Business
Pickleball went pro. Can it profit?
As pickleball takes over the minds and courts of America, investors are pouncing on the opportunity to turn a favorite casual pickup game into a massive professional sport.
The Super Bowl champion Tom Brady invested in a pickleball expansion team alongside the tennis star Kim Clijsters in 2022. This year, Drake and Michael B. Jordan backed a Brooklyn team. Major League Pickleball, one of the sport’s two professional leagues, which was co-founded by the Texas-based billionaire Steve Kuhn, has grown from one event and eight teams in its 2021 debut to six events and 24 teams.
But as pingpong and some e-sports leagues have demonstrated, even if a huge number of people like to play a sport, it’s no guarantee that the masses will watch it. Can pickleball develop the television deals and star power of tennis and other more established sports?
Investors see opportunity in tennis’s less exclusive cousin. While pickleball has been around for decades, the sport — which, unlike tennis, requires little experience or athletic ability — exploded during the pandemic. Participation in pickleball almost doubled in 2022, growing by 85.7 percent year-over-year and by 158.6 percent over three years, according to The Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
The sport’s investors have been driven partly by a desire to get in early. As valuations for National Basketball Association and National Football League teams have leaped beyond the reach of even some billionaires, pickleball offers, by comparison, a more affordable opportunity. Valuations of pickleball teams reportedly range anywhere from $1 million to $10 million. The Washington Commanders just sold for $6 billion.
But those valuations are going up. “We may be getting close to a point where it’s almost too late to get in to expect a realistic return on investment,” said Patrick Rishe, the director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis.
A lot hinges on television. “We don’t know whether pickleball is going to be a television event — if it’s not, there probably won’t be a lot of revenue attached to it,” said David Levy, the former president of the television and media conglomerate Turner. “Sponsors want what? Reach and branding.”
As a co-founder of Horizon Sports & Experiences, a sports and marketing agency, Mr. Levy this year launched the Pickleball Slam, an ESPN-broadcast event that featured retired the tennis pros Andre Agassi, John McEnroe and others competing for a million-dollar prize. It was viewed as a success, notching an average broadcast viewership of 237,000 adults under 50. But it borrowed its stars from another sport.
Pickleball proponents say the sport will eventually develop its own celebrity players.
But pickleball pessimists aren’t so sure. “It doesn’t make for good television,” Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who has written several books about sports, told DealBook. He pointed out that while pingpong has long been played by millions of people in multiple countries, it hasn’t become a commercial success. “I think that pickleball is going to confront some of the same issues,” he said.
Is there another way? “The viewership side of it — people watching at home — is going to be a challenge,” said Richard Kleiman, a co-owner of a professional pickleball team, the Brooklyn Aces, and the founder of Boardroom, a sports and entertainment company that also invests in emerging sports teams and leagues. He said that rather than depending on big network T.V. deals, teams may make much of their profits from merchandise and events, like the U.S. Pickleball Nationals, which inked a sponsorship deal with the hospitality company Margaritaville last year.
Marc Lasry, the chief executive of the hedge fund Avenue Capital Group and one of sport’s earliest big ticket investors, is taking a long-term view on television pickleball riches.
“TV rights are like steroids,” he told DealBook. “Ultimately, the media rights will get there. The question is: is it a year from now or five years from now?”
Mr. Lasry, who sold his stake in the Milwaukee Bucks for $3.5 billion this year, noted the N.B.A. started with a three-year $1.5 million T.V. deal in 1979. It now wants a reported $75 billion for its rights when they come up for renewal.
Even if pickleball doesn’t follow a similar trajectory, Mr. Lasry thinks the sport is a bet worth taking: “If you say to me, I got 50 million people playing pickleball, but you’re never going to watch it on TV — Would you still want to own a piece of that business?”
The answer, he said, is “yes.” — Lauren Hirsch
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Donald Trump is indicted in Georgia. The former president and 18 others face charges stemming from efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. Trump, the Republican front-runner for president, has been charged in at least four separate criminal cases since April.
Environmental activists win in Montana. A judge found that the state’s failure to consider the impact of warming temperatures when approving fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional. (The state is expected to appeal.) Similar cases seeking to hold oil giants and governments accountable for damages from climate disasters are winding their way through courts nationwide.
More signs of decline in China’s economy. Retail sales and industrial production both missed forecasts in July, according to data released on Tuesday, and Beijing said it would stop publishing youth unemployment figures weeks after it hit a record high. The I.M.F. has previously forecast that China would account for 35 percent of global growth this year, but that’s looking less likely.
The next frontier for corporate benefits: Menopause
In the same way that many companies looking to attract and retain talent have expanded their benefits packages to include fertility treatments and paid parental leave, many are now wrapping in menopause-specific care.
Doing so was a “no brainer,” said Nathalie Grenache, the senior vice president of people and culture at the health care company Sanofi, which began offering such menopause benefits to employees in October.
“If you feel truly supported throughout your life cycle, whether it is maternity or menopause, you’ll be more engaged,” she said.
Symptoms associated with the transition to menopause, which can last a decade, are often a drag on women’s careers. A study by the Mayo Clinic found that 15 percent of women either missed work or cut back on hours because of menopause symptoms, and that loss of productivity costs women an estimated $1.8 billion each year. Researchers in the U.K. also found that those who reported at least one disruptive menopausal symptom at age 50 were 43 percent more likely to have left their jobs by age 55.
Corporate benefits that address menopause can include virtual access to the small pool of roughly 1,000 certified specialists in the country, who can be difficult to find locally, and coverage of often expensive hormone treatment, which may not be included in some insurance plans.
Providers of menopause support services say uptake has been fast. Peppy, a gender-inclusive telehealth company founded in 2018 in Britain, offers menopause support in workplaces and began offering services in the U.S. in January. EBay, Nvidia, Wiley and Capgemini are all clients. In October, the health care benefits provider Maven launched a menopause product, which provides employees with app-based telehealth access to specialists and therapists. Within nine months, more than 150 companies had signed up, said Kate Ryder, its chief executive and founder. It has become “the fastest selling product,” she added, “in the history of all Maven products.”
More than 40 percent of female workers are at least 45, the age at which women typically transition to menopause (though some studies suggest women of color might begin earlier). But despite the high cost and common experience of menopause, it has mostly been ignored in the workplace. A 2023 survey by Bank of America found that 58 percent of women felt uncomfortable talking about menopause at work.
Existing laws may require companies to make accommodations beyond benefits. Liz Morris, the deputy director at the Center for WorkLife Law, an advocacy and research organization at the University of California College of the Law, argues that a patchwork of laws could be used to cover for menopause symptoms. They include the new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that went into effect in June. It mandates employers provide accommodations for workers experiencing pregnancy, postpartum recovery and “related medical conditions,” which, Morris argued, could include the end of fertility.
Regardless of whether the so far untested argument holds up in court, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, who runs the women’s leadership center at the New York University School of Law, says corporate benefits won’t be enough: Both further research that can help prevent symptoms and laws that explicitly ban discrimination are needed.
Corporate benefits, Weiss-Wolf said, are, at best, “just scratching at the surface.”
Saudi Arabia’s winning streak in sports
Saudi Arabia lured its biggest soccer star in a summer of big signings this week: the Brazilian player Neymar joined the Al Hilal team from Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain on a contract that will reportedly pay him $165 million a year.
The focus on the kingdom’s sports spending in recent months has been on a tentative peace deal between the PGA Tour and its rival, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf. But Neymar’s signing was a reminder that Riyadh’s push to diversify began with the world’s most popular sport. And lessons from its first big sports acquisition could offer clues to what happens next elsewhere.
Buying Newcastle United was the start of a global push. A consortium led by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, bought the English Premier League team in 2021 from a British retail tycoon for about $370 million. But the deal was contentious, coming just three years after Saudi agents murdered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Success on the pitch helped dampen difficult questions. As the team has been transformed into one of the country’s best,questions about “sportswashing” have become less frequent, in what some have called a “deafening silence.” (This week, it was revealed that the British government invited Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, for an official visit.)
Saudi money is now being used to supercharge its domestic league. The signing last year of Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese player considered one of the sport’s best ever, seemed an anomaly. But the league created a huge fund potentially worth more than $1 billion to pick off stars from Europe’s top leagues. Teams spent about $500 million this summer alone. (Even Saudi fans are spending big: Fabinho, a Brazilian player who was signed from Liverpool, was given a Rolex by an enthusiastic supporter after his first match for Al-Ittihad last week.)
What next for Saudi’s global sports push? The P.I.F. is spending billions on everything from boxing to Formula One motor racing. It has held talks with the men’s ATP tennis tour about investments. Improbably, it will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029 and is also expected to bid for the soccer World Cup.
In Washington, calls persist for Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the P.I.F., to testify before a Senate committee about the putative PGA-LIV deal .
As for Newcastle, the team said on Thursday that the Saudi men’s national team would play two matches in September at St. James’ Park, its home ground. Saudi’s sports push is about to come full circle.
Quiz time, global stock markets edition
Despite a shaky August performance, stocks have had a strong year. Most of those gains came from the roughly $10 trillion global rally in the first half of 2023. What makes that surge all the more impressive is that inflation and geopolitical instability are crimping economic growth worldwide.
Which of the following is the best-performing stock index this year?
Answer: Argentina’s Merval index. It’s jumped nearly threefold since the start of the year (in local currency terms) as of Thursday’s close, and is up more than 45 percent in U.S. dollar terms, an extraordinary rise considering the country’s debt woes, inflation running above 100 percent and stalled growth. Over the same period, the Nasdaq was up roughly 27 percent, according to Refinitiv data.
Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
Thanks for reading! We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
Business
RFK Jr. Sought to Stop Covid Vaccinations 6 Months After Rollout
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s health agencies, formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all Covid vaccines during a deadly phase of the pandemic when thousands of Americans were still dying every week.
Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in May 2021 demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any Covid vaccine in the future.
Just six months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the Covid vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving their shots. Schools were reopening and churches were filling.
Estimates had begun to show that the rapid rollout of Covid vaccines had already saved about 140,000 lives in the United States.
The petition was filed on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy founded and led, Children’s Health Defense. It claimed that the risks of the vaccines outweighed the benefits and that the vaccines weren’t necessary because good treatments were available, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which had already been deemed ineffective against the virus.
The petition received little notice when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the public health establishment, and the agency denied it within months. Public health experts told about the filing said it was shocking.
John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Mr. Kennedy’s request to the F.D.A. “an appalling error of judgment.” Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, likened having Mr. Kennedy lead the federal health agencies to “putting a flat earther in charge of NASA.”
Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, described Mr. Kennedy’s effort to halt the use of Covid vaccines as a “massive error.”
Mr. Kennedy’s transition spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment, but has said recently that he does not want to take vaccines away.
Asked in November by an NBC reporter about his general opposition to Covid vaccines — and whether he would have stopped authorization — Mr. Kennedy said he was concerned that the vaccines did not prevent transmission of the virus.
“I wouldn’t have directly blocked it,” he said. “I would have made sure that we had the best science, and there was no effort to do that at that time.”
Mr. Kennedy’s early opposition to Covid vaccines has alarmed public health experts, many of whom contend that it should disqualify him from overseeing health agencies with the power to authorize, monitor and allocate funding for millions of vaccines each year.
They are also concerned about how he might handle a possible bird flu pandemic, which could necessitate a rapid deployment of vaccines.
As Mr. Kennedy prepares for his confirmation hearings before two Senate committees, he and his allies have insisted that he is not anti-vaccine.
In fact, in mid-2023, he told a House panel that he had taken all recommended vaccines — except for the Covid immunization.
At his confirmation hearings, he’ll most likely face scrutiny of his broader statements on vaccines, including that the polio vaccine cost more lives than it saved.
Mr. Trump has stepped forward in recent weeks to defend Mr. Kennedy after The New York Times reported that one of Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers had previously petitioned the F.D.A. to revoke approval or pause distribution of several polio vaccines over safety concerns.
“I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think,” Mr. Trump said last month.
After the Times report, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy expressed their support for the polio vaccine.
If confirmed by the Senate as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, Mr. Kennedy would assume oversight of $8 billion in funding for the Vaccines for Children program and would have the authority to appoint new members to a panel that makes influential vaccine recommendations to states.
At the time Mr. Kennedy challenged the Covid vaccines, some of his objections touched on wider concerns about their rapid development. Emergency-use authorization — a preliminary form of approval — for immunizations was unusual. Others argued that a public health emergency dictated a speedier rollout.
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, said it would be reasonable to debate whether Covid vaccines should have been subject to additional study.
But she profoundly disagreed with Mr. Kennedy’s views, saying that “the idea that in early 2021 that you could be saying that people over the age of 65 don’t need Covid vaccines — that’s just nuts.”
Vaccines have rare side effects, and there have been cases of injury from the Covid shots. Government officials weigh the harms against the potential to save lives. An estimate released in early 2024 found that the Covid vaccines and mitigation measures saved about 800,000 lives in the United States.
Another study found that in late 2021 and 2022, Covid death rates among unvaccinated people were 14 times the rates of those who had received a Covid booster shot. Researchers also estimated that from May 2021 through September 2022, more than 230,000 deaths could have been prevented among people who declined initial Covid inoculations.
From the start of the Covid vaccine campaign, Mr. Kennedy’s view that the Covid vaccines were dangerous put him at odds with Mr. Trump, whose Operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines was one of his policy triumphs. And Mr. Kennedy went on a concerted campaign against the vaccine.
Mr. Kennedy told Louisiana lawmakers in late 2021 that the Covid vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
He has remained a plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Biden and others, contesting efforts by government officials to limit his ability to suggest on social media that Covid vaccines were not safe.
In January 2021, Mr. Kennedy suggested on Facebook that the death of the baseball legend Hank Aaron, 86, was related to a Covid vaccine he had received 17 days earlier. It was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths” following Covid vaccines, he claimed. A doctor who was vaccinated alongside Mr. Aaron and the county medical examiner dismissed the claim.
In May, when Mr. Kennedy petitioned the F.D.A. to “immediately remove Covid vaccines from the market,” he was joined by Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board and a physician in Maine.
Her medical license was initially suspended on an emergency basis in early 2022 for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to patients with severe cases of Covid, including one who was intubated, Maine medical board records show.
She later sued the board, claiming that it retaliated against her for exercising her right to free speech. The case is pending.
In 2022, Mr. Kennedy and others filed a lawsuit against the F.D.A. on behalf of Children’s Health Defense and parents who said they were concerned that their children would be given Covid vaccines without their knowledge or consent. The amended lawsuit, filed in July 2022, sought a court order requesting that the agency reconsider granting authorization for Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines for children.
A Texas appeals court dismissed the case in early 2024, concurring with a lower court that the plaintiffs did not face a “concrete or imminent” risk of harm. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
Mr. Kennedy also sent letters to the F.D.A. threatening legal action if vaccine authorizations for children were granted.
Covid vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna for infants and children 6 months to 11 years old remain in use under emergency authorization, according to the F.D.A. Spokesmen for Pfizer and for Moderna said the companies are pursuing full approval for all ages.
Mr. Kennedy claimed in the censorship case that top Biden administration officials had coerced social media platforms to silence him, mostly during the summer of 2021. At the time, vaccine rates were stalling. People who were not vaccinated began to die at higher rates. Some who died were young; their loved ones said they were confused by conflicting messages on social media — or regretted that they had not gotten the vaccine.
Records in the lawsuit outline a briefing that summer with Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, both of whom criticized social media companies for allowing the spread of misinformation that was influencing people against vaccination.
“And we can’t wait longer for them to take aggressive action because it’s costing people their lives,” Dr. Murthy said on July 15, 2021.
Mr. Biden expressed outrage the following day, telling reporters that social media companies that hosted vaccine misinformation were “killing people.”
In legal filings, Mr. Kennedy said that he had been named one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by a prominent advocacy group — and that he was one of the people the White House was targeting. Exhibits in the lawsuit show that White House officials leaned on social media companies to take down misinformation.
Within a month, a senior Facebook executive reported to Dr. Murthy that it had removed a number of pages or groups, including Mr. Kennedy’s, court records show.
The Supreme Court dismissed an associated case last summer, and an appeals court dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s case late last year. Lawyers representing Mr. Kennedy and others are still working on obtaining depositions of about 30 people, mostly Biden administration officials.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.
Business
Supreme Court upholds law that could force TikTok to shut down in U.S.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that calls for the shutdown of the U.S. operations of social media app TikTok due to privacy and security concerns related to its Chinese owner.
The justices in a unanimous opinion said the 2024 law does not violate the 1st Amendment or its protection for freedom of speech. The ruling means 170 million Americans may lose access to the popular social media platform as soon as Sunday.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court said in an unsigned opinion. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. .. we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ 1st Amendment rights.”
The decision appears to leave the U.S. fate of TikTok to either a last-minute sale by its Chinese owners, or a reprieve from President Biden or President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump takes office on Monday, the day after the shut-down law is due to take effect. Recently, Trump has said he will try to work out a deal that keeps TikTok in operation, presumably by separating it from Chinese government control.
Last year, the House and Senate by large bipartisan votes approved the shut-down law, citing national security fears that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was gathering data on tens of millions of Americans.
Congress decided TikTok must separate itself from its ownership by a “foreign adversary.”
In defense of the law, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that TikTok and ByteDance “collect vast swaths of data about tens of millions of Americans,” which China “could use for espionage or blackmail.”
In its 20-page “per curiam” opinion Friday, the court said the case turned on the ownership and control of TikTok, not free speech.
While TikTok is “operated in the United States by TikTok Inc., an American company incorporated and headquartered in California,” its “ultimate parent company is ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company that has operations in China. ByteDance Ltd. owns TikTok’s proprietary algorithm…and is subject to Chinese laws that require it to ‘assist or cooperate’ with the Chinese government’s ‘intelligence work’ and to ensure that the Chinese Government has ‘the power to access and control private data’ the company holds.”
Second, the court said the shut-down law is not targeted at speech or expression. The 1st Amendment protects against the government’s efforts to control the “content” of the speech, but that is not at issue in this case, the court said.
The law “does not regulate the creators…and directly regulates ByteDance and TikTok only through the divestiture requirement.”
The free-speech advocates who sued to block the law “have not identified any case in which this court has treated a regulation of corporate control as a direct regulation of expressive activity or semi-expressive conduct. We hesitate to break that new ground in this unique case.”
Biden and his administration tried and failed to make progress on a separation agreement. Government lawyers told the court they did not find ByteDance to be trustworthy.
But Trump may see it differently. Though he originally supported efforts to ban TikTok in the U.S., he recently changed his position. “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said last month.
One provision of the law allows the president to give TikTok a 90-day extension if it is determined there has been “significant progress” toward arranging a “qualified divestiture” from its foreign owners.
Business
Musk and Zuckerberg Reflect New Blows Against D.E.I. Policies
The war on D.E.I. intensifies
Even before Donald Trump won in November, the conservative backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion policies was going strong.
But new revelations about the next Trump administration’s efforts to constrain what’s commonly known as D.E.I. — and corporate titans’ willingness to put such programs aside — suggest just how strident the pushback will be.
Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative is eyeing big cuts to federal diversity programs, according to The Washington Post. The nongovernmental panel, the Department of Government Efficiency, is said to be considering a report by a right-wing civil rights group that claims to have identified more than $120 billion in potential cuts in D.E.I.-related programs.
Among them, according to The Post, are ending programs to benefit Black farmers and businesses, as well as a Biden-era executive order reserving 15 percent of federal contracts for minority-owned businesses. (Separately, the F.B.I. confirmed that it had closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, prompting Trump to express anger that it had existed at all.)
The Times shed more light on Mark Zuckerberg’s move to unwind D.E.I. at Meta. In a meeting with Stephen Miller, the influential Trump aide, Zuckerberg signaled that he would do nothing to obstruct the president-elect’s agenda of cracking down on corporate D.E.I. culture. The tech mogul said new guidelines were coming — and soon after announced a rollback of content moderation rules and an end to Meta’s D.E.I. efforts.
Moreover, Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg, his former longtime lieutenant who was known for cultural advocacy programs like Lean In, for encouraging employee self-expression in the workplace, The Times adds. (The revelation stoked outrage online.)
The news underscores how defenses of D.E.I. are faltering. Many companies had already been rethinking their commitment to diversity programs before Trump’s victory, especially after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action at universities. But several corporate giants, including Amazon and McDonald’s, have ended or scaled back such programs post-election.
For some corporations, work on diversity will still take place, using language that isn’t as politically charged. But as corporate leaders respond to pressure from ascendant right-wing activists and seek to get on Trump’s good side, the pressure on D.E.I. isn’t going away.
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In related news: Meta’s chief technology officer said the company had mishandled how it rolled out changes to diversity policies and content moderation. And for some workers whose careers haven’t advanced how they like, diversity programs may have simply been an excuse to sugarcoat the real reason they were passed over, according to a Wall Street Journal column.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Israel’s security cabinet meets to approve the cease-fire deal. The vote is taking place after Israeli and Hamas negotiators resolved remaining disputes, with ministers expected to clear the agreement this weekend. If approved, Israel would withdraw eastward and both sides would release hostages or prisoners, potentially paving a path to ending the 15-month war.
China’s economy grows, but its population shrinks again. New data showed that the Chinese economy grew 5 percent last year, with increased exports and investment in manufacturing offsetting a slump in construction. But Beijing also disclosed that China’s population fell for a third straight year, despite an unexpected rise in births, portending a longer-term challenge to economic growth.
The Biden administration files a final flurry of regulatory actions. Regulators including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department struck settlements with companies including American Express, Block, General Motors and Toyota, and recommended charges against the parent of Snapchat. They’re a last burst of oversight actions before the Trump administration, which is expected to take a lighter hand in regulating business, takes office next week.
Markets feel reassured by Bessent
Bitcoin, stock futures and government bonds — all are rallying modestly on Friday, the final trading day of the Biden era.
Their fortunes appear to be buoyed by renewed bullishness for the next Trump administration, with investors feeling relieved about what they’ve heard from the president-elect’s Cabinet picks on how they intend to operate.
Markets were especially heartened by Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary pick, Scott Bessent. In his confirmation hearing on Thursday, Bessent played down the inflationary risks of Trump’s agenda.
Here are the highlights:
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Bessent called for renewing and extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts to avert “economic calamity.” But while he said cutting fiscal spending was also important, he was noncommittal about repealing the country’s debt ceiling and said entitlement programs like Medicare would be safe.
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He said tariffs should be imposed on select countries to fix trade imbalances or used as leverage to negotiate favorable trade deals. A new round directed at China seems inevitable. In response, China is zeroing in on American chipmakers.
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Bessent said that Fed independence is key to American fiscal stability. But he warned that Trump, who has long grumbled about high interest rates, was still “going to make his views known.”
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He demurred on the idea of the Fed creating a digital currency. Still, Bloomberg reports that Trump is expected to designate crypto as a national priority. Speculation is also growing that Trump will greenlight a federal Bitcoin reserve.
Other confirmation hearings raised questions about how the second Trump administration was shaping up. Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the choice for interior secretary, criticized renewables as part of a wider national “electricity crisis.” The country needed to refocus on fossil fuels to maintain its global lead in energy-intensive sectors like artificial intelligence, he added.
But Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, dodged questions about Trump’s repeated vows to roll back or scrap the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate legislation.
And Scott Turner, the former N.F.L. player tapped to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, offered little detail about how he would address a housing crunch. His lack of clarity came as new Freddie Mac data showed mortgage rates hitting an eight-month high.
The surge is pricing some prospective buyers out of the market — despite the Fed having lowered borrowing costs — in a trend that has alarmed some market watchers.
The TikTok countdown continues
As TikTok nears a potential ban in the United States, elected officials are racing to find ways to delay a crisis that many of them helped stoke by backing the law behind the punishment.
Here’s where things stand.
President Biden is trying to make it Donald Trump’s problem. An administration official told NBC News that the White House was “exploring options” to forestall the app from going dark. Biden also does not plan to fine the companies that host the TikTok app, like Google and Apple, according to NBC News.
That would leave it up to Trump to enforce any punishments against TikTok and its partners. The president-elect has been weighing an executive order to let the app keep running until a U.S. buyer is found, though it is unclear how effective that would be.
Senate Democrats scrambled to arrange a delay. Lawmakers led by Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Cory Booker of New Jersey have sought to pass a bill giving TikTok more time to find a buyer. But Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, objected, citing concerns about dangers posed by the app.
A spokesperson for Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, told The Wall Street Journal that the minority leader spoke with Biden on Thursday about creating a delay.
TikTok’s C.E.O. is continuing to court Trump as well. In addition to sitting on the dais for the inauguration with top Cabinet picks and other tech moguls, Shou Chew is hosting a party for pro-Trump creators Sunday night, which will cost TikTok about $50,000 to throw.
Chew is also expected to attend a Trump victory rally on Sunday at the Capital One Arena, sitting in the suite of Raul Fernandez, a Trump donor and a partner at Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the sports team owner.
Musk’s gaming rank
Elon Musk has famously and unapologetically clashed with regulators and heads of state. But he is coming up against opponents who appear to have touched a nerve: gamers who have questioned his claims to video game mastery.
A recap: Musk has boasted lately on X lately about his gaming prowess, including soaring to the top of the global leader boards in Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2. Such feats require skills, sure, but also a lot of screen time, leading skeptics to question how the C.E.O. of six companies and a key adviser to Donald Trump finds the time.
Online sleuths increasingly believe they have found the answer: They’ve accused Musk of paying others to use his accounts and put in the hours to boost his rankings.
A popular YouTube gaming personality named Asmongold in particular accused Musk of being disingenuous about his rapid rise to the top.
Musk has taken those charges personally. The billionaire has shared videos of himself in action as a way to prove he’s the real deal. Musk also fired back at Asmongold, saying of the YouTuber, “he is NOT good at video games.”
Others came to Asmongold’s defense, using X’s Community Notes feature to annotate Musk’s posts.
Given the level of discussion online, this spat feels like it’s far from over.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Rio Tinto and Glencore reportedly held talks last year about a deal, which would have combined two of the world’s biggest miners, though discussions aren’t currently active. (Bloomberg).
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Junior investment bankers beware: Artificial intelligence tools can write 95 percent of an I.P.O. prospectus in minutes, according to David Solomon, Goldman Sachs’s C.E.O. (FT)
Politics, policy and regulation
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Meet Ken Howery, the tech investor and friend of Elon Musk who will spearhead any deal talks with Denmark over Greenland. (NYT)
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A group representing Capitol Hill staffers who work for progressive lawmakers is pushing for a 32-hour workweek. (Politico)
Best of the rest
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A SpaceX rocket broke up on Thursday during a test flight, forcing the F.A.A. to divert several commercial flights to avoid the debris. (CNBC)
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David Lynch, the director behind classic movies and TV shows including “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Twin Peaks,” has died. He was 78. (NYT)
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