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Recruitment, development, career transition. LHH, a beautiful working world. Discover recruitment solutions at LHH.com slash beautiful. In a few minutes, how to keep some of the U.S. in U.S. steel if the big Japanese steel company goes ahead and buys it.
I'm David Brancaccio in New York. First weeks after halting instruction on a major wind power project off the coast of New York, the Trump administration reversed course last week and allowed the Empire Wind Project to proceed. It's a piece of good news for an industry that had been hit by high financing costs. But then there's the budget bill in Congress. Daniel Ackerman reports.
One person who's happy that Empire Wind is back under construction is Gordon Vidal. Literally this morning, we just got another contract, so things are looking good. Vidal's company, Sea Services, helps ensure that offshore wind construction doesn't damage undersea cables or other infrastructure. We provide safety vessels to make sure the assets are protected.
And while Vidal is glad to work on the $5 billion Empire Wind project, expected to power half a million homes, he's less confident about what comes next.
Because all the policy whiplash, he says, could chill new investment. President Trump signed an executive order aimed at halting offshore wind, even as he declared the country to be in an energy emergency. David Victor, an energy researcher at UC San Diego, says offshore wind projects already take years to plan and finance, and the federal government's stance isn't helping.
You're not quite sure what they're doing or why they're doing or whether they're going to come after you next. The Republican budget bill could also eliminate federal tax credits for offshore wind, says Oliver Metcalf, head of wind energy research at Bloomberg NEF. If we see the end of tax credits, then making the economic case for any future projects would be very, very difficult.
And this could put a dent in domestic manufacturing, too. Chris Oleth has the think tank Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, and she says companies had announced plans to build equipment here in the U.S., including underwater transmission cables. Now, though?
The policies of the Trump administration are actually pushing these supply chain and manufacturing companies to other countries. But Olath says states remain committed to offshore wind, especially in the Northeast, where demand for energy is high, but there's not much room for siting projects on land.
Alicia Janae Artesa is with the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, and she says, Yes, it's a three to four year delay from the federal level, but there is a lot of work to be done on the state side. And so we can work on building out our transmission infrastructure. So that someday down the line, she says, the state will be ready to buy power from a new crop of offshore wind projects. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.
After the S&P 500 went up 2% yesterday, the talk among market participants is a sense, perhaps unfounded in reality, but a sense that the big Trump tariff shocks are now behind us. This after sudden new tariffs on Europe were quickly delayed for some weeks. With Memorial Day behind us, is it time to relax for the summer and set portfolios on cruise control until Labor Day? The expression on markets is sell in May and go away.
Well, don't think so. Susan Schmidt is portfolio manager at Exchange Capital Resources. Absolutely no way you can take your eye off the ball or ignore the markets this summer because you don't know what news is going to come out of the administration. So investors, while they're reacting very positively this week to news that we're delaying tariffs to Europe and that there might be a solution this
it's not going to reduce their attention to the market this summer because too much can still change and that volatility is going to continue. Yeah, I mean, truth social is still there and the president of the United States likes to use it in the middle of the night. And anyone who's going to go off to the Hamptons in eastern Long Island,
thinking they can turn off the news in the investment business is fooling themselves. Absolutely. They just can't leave. We're seeing such aggressive swings in the market by statements that President Trump is making that investors know things are going to keep moving around. Despite the euphoria this week that it may be behind us, it's really wishful thinking. Most investors realize that this is going to continue throughout the summer. They're going to need to stay alert to figure out what's happening in the market.
You think? Susan Schmidt, Portfolio Manager at Exchange Capital Resources. She's based in Chicago. Thank you. Thank you.
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The sale of U.S. steel to the Japanese firm Nippon Steel appears close, and it's expected to give an unusual role to the U.S. government. Multiple news outlets are reporting the United States may receive what's being styled as a golden share in U.S. steel. Marketplaces Henry Epp is following this golden share business.
It's veto power over some company decisions, most likely. It's not clear at this point what exactly a golden share would entail in the case of U.S. Steel, but it could limit the company's ability to move or shut down production. If it goes forward, this would be an unusual setup, at least for the U.S. It's rare for the federal government to have a position like this in a publicly traded company, but it has happened before. One example is the government's controlling stake in General Motors in exchange for bailing out the company during the 2008 financial crisis.
That was not a permanent position, though. The federal government sold off the last of its GM shares in 2013. Henry, we've been talking about Nippon Steel maybe buying U.S. Steel for I think it's over a year. What else do we know about the emerging deal?
Yeah, Nippon is reportedly in line to buy U.S. Steel for $55 per share. It's been trading well below that level, but its share price jumped yesterday. U.S. Steel is headquartered in Pittsburgh, and Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick told CNBC that in addition to that so-called golden share, the company would have an American CEO and the majority of its board would be from the U.S.,
President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind this deal, which is a reversal from last year when he joined then-President Joe Biden in opposing the takeover. Trump is set to hold an event at U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh on Friday. The United Steelworkers Union has long opposed selling U.S. Steel to Nippon, and last week it urged the president to block the sale.
All right. And as a reminder not to trust the stuff you see at the top of online searches, often aided by artificial intelligence. Microsoft Bing is telling me here, I'm referring to the very first thing in bold at the top of the search return. That quote, the Pittsburgh Steelers have been known by several names throughout history, including Nippon Steelers, unquote. Baloney, not true, wrong.
Now, a search of Microsoft's co-pilot's standalone AI didn't make the same ridiculous mistake, but this tech can save or ruin careers. In New York, I'm David Brancaccio, Marketplace Morning Report. From APM, American Public Media.
Can we invest our way out of the climate crisis? Five years ago, it seemed like Wall Street was working on it until a backlash upended everything. So there's a lot of alignment between the dark money right and the oil industry on this effort. I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive, a podcast from Marketplace. In this season, we investigate the rise, fall, and reincarnation of climate-conscious investing.
Listen to How We Survive wherever you get your podcasts.