranks inside a yr.

Elliot Administration sues London alternate. The activist hedge fund is in search of almost half a billion {dollars} from the London Steel Alternate, which is already beneath evaluate by British regulators for actions it took earlier this yr following wild worth swings and a suspension of buying and selling within the nickel market. Elliot and different hedge funds contend that the L.M.E. was fallacious to cancel trades that have been made earlier than the suspension of buying and selling and will have value members of the alternate billions of {dollars}.

Boris Johnson faces a “no confidence” vote. The vote, to be held this night, was triggered after 15 p.c of Conservative members of Parliament joined an effort to recall Johnson. The vote comes within the wake of “partygate,” allegations that Johnson and members of his authorities broke Covid lockdown restrictions, and as Johnson seeks to remodel the protocol that will govern the connection with Northern Eire and Britain after Brexit.

Abbott Laboratories resumes child method manufacturing. Its Similac model is the most important by U.S. gross sales, however the firm is initially specializing in specialty formulation. Shipments from overseas negotiated by the Biden administration could are available days, although a scarcity in shops may persist for weeks.

Apple launches into the metaverse

Apple right now unveils the items for what it hopes can be its subsequent business-altering system, 15 years after the iPhone. Apple plans to disclose software program instruments at its annual builders’ convention that will permit apps so as to add new digicam and voice performance, laying the groundwork for a hands-free interface that clients will finally be capable of navigate on a headset. It may thrust the corporate into the following frontier of computing at a time when a lot of its rivals are additionally seeking to the metaverse for development, report The Occasions’s Tripp Mickle and Brian X. Chen.

Competitors within the metaverse is fierce, and the stakes are excessive. Microsoft, Google and Fb’s mum or dad firm, Meta, are all in numerous phases of creating software program and {hardware} to create a brand new universe the place the web, digital and actual worlds coalesce. For Apple, the metaverse may very well be a chance to construct new merchandise and experiences across the investments it has already made creating its personal reveals.

Apple’s software program instruments and content material will assist decide its metaverse success. Its final main product, the Apple Watch, was launched with about 3,000 apps however struggled to take off as a result of tech reviewers mentioned few of these apps have been helpful. Comparable shortcomings have dogged Meta’s virtual-reality headset, the Oculus Quest, which bought over 10 million items final yr, as a result of many view it as a gaming system. Companies stay essential for Apple extra broadly: As iPhone gross sales are anticipated to stall amid manufacturing unit shutdowns in China, service gross sales may rise almost 17 p.c to $80 billion.

Cravath heads contained in the Beltway

Cravath, Swain & Moore, a prime Wall Avenue regulation agency whose first companions served President Lincoln throughout the Civil Battle, is opening its first Washington workplace in about 75 years. The workplace can be led by two former federal regulators: Jelena McWilliams, who chaired the F.D.I.C., and Elad Roisman, an ex-S.E.C. commissioner. The 2 former regulators, each appointed by President Trump, are becoming a member of the agency as companions.

Purchasers want plenty of regulatory assist. Cravath’s presiding accomplice, Faiza Saeed, instructed DealBook that company America is going through extra coverage strain than ever from each Democrats and Republicans. That, Saeed mentioned, together with the potential for 2 high-profile hires, made it the best time for the agency to return to the Beltway. The agency, which has over 500 attorneys and is generally based mostly in New York and London, has additionally had Hong Kong and Paris branches previously, whereas a earlier Washington department was spun off within the Nineteen Forties.

The brand new department can be conserving a detailed eye on crypto. Saeed mentioned cryptocurrencies are one of many causes for Cravath’s transfer to D.C. As digital belongings get extra consideration from lawmakers and regulators, regulation companies are making parallel efforts. Final month, the S.E.C. pledged to just about double the scale of its employees in its crypto belongings and cyber unit. Jennifer Leete, who beforehand helped lead enforcement on the S.E.C., can also be becoming a member of the brand new Cravath workplace in D.C. “Crypto is a sizzling space,” Saeed mentioned.

“A president has to strive. Sadly, there are solely dangerous choices. And any different choices are in all probability worse than asking the Saudis to extend manufacturing.”

— Invoice Richardson, an vitality secretary within the Clinton administration and former governor of New Mexico, on Biden’s choice to journey to Saudi Arabia later this summer time, after calling the nation a “pariah” on the marketing campaign path.

NFT start-up OpenSea navigates a wave of fraud

OpenSea, the four-year-old digital market for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, that has been valued by traders at greater than $13 billion, is scuffling with hackers and fraud. The corporate, which has already paid out tens of millions in settlements, faces quite a few extra person complaints and lawsuits. And its rising issues come at a time when the marketplace for the briefly buzzy digital belongings that it focuses on, and crypto extra broadly, has cooled, stories The Occasions’s David Yaffe-Bellany.

Did OpenSea make NFTs too simple? The promise of NFTs, for artists at the least, is that the method of turning digital recordsdata into digital belongings lets them promote their work on-line on to admirers with out going via conventional gatekeepers like brokers. However OpenSea has made creating NFTs too painless and well-liked, some artists say.

Firm executives admit there’s bother. The executives instructed The Occasions that OpenSea has been gradual to halt dangerous actors, making it simple for them to revenue off schemes. They mentioned they’re including providers to freeze gross sales of stolen NFTs and ferret out plagiarized works. “Like each tech firm, there’s a interval the place you’re catching up,” mentioned Devin Finzer, 31, OpenSea’s chief government. “You’re making an attempt to do all the pieces you may to accommodate the brand-new customers which can be coming into the house.”

However the issues that proliferate on the location reveal the downsides of decentralized platforms the place anonymity is allowed. Final week, a former OpenSea product supervisor was charged with insider buying and selling, accused of utilizing nameless accountants to personally revenue off the truth that he knew which NFTs have been scheduled to be featured on OpenSea’s dwelling web page.

THE SPEED READ

Offers

Carl Icahn, after an analogous McDonald’s defeat, is dropping his proxy combat with Krogers over the therapy of pigs. (WSJ)
JetBlue sweetened its supply for Spirit Airways because it battles with Frontier Airways in a bid for the service. (Yahoo)

Coverage

Better of the remaining

Retailers like Macy’s and Hole have an excessive amount of pandemic-era inventory, like joggers. (WSJ)
Hackers stole $360,000 value of Bored Ape NFTs within the newest in a spate of assaults. (CoinDesk)
In a company exodus, a report variety of corporations have moved their workplaces out of Tokyo. (FT)

We’d like your suggestions! Please electronic mail ideas and options to dealbook@nytimes.com.

Business

Cleveland-Cliffs Signals a Possible New Bid for U.S. Steel

Published

5 hours ago

January 14, 2025

Press Room

Cleveland-Cliffs Signals a Possible New Bid for U.S. Steel

A possible new takeover bid for U.S. Steel emerged on Monday, teeing up more turmoil over the once-dominant company’s future after President Biden’s decision to block its acquisition by a Japanese company.

Lourenco Goncalves, the chief executive of an American competitor, Cleveland-Cliffs, said his company had “an All-American solution to save the United States Steel Corporation,” stressing that acquiring U.S. Steel was a matter of “when,” not “if.” But he offered no details of the bidding plans.

The renewed expression of interest from Cleveland-Cliffs comes less than two weeks after Mr. Biden blocked a $14 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel, arguing that the sale posed a threat to national security. Cleveland-Cliffs tried to buy U.S. Steel in 2023, an offer that was rejected in favor of Nippon’s higher bid.

CNBC reported on Monday morning that Cleveland-Cliffs would seek to take over U.S. Steel and sell off its subsidiary, Big River Steel, to Nucor, another American producer. But Mr. Goncalves, at a news conference later in the day, would not confirm any partnership with Nucor on a bid.

U.S. Steel and Nucor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Investors seemed pleased by the potential bid, sending shares of U.S. Steel up as much as 10 percent on Monday when CNBC reported the potential offer. Shares of U.S. Steel finished about 6 percent higher on Monday but are down 23 percent over the past year, including Monday’s spike.

But the fate of Nippon’s proposed takeover remains in limbo. U.S. Steel and Nippon sued the United States government last week in the hopes of reviving their merger, accusing Mr. Biden and other senior administration officials of corrupting the review process for political gain and blocking the deal under false pretenses.

The companies filed a separate lawsuit against Cleveland-Cliffs, Mr. Goncalves and David McCall, international president of the United Steelworkers union. They argue that Cleveland-Cliffs and the head of the union illegally colluded to undermine the Nippon deal, assertions that both defendants called “baseless.”

On Saturday, the companies said the Biden administration had delayed enforcement of its executive order blocking Nippon’s takeover until June, to give the courts time to review the lawsuit.

“The problem is, we can’t make anything happen until the current management and the current board of U.S. Steel make the decision to abandon the merger agreement with Nippon Steel,” Mr. Goncalves said at a news conference in Butler, Pa., on Monday.

Given this rancor, it is unclear how receptive U.S. Steel would be to a new bid by Cleveland-Cliffs. If U.S. Steel does not engage, one option would be for Cleveland-Cliffs to take an offer to shareholders.

U.S. Steel was once the world’s largest steel producer, but the company has fallen in global rankings in recent years. Concerns about its long-term future are rooted in a failure to quickly adopt alternatives to traditional mills that are more energy-efficient and cost-effective. Nippon, U.S. Steel has argued, is the only buyer that can make substantial investments in multiple steel mills and protect jobs.

The United Steelworkers, which represents 11,000 U.S. Steel employees, has voiced strong opposition to the proposed merger with Nippon. The powerful union has said the Japanese company engaged in illegal trade practices and dealt with the union in bad faith. Previously, the union expressed its preference for a merger with Cleveland-Cliffs, which is unionized.

A new bid by Cleveland-Cliffs, if it materializes, risks antitrust scrutiny from federal antitrust regulators, though regulators in the Trump administration are widely expected to take a less aggressive approach to merger enforcement than their Biden administration predecessors.

Business

Supreme Court denies oil industry plea to block climate lawsuits filed by California, other blue states

Published

6 hours ago

January 14, 2025

Press Room

Supreme Court denies oil industry plea to block climate lawsuits filed by California, other blue states

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court dealt a major setback to the oil industry Monday, refusing to block lawsuits from California and other blue states that seek billions of dollars in damages for the effects of climate change.

Without a comment or dissent, the justices turned down closely watched appeals from Sunoco, Shell and other energy producers.

In Sunoco vs. Honolulu, the oil industry urged the justices to intervene in these state cases and rule that because climate change is a global phenomenon, it is a matter for federal law only, not one suited to state-by-state claims.

“The stakes could not be higher,” they told the court.

But none of the justices said they wanted to hear their claim, at least not now.

The decision clears the way for more than two dozen suits filed by states and municipalities to move forward and try to prove their claim that the major oil producers knew of the potential damage of burning fossil fuels but chose to conceal it.

“Big Oil companies keep fighting a losing battle to avoid standing trial for their climate lies,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity. “With this latest denial, the fossil fuel industry’s worst nightmare — having to face the overwhelming evidence of their decades of calculated climate deception — is closer than ever to becoming a reality.”

Two years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit in San Francisco County Superior Court against five of the largest oil and gas companies — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — and the American Petroleum Institute for what they described as a “decades-long campaign of deception” that created climate-related harms in California.

“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” Newsom said in announcing the suit.

In recent days, California officials have blamed climate change for the devastating weather conditions that contributed to the deadly wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes and other structures, leading to what many experts expect to become the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

California’s suit followed the pattern set by similar claims from the cities of Baltimore, New York, Chicago and San Francisco as well as blue states including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Minnesota.

These suits argue that the oil producers used deceptive marketing to hide the danger of burning fossil fuels. Under state law, companies can be held liable for failing to warn consumers of a known danger.

In June 2024, the court asked the Justice Department to weigh in on the issue. In December, lawyers for the Biden administration urged the court to stand aside for now because the suits are at an early stage.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said he took no part in the decision to deny the appeals, presumably because he owns stock in companies affected by the dispute.

The climate change lawsuits were patterned after the successful mass lawsuits filed by states and others against the tobacco industry over cigarettes and the pharmaceutical industry over opioids.

Cigarettes and opioids were sold legally, but the suits alleged that industry officials conspired to deceive the public and hide the true dangers of their highly profitable products.

Under state law, plaintiffs can seek damages for broad and open-ended claims such as a failure to warn of a danger, false advertising or creating a public nuisance. All three claims are cited in California’s lawsuit. Federal law, by contrast, is usually limited to damage claims that are authorized by Congress.

Had the Supreme Court agreed to hear the oil industry’s appeal in the Hawaii case, it “would have frozen the cases for a year or more and could have resulted in a death blow for all of them,” said Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law expert at the Vermont Law School.

Los Angeles lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., who represents Chevron, said the company “will continue to defend against meritless state law climate litigation, which clashes with basic constitutional principles, undermines sound energy policy.”

Meanwhile, Alabama and 20 red states urged the court to throw out these blue-state lawsuits. They said liberal states and their judges should not have the power to set the nation’s policy on the energy industry. The court has not ruled on that claim yet.

The case dismissed Monday began five years ago when the city and county of Honolulu sued Sunoco and 14 other major oil and gas producers, alleging a failure to warn and creating a nuisance.

The Hawaii Supreme Court last year rejected the industry’s motion and refused to dismiss the suit.

“Simply put, the plaintiffs say the issue is whether defendants misled the public about fossil fuels’ dangers and environmental impact. We agree …. This suit does not seek to regulate emissions and does not seek damages for interstate emissions,” the state court said in a unanimous opinion. “Rather, plaintiffs’ complaint clearly seeks to challenge the promotion and sale of fossil-fuel products without warning and abetted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign.”

Business

How the NFL Moved the Vikings-Rams Playoff Game Away From the L.A. Fires

Published

13 hours ago

January 13, 2025

Press Room

How the NFL Moved the Vikings-Rams Playoff Game Away From the L.A. Fires

Matthew Giachelli got the call he anticipated on Thursday morning: The N.F.L. was moving the Rams’ playoff game to Arizona because of the wildfires raging in Los Angeles, and the league needed 200 gallons of paint pronto.

The game on Monday between the Rams and the Minnesota Vikings would now be held at State Farm Stadium outside Phoenix, and it had to look and feel as if it were being played in the Rams’ usual home, SoFi Stadium. That included painting the field with the team’s and league’s logos and colors. The hometown Cardinals, though, did not have some of the needed hues on hand, including the Rams’ blue and yellow.

Giachelli’s company, World Class Athletic Surfaces in tiny Leland, Miss., provides paint to most N.F.L. and top college teams. Within hours, he and his co-workers had loaded five-gallon buckets of nine custom paint colors, as well as stencils for the N.F.L. playoff logos, onto a truck that left Thursday afternoon on a 1,500-mile journey to Arizona.

“I definitely regret what’s going on in California, but I’m glad we could meet their needs,” said Giachelli, the vice president of production and distribution.

Getting the right paint was just one of hundreds of details that the league, the Rams, the Vikings, the host Arizona Cardinals and ASM Global, which operates State Farm Stadium, have juggled since the N.F.L. decided to move the wild-card round game.

The N.F.L. has canceled preseason games and postponed and moved regular-season games over the years because of hurricanes, snowstorms and other calamities. But it had not moved a winner-take-all playoff showdown since 1936, when the site of its championship game was changed from Boston to New York to drum up ticket sales.

A battalion of people — from the front-office workers to the training staffs to the thousands of game-day workers — have been mobilized on short notice. Each game, particularly in the playoffs, generates tens of millions of dollars for television networks, advertisers and stadium operators, and with the season coming down to its last few weeks, there was little margin for error.

“If it can be played, they play it, and in this case, it can be played in Glendale,” said Joe Buck, who will call the game for ESPN on Monday. “We’re in the playoffs now, and you’ve got all this pressure to get this first round finished before Kansas City and Detroit,” which had first-round byes, “get back in.”

A big reason the N.F.L. is the world’s most valuable league is scarcity. There are just 272 regular-season games and 13 playoff games, so each one is of critical importance to the 32 teams. (By contrast, there are about 400 Major League Baseball games every month during the season.) They are also critical to the owners of those teams and the league, as well as broadcast networks, sponsors and other companies that spend billions of dollars a year to attach their businesses and brands to the N.F.L.

It has not escaped notice that one of those businesses, State Farm, will have its name attached to Monday night’s broadcast less than a year after it announced that it would not renew 30,000 homeowner policies and 42,000 policies for commercial apartments in California. (The N.F.L. has donated $5 million to Los Angeles relief efforts.)

With so much riding on each contest, the N.F.L. does everything it can to play every game every year. When the league creates its season schedule each spring, it prepares contingency plans including an alternate site for each game. In 2022, when a massive snowstorm hit western New York, the Buffalo Bills played a home game at Ford Field in Detroit.

During the pandemic, outbreaks in locker rooms forced the league to postpone several games, though none were canceled. When pandemic conditions in Santa Clara County, Calif., deteriorated, the San Francisco 49ers moved to Arizona for a month, playing three home games in State Farm Stadium. Arizona was also a backstop in 2003 when the Chargers moved their home game against the Miami Dolphins because of fires in San Diego.

This time, the fires spread so quickly, the league decided to move the game five days before kickoff. Kevin Demoff, the president of the Rams, said the team had been in constant contact with officials in Los Angeles, who initially thought the game could be held at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which was unaffected by the fires.

But that changed midweek, when fires broke out close to the team’s training facility in Woodland Hills, forcing some players and staff to evacuate their homes and for one practice to be cut short. Demoff said he did not want the players and staff to be distracted, nor did he want city and county resources to be diverted for the game when they could be used to help others in need.

Moving the game is “just a recognition that there’s some things bigger than football and we owe this to our community to make sure that this game can be played safely and not be a distraction,” Demoff said Friday.

ESPN was on hold as well. Four of its production trucks were en route to Los Angeles from Pittsburgh when the league told the network on Wednesday night that the game could be moved to Glendale. The crews spent the night in Kingman, Ariz. On Thursday, the plan was to set up in both stadiums in case the league waited until Saturday to decide where to play. So the trucks continued on to Los Angeles while another set of trucks left for Glendale. When the N.F.L. said Thursday that the game had been moved, the first set of trucks, which had reached Ontario, Calif., turned around and arrived in Glendale with time to spare.

The Cardinals also helped out the Rams in ways beyond just lending their stadium. The team’s owner, Michael Bidwill, sent two team planes to Los Angeles to help the Rams get their entourage and equipment to Arizona.