Business

➚ BUY: Hostiles. Stirring animal spirits have corporate warfare back on the agenda. Herc topped United Rentals’ $5 billion equipment takeover, and Honda kept the door open to a Nissan merger — provided Nissan fires its CEO.

➘ SELL: Friendlies. Europe is bracing for Trump tariffs, as the White House’s trade agenda makes few distinctions between allies and adversaries. Superhawk Peter Navarro, whose hardline nationalist ideas were stymied in Trump’s first term, is ascendant. (His jailhouse interview with Semafor’s Gina Chon last year is prescient reading.)

JPMorgan’s fintech fiasco heads to trial… Ukraine talks buoy Europe’s cheap energy hopes… KKR beats Bain in Japan battle… Nike + Kim Kardashian…

A MAGA investment manager is making the rounds in Washington this week with a proposal to turn Elon Musk’s government cost cuts into “DOGE dividend” checks for Americans. James Fishback, who was briefly an object of Wall Street fascination before launching an anti-woke fund this fall and becoming an adviser to DOGE, is proposing returning 20% of the initiative’s savings to tax-paying households.

“When consumers don’t get what they pay for, they’re entitled to a refund,” he told Semafor. Fishback says he met last week with the offices of Sens. Rick Scott and Roger Marshall and will be back on Capitol Hill this week with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

Trump relished seeing his name on checks cut to Americans during the pandemic. But even Musk admits that DOGE is unlikely to hit its $2 trillion target, which Fishback says would fund $5,000 rebates to 79 million households, and Republicans are already struggling to pay for an extension of Donald Trump’s tax cuts.

Trump is expected to make the case for investing in America when he speaks tomorrow at a Saudi-sponsored conference in Miami. CEOs making the trip to the Future Investment Initiative’s third gathering in Florida include Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi, Delta’s Ed Bastian, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Oracle’s Safra Catz, and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son — the latter three of whom gave Trump a big America First win with their Stargate AI moonshot. The event, an extension of the Saudi’s flagship Riyadh conference, has doubled the number of delegates since its 2023 launch.

Its impresario, Richard Attias, told Semafor he expects multibillion-dollar deals to be announced. Less clear is how its theme — “investing with purpose” — squares with a retreat from high-minded globalism. “Purpose-driven capital allocation is no longer just a philosophical ideal,” Attias said. “It’s the engine of 21st-century economic growth.”

The Delaware legislature will consider changes to its corporate law meant to stem an exodus of companies — many of them run by MAGA-converted CEOs — to more politically friendly states. The push comes after Tesla, SpaceX, Dropbox, Bill Ackman’s hedge fund, and other firms have shifted their legal homes outside the state, which gets more than a quarter of its revenue from incorporation fees and another 16% from associated business revenue that could be threatened if companies keep fleeing.

The new law would give powerful CEOs like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, who is said to be considering reincorporating Meta in Texas, more leeway to control their companies. They could do almost anything short of taking their companies private, assuming they have either the approval of independent board members or other shareholders. (They used to need both.)

Corporate lawyers have privately urged the governor to call a special session to pass the changes, people familiar with the matter said. Quick passage would put pressure on the Delaware Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s ruling against Musk’s $55 billion pay package at Tesla, which was twice approved by shareholders.

“This can’t wait,” one influential Wilmington lawyer told Semafor. “If this doesn’t pass, Delaware will become a footnote in history.”

Semafor is keeping tabs on the business community’s MAGA shift and the Trump administration’s crackdown on corporate diversity efforts. The news is coming fast, and we’ll bring you updates in each newsletter.

Ruffling feathers: America’s largest media conglomerate is facing regulatory scrutiny over its diversity practices. “I am concerned that Comcast and NBCUniversal may be promoting invidious forms of DEI,” Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr wrote in a letter informing Comcast chief Brian Roberts that the agency had opened an investigation.

Comcast embraced DEI across its business lines even before 2020 — it regularly received flawless scores from the Human Rights Council, and NBC News spun up a Black-focused news team — before retreating amid Trump’s election. Comcast is unusually vulnerable to FCC scrutiny because both its content (news stations) and the pipelines that deliver them (cable) are regulated by the agency.

Straw men: Federal agencies will no longer consider contractor DEI policies when doling out awards. Government contractors like Boeing had already axed their diversity policies ahead of Trump’s election, while others like RTX moved rapidly to respond to Trump’s executive orders on the matter. Also: no more paper straws in government-operated cafeterias.

Calendar hold: BlackRock called off scheduled engagement meetings with companies after the Securities and Exchange Commission last week walked back guidance that had allowed big index-fund investors to privately press companies on “social and public interest issues” without running afoul of the rules, people familiar with the matter said. It’s a technical change with wide-ranging repercussions that could hasten big investors’ retreat from pushing progressive corporate policies. BlackRock declined to comment.

“Companies may bear the brunt of this change, as they miss out on valuable feedback from their largest long-term holders,” said Jessica McDougall, who spent seven years on BlackRock’s investment stewardship team and now advises investors and boards.

Even as Trump cracks down on the flow of fentanyl, a new Tijuana trade has cropped up — in eggs. Consumers, tired of sky-high prices and grocery store buying limits caused by rising bird flu outbreaks among chicken flocks, have begun to smuggle eggs across the Mexican border, ABC News reports.

The CEO of a plant-based startup challenging Big Agriculture told Semafor that the political finger-pointing — Trump’s economic team says Biden was slow to respond to the outbreaks — misses a bigger point that could gain salience in RFK Jr.’s push to Make America Healthy Again.

“The problem is industrial egg production,” said Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just, which makes an egg substitute made from mung beans. “If you put animals in tight spaces, they’re going to get sick.”

Sales of his company’s product, Just Eggs, grew five times faster over the past month than in the same period a year ago, according to SPINS, which tracks consumer shopping data. Sales at the top three retailers — Walmart, Kroger, and Albertsons — are up 70% from a year ago. “Retailers are beginning to think about how they can better prepare for this inevitable continuing issue,” said Tetrick, who shared photos of stores where his company’s product is the only one on empty egg shelves.

“If RFK Jr. came out tomorrow for a push toward pasture-raised eggs, I would put on a ‘Make America Healthy Again’ hat,” said Tetrick, a Democrat whose laptop bears a “Yes we Kam” sticker. Just Eggs are produced at a plant in a deep-red Minnesota district where the company has refitted soybean and corn silos to house mung beans.

As Washington shifts its attention to Iran and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the central hub for negotiations on two of the toughest issues facing the Trump administration, Al Arabiya’s Chief International Anchor Hadley Gamble writes in a Semafor column.

“Saudi Arabia has emerged as the definite counterweight to Israel. To put it another way: If the president sees Israel as the center of American influence in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is the US’ essential partner,” Gamble wrote.