Business
Trump, the Deal Maker in Chief, Is Back
The questions facing a new Trump era
Good morning on this Inauguration Day. Welcome to Round 2 of President Donald Trump. No matter your politics, it is likely to be a historic ride.
For business and policy leaders, the next administration is expected to be filled with deals of all sorts — from White House agreements brokered over secure phone lines with foreign powers to congressional backroom pacts to headline-making deals negotiated by Wall Street.
This is a transactional president, perhaps the most transactional ever. He wants to engage with the business community, which is a big distinction from the Biden administration. He takes great pride in publicly name-dropping the C.E.O.s he’s talking with. “Today, I spoke with Tim Cook of Apple,” he told supporters last night. “He said they’re going to make a massive investment in the United States because of our big election win.”
Trump is rooting for big business, until he isn’t. He’s fickle. And uncertain.
That poses a big challenge for business leaders: How and when might Trump’s unpredictability emerge? Is there a red line? C.E.O. calculations have been that a second term means that uncertainty — something many dislike — is a certainty. But many think that they can manage it, or at least they tell themselves they can.
After Trump’s 2016 win, he invited tech C.E.O.s to meet with him (that was, of course, a photo op). They showed up, though many came reluctantly. Others joined his administration’s various councils only to depart when he said things that appeared to cross a line.
This time, many are all-in — at least for now. Some genuinely support him, or at least think he was better than the alternative. Others have taken an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude. Or it may be that his threats, real and imagined, are working. He said as much in a candid moment about his threats to arrest Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s C.E.O., and the company’s decision to abandon fact-checking on the platform, saying Zuckerberg’s decision was “probably” the result of those threats. (Many of these same people rebuked him after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021).
We will see how long the love affair with business lasts. It may be longer than some skeptics suggest. Now that he’s in power, the business community needs Trump to like them: It’ll need his support if deals and investments are to flourish; it needs him to push the corporate tax rate lower; and the crypto world needs him. (He also needs it given his and his family’s forays into the sector). All of this raises all sorts of questions, as we get into below.
We’ll be here, every morning, reporting on all of it, as well as raising and asking tough questions. I imagine there will be a lot of them. — Andrew Ross Sorkin
TikTok’s fuzzy future
TikTok users in the United States breathed sighs of relief on Sunday after the video platform began to resume service, thanks to Donald Trump’s pledge to suspend a ban of the app.
But while the president-elect took credit for saving the hugely popular app — “So I like TikTok! I had a slightly good experience, wouldn’t you say?” he said at a rally on Sunday — his thinly sketched proposal leaves some big questions unanswered.
What Trump said: His “initial thought,” he wrote on Truth Social, was a 50-50 joint venture between ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, and an unspecified American entity. It represented Trump’s favorite thing — a deal — and on the surface had some appeal.
Trump added that he envisioned ByteDance handing over half of the company to the U.S. and that the U.S. wouldn’t pay a dime. “Whether you like TikTok or not, we’re going to make a lot of money,” he said.
But hold on a second. Trump hasn’t addressed the thorny national security concerns that persuaded a bipartisan group of lawmakers and President Biden to back the TikTok ban, not to mention who controls the ByteDance algorithm that is the key to the app’s success.
Moreover, it’s not clear how Trump can legally get around the ban. While he has promised to issue an executive order saving the app, the law is still on the books — though Trump can choose how aggressively to enforce parts of it, legal experts say.
Republicans and their allies criticized Trump’s efforts to circumvent the law:
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Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned on X that any company that aids “communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law.”
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Speaker Mike Johnson added that he expected the law to be enforced: “The law is very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works,” he said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
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Joe Lonsdale, the venture capitalist who’s close to Trump allies like Peter Thiel, wrote on X, “Tomorrow he becomes POTUS, NOT King. Congress and SCOTUS were clear. He can give TikTok 90 days, then if it’s not sold, any company facilitating it is breaking the law.”
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And Elon Musk reiterated that while he didn’t believe in banning TikTok, he found it “unbalanced” that TikTok be allowed to operate in the U.S. but X remains blocked in China. (That said, China’s vice president, Han Zheng, met with Musk and other business leaders to say his country was open to American business.)
What next? Trump will need to flesh out his proposal in the coming days to persuade lawmakers and others that it’s legally sound. Meanwhile, other bidders for TikTok are circling, including the billionaire Frank McCourt, who has assembled a group that wants to buy the app without its key algorithm, and reportedly Perplexity, an artificial intelligence start-up.
For ByteDance’s U.S. investors, which include General Atlantic, Susquehanna and Sequoia, a preferred course — second only to keeping the whole thing intact — may well be to spin the company to themselves. But if China won’t let them keep the algorithm, what would they be left with?
Executive orders galore
In between the dining, dancing and speechifying, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to unveil a flurry of executive orders on Monday.
First up, according to Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, are major policy shake-ups for energy, immigration and border security, work protections for federal employees, as well as halting or scaling back key planks of the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
D.E.I. is also in the cross hairs. President Biden’s diversity, equity and inclusion measures for federal agencies are expected to be rolled back, just as big companies, such as Meta and Amazon, plan to eliminate or revamp some of these policies.
Electric vehicle credits are on the chopping block. Trump has long promised to undo the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that has supporters among some oil executives. It also extends credits to electric vehicle customers. Withdrawing those could dent sales of E.V.s.
That said, Elon Musk, Tesla’s C.E.O. and a key Trump ally, has suggested his company could weather a pullback.
Crypto bulls rejoice
Stock and bond markets are closed in the United States for Martin Luther King’s Birthday. But crypto trading is available — and it has helped mint Donald Trump as the latest crypto billionaire.
This weekend saw a frenzied rally for Donald Trump and Melania Trump meme coins, prompted by Trump himself. “GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW,” the president-elect told his followers on Truth Social this weekend.
It rallied further when Robinhood, the trading platform that made a big donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, began letting its customers trade the $TRUMP coin.
Bitcoin, which hit a record on Monday, and other digital tokens have soared since Election Day on the hope that the incoming administration will loosen regulation around the sector. That said, the rally in $Trump and $Melania tokens has astounded longtime market watchers.
Ethics watchdogs see the coin as a “profound conflict of interest” for Trump. Though organizers of the Trump coin say that buying it is neither a political donation nor an investment contract, skeptics say it raises questions about the president-elect benefiting from an industry he is supposed to be regulating.
There’s also the question of whether foreign governments could buy into the coin, potentially violating the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution.
“This may represent the single worst conflict of interest in the modern history of the presidency,” Norm Eisen, a White House ethics adviser during the Obama administration, told The Washington Post.
The big money behind the inauguration
As Donald Trump prepares to take office, one thing is becoming especially clear: Washington is increasingly becoming a city where it pays to pay up.
The inaugural committee has already raised more than $170 million, shattering a record set by the first Trump committee.
Corporations as well as donors have opened their wallets. Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft all gave millions to Trump this time, taking advantage of the more-permissive rules around donations for post-election activities such as the inauguration.
“Corporate America has embraced President Trump,” Brian Ballard, a powerful lobbyist and Trump fund-raiser, told The Washington Post. “Every corporate client I have wants to be a part of it.”
Critics of such donations point to a pay-to-play culture. An analysis by OpenSecrets of giving to the first Trump inauguration found that more than half of the 63 federal contractors who gave won multimillion-dollar bids in 2017.
Among them:
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For-profit prison operators, including CoreCivic and Geo Group, saw huge increases in contract awards.
David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Group, put it bluntly to The Times:
Big donors, he said, “would like to get the policies they believe in from the federal government — more oil drilling, easier antitrust policy, more favorable crypto policy, less bank oversight. They also want more support for helping American companies invest overseas, and have ready access to government officials.”
How Trump’s inauguration stacks up
The inauguration of Donald Trump as president will be a pricey and star-studded affair.
Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts and the Village People are set to perform. And Snoop Dogg headlined Friday’s black-tie “Crypto Ball,” a $2,500-a-ticket gala that hailed Trump as “the first crypto president.”
Inauguration celebrations have changed significantly over the course of American history: The more lavish the festivities, the greater the statement. On the unpretentious side were those for Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter. The co-chairman of Carter’s inaugural committee told The Times that the goal was “an inauguration which is traditional but modest in one, not extravagant.”
Barack Obama declined corporate donations for his first inauguration (though he still managed 10 official balls and a performance by Jay-Z) before accepting them for his second inauguration. President Biden’s pandemic-marred inauguration ended with fireworks, but there were no galas.
Trump’s festivities may draw comparisons to those of Ronald Reagan, whose 1981 inauguration fund set a record by raising $8 million (about $29 million in today’s money). As The Times described the day:
In white and black tie, in sequins and sables and clouds of perfume, Republican revelers stepped out tonight to the most lavish series of inaugural balls ever held in the nation’s capital.
It was an evening of shiny black limousines and nostalgic swing bands, of glittery Hollywood celebrities and wealthy Western oil men. The aura of big money was everywhere.
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After nearly 50 years of selling all things comics, Dark Horse is closing its Things From Another World retail locations.
The publishing house, well known for series such as “Hellboy” and “The Umbrella Academy,” operated two storefronts in Oregon and maintained a flagship store at L.A.’s Universal Citywalk. The Oregon shops will close in June, and the L.A. location will close in September. The company said in a statement that these closures are a part of its efforts to “modernize.”
“This was not an easy decision, and we do not take lightly the impact it has on the people directly affected,” Dark Horse said in a statement.
As the company moves away from the retail business, the Oregon-based publisher said it plans to focus more on its creators and writers, “ensuring they have the development support, creative partnerships, and resources to bring their visions to life across film and television.” Over the years, Dark Horse has become one of the largest comics publishers in the country.
The company also recently launched a games division focused on providing creators with development opportunities in interactive entertainment.
Dark Horse added, “We believe these changes further focus Dark Horse on its successful core publishing and collectibles business and on deepening our relationship with our fans and the retail community alike.”
The structural changes came a week after Dark Horse Media, which oversees Dark Horse Comics, was rolled into a new parent company, Fellowship Entertainment. The Stockholm-listed entertainment business was formed through a company split at Embracer Group. Under this separation, Fellowship Entertainment is now home to companies such as Dark Horse Media and Crystal Dynamics, as well as IPs such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “Tomb Raider.”
Dark Horse was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson. He had initially opened Pegasus Books in Bend, Ore., in 1980, with plans to become an author. But as the retail business expanded, he instead decided to get into the publishing industry with Dark Horse. In the first few years of the company, he popularized comic series based on movies such as “Star Wars,” “Aliens” and “Predator.” Today, the company represents over 350 properties across comics, books, films, television, electronic games, toys and collectibles.
The closing of Things From Another World at Universal Citywalk marks the loss of another legacy comic store in the city. In recent years, many storied shops such as Geoffrey’s Comics in Torrance, Earth-2 Comics in Sherman Oaks and Hi De-Ho Comics in Santa Monica have all been forced to close due in part to a struggling retail market.
Ferrari’s first-ever fully electric vehicle triggered some fans who said it looks more like an iPhone than an Italian supercar.
The $640,000 Ferrari Luce, which was unveiled on Wednesday, looks like a distant relative of many Apple products. It was built with the help of Jony Ive, the person who designed the look and feel of the Cupertino company’s iPhone, iPod and Macintosh through 2019.
“Legend has it that if you pull the Ferrari badge off the side of the new Luce you see an Apple logo underneath,” one user wrote on X.
A meme circulated portraying the Luce with iPhone applications photo-shopped onto the top, and another showing the car upside down and plugged into an iPhone charger.
To accommodate more batteries and seats, the new EV is bigger and boxier than most classic Ferraris. Ive’s design firm, LoveFrom, which he started in San-Francisco after leaving Apple, was brought in to try to meld the traditions of Ferrari with the new functionality and form allowed by a battery-powered engine.
In a marketing video, Ferrari’s chief design officer, Flavio Manzoni, said he sees the Luce “acting as a bridge between San Francisco and Maranello,” the northern Italian city where Ferrari is headquartered.
The four-door, five-seat car comes onto the scene at a difficult moment for electric vehicles, an industry that has been battered by President Trump’s policies.
Trump has cut EV incentives for manufacturers and customers, prompting several major automakers to move away from EV efforts and focus on gas-powered options.
A luxury EV effort from Sony and Honda, a high-tech vehicle dubbed Afeela, was shut down before it ever hit the road due to Honda paring back its EV offerings.
Legacy automakers such as Ferrari face a particularly difficult landscape for launching an EV, as die-hard fans are attached to traditional, gas-powered models.
Ferraris are known for roaring engines and bold, angular designs, a far cry from the smooth, rounded exterior of the Luce.
To be sure, aggressive redesigns often attract ridicule. The early electric Mustang models were shunned by some but have become popular.
One X user posted a meme with a photo of fictional Italian gangster Tony Soprano saying, “I don’t want any California bulls—.”
The online launch page for the car emphasizes that the Luce is “100% Ferrari.”
Still, Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s former chairman, told reporters on Tuesday that the automaker is “risking the destruction of a legend.”
Ferrari shares have fallen about 8% since the launch of the Luce, signaling investors’ concerns that the car won’t resonate with customers.
NEW YORK — Donald E. Newhouse, president of one of the largest family-controlled publishing companies in the nation and a former board chairman of the Associated Press, died Tuesday. He was 96 and died at his home in New Jersey, his family said.
During his career, Newhouse served as president of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., and head of Advance Publications’ newspaper group, which he navigated into the internet age.
“You reveled in his company. He filled you with energy and humor when you felt doubtful and weak,” said Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and Conde Nast’s chief content officer.
“He was scrupulous about not interfering in editorial business, but if you turned to him for counsel, he invariably offered judicious advice,” she said in an obituary released Tuesday night by the Newhouse family.
Newhouse, who lived in New York, spent nearly 50 years overseeing the 35 newspapers of Advance Publications, the media business started by his late father, Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., in 1922. His older brother, S.I. Newhouse Jr., was chairman of the company and oversaw Conde Nast magazines. He died in 2017.
Louis D. Boccardi, retired president and chief executive of the AP, said Newhouse was an extraordinary chairman for the cooperative.
“His voice was never the loudest in the room, but it was often the wisest,” Boccardi said. Newhouse was instinctively private, but behind that, Boccardi said, was a generous man, at home anywhere and curious about everything.
“He could come across as self-effacing and deferential, but in Don’s skilled hands those were qualities that made him an enormously strong and effective leader,” Boccardi said. “You don’t often see the adjective ‘warm’ attached to a titan of industry, but it applied to him.”
A man who didn’t chase the spotlight
Newhouse, born in 1929, was known for staying out of the public eye. A reporter once asked him to list the biggest chances he took in his career. The answer: “Inviting your questions.”
The usually reserved Newhouse did step into the spotlight when he took on the role of chairman of the Newspaper Assn. of America from 1993 to 1994 and then chairman of the AP board of directors from 1997 to 2002. He had served on the AP board for nine years before becoming its chairman.
“He was a smart and shrewd businessman but as thoughtful and kind a man as you’ll find. Being in his presence was always a joy,” said Doug Clifton, editor of one of Newhouse’s papers, the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, from 1999 to 2007.
Newhouse attended Syracuse University but never graduated, heading into the family’s newspaper business instead. He would regularly visit his newspapers but left the ultimate authority of running them to his publishers.
“Each of our newspapers operates independently, with publishers who are strong, who set policy for their individual organizations and who have the authority and responsibility of carrying out the policies they set,” he said in 1993 when taking over as chairman of the newspaper association.
Newhouse was known for spending money to make sure that papers got the best stories. Jim Willse, editor of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., from 1995 until 2010, said he would give “us all the resources we needed to make the Ledger really special.” Willse said Newhouse loved newspapers and newspaper people.
“He especially enjoyed it when we’d have a story about some politician caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or a spicy feature about stuffed shirts behaving badly,” Willse said.
Newhouse’s philosophy of spending money to produce quality coverage and a hands-off approach toward his editors led to many successes, including multiple Pulitzers.
Many of those newspapers were able to thrive and remain profitable because they dominated their market, but Newhouse said he was very much aware of what he called the “dramatically changing media landscape” and how people get their news.
“The 15th-century revolution was epitomized by the printing of the Gutenberg Bible; ours by Ted Turner’s cable news network and by web-based news sites — news in real time from anywhere to everywhere,” he said in 2004 at the rededication of a communications school named after his father at Syracuse University.
Three years later, he told one of his papers, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., that newspapers can survive “by producing content that is relevant, interesting, accurate and entertaining for newspapers and the internet.”
He steered through financial struggles
Yet the papers did ultimately struggle financially.
Advance was known in the industry for a pledge that employees who weren’t in a union would have jobs regardless of economic downturns or technological advances. In 2009, the company announced that the pledge would be withdrawn.
The company also moved away from daily publishing of several papers. In 2012, it announced that the Post-Standard; the Times-Picayune in New Orleans; the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Penn.; and the Birmingham News, the Press-Register of Mobile and the Huntsville Times, all in Alabama, would cease daily publication and would only offer print editions on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Those changes were accompanied by hundreds of layoffs.
“His conservative approach left both the papers and its employees somewhat unprepared for the realities of the internet,” said Thomas Maier, who wrote a 1994 biography of the family.
Newhouse’s eldest son, Steven, spearheaded the company’s growth on the internet and on mobile devices. Steven Newhouse is currently co-president of Advance Publications.
“My dad spent his life in the newspaper business and was devoted to it, built it up and enjoyed many good years. When it became more challenging, he was first in line to work through, finding solutions to keep the local journalism franchise going,” he said.
Newhouse is also survived by another son, Michael, daughter Katherine Mele and grandchildren. His wife, Susan, died in 2015.
Mayerowitz writes for the Associated Press.
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