During his first week in office, President Trump issued a barrage of executive orders, signing sweeping directives on immigration, D.E.I., energy policy, trade, TikTok and more. The blizzard of activity — some of which is bound to be challenged in court — was overwhelming. Here’s our cheat sheet.
Tariffs and the economy
President Trump had long threatened to enact tariffs on Day 1 in office. Five days and dozens of executive orders later, there’s surprisingly little to show.
The good news: That’s delighted market watchers. The S&P 500 hit a fresh record this week, bolstered by a slew of solid corporate earnings, and a calm settled over the Treasuries market that suggests investors no longer see Trump tariffs as an immediate threat.
The less-good news: Though Trump himself has softened his tone on tariffs, analysts still think he’s likely to slap them at least on China (Goldman Sachs economists this week gave it 70 percent odds). Tariffs could lead to a wider trade war that saps global growth and potentially accelerates inflation.
What we’re watching: What will the Fed say next week about economic growth, and will inflation concerns force it to stand pat on interest rates? Will Trump ignore the warnings, anyway? After all, he does see tariffs as a revenue-driver, and he’s already put Jay Powell, the Fed chair, on notice about interest rates. “If I disagree, I will let it be known,” he told reporters this week. — Bernhard Warner
Diversity and inclusion
President Trump made it clear his attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs won’t be restricted to the federal government. On his second day in office, he instructed agencies to identify targets for “civil compliance investigations” related to their D.E.I. practices.
Companies were already rethinking their approach to D.E.I. Lawsuits, social media influencers and conservative politicians have led companies like Walmart, Meta and Ford to roll back their diversity commitments. Trump’s order adds to the pressure. On Friday, Target said it would halt its diversity and inclusion programs.
In general, legal experts consider policies that provide opportunities or benefits to a specific group based on race or gender to be vulnerable.
What we’re watching: Executives are anxious to find out which agencies will conduct investigations and enforcement actions, and what they may do to make examples out of target companies, said Jason Schwartz, the labor and employment co-chair at the law firm Gibson Dunn. But the biggest question in boardrooms is which companies will be the first targets. Schwartz said checking the list of “woke companies” on the website of America First Legal, a Trump-aligned group, might be “a good starting place for hints.” — Sarah Kessler
Always dealing
If there’s one organizing principle driving the Trump administration, it’s the man himself. His litany of threats and initiatives, from tariffs to corporate investment to the border, are all tied together. They’re targets for a deal, and he’s the deal-maker in chief.
Still going off script. In what was meant to be a promotional appearance at Davos for the president, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America lobbed a softball question, but Trump, joining via satellite, lashed out at the executive, accusing him of debanking conservatives and other supporters. Moynihan seemed to ignore the comment (or didn’t hear it) but the debacle highlighted the pitfalls of trying to work with Trump. A House committee is now investigating the issue.
Asymmetric deal-making. Tariffs are more than just ploys to raise revenue. Trump uses them as an all-purpose cudgel, linking tariffs to immigration or the sale of TikTok. His threat of a 25 percent tariff on Mexico, for example, was aimed at tightening the U.S. border against immigrants and drugs, not unfair trade. Trump threatened a 100 percent levy on China if Beijing refused to sell TikTok to a U.S. company.
The Elon Musk factor. Both Trump and the richest man in the world crave the spotlight, and they might soon find the world stage too small to share. One of the first fissures came a day after Trump was sworn in, when Musk dismissed a $100 billion A.I. initiative that was the president’s first major tech deal. Trump said he wasn’t bothered by it, but his staff was.
What we’re watching: Business leaders have been bullish over a Trump administration that plans to lower taxes, loosen regulations and allow for more deal-making. But at what point do Trump’s whims become a liability for business and the markets? — Edmund Lee
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Banks prepared to sell their X debt. Next week, Morgan Stanley and other banks plan to offload as much as $3 billion of the debt they lent to finance Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now called X. But it may not be easy. Musk recently told X staff in an email: “Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even.”
The Trumps’ meme coins retained billions in value. The $TRUMP and $MELANIA cryptocurrency tokens, introduced just days before President Trump’s inauguration, had a combined market cap of about $6 billion as of Friday. The speculative assets were immediately condemned by ethics experts as a profiteering effort and a conflict of interest. On Thursday, President Trump issued an executive order to support the cryptocurrency industry.
TikTok returned — but not to app stores. After the Supreme Court backed a law forcing ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban, the app briefly went dark. It started working again after President Trump said he would issue an executive order to pause the law’s enforcement. But Apple and Google, which removed the app from their stores to comply with the law, have not made it available to download again. Now American tech companies that support TikTok face a dilemma — follow the law or the president?
Companies promised to spend fortunes on A.I. data centers. On Tuesday, President Trump announced a $100 billion initiative for a vast network of computing centers called Stargate, whose backers include OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. The project drew scorn from Elon Musk — an archrival to OpenAI’s Sam Altman — and the two tech moguls sparred over its viability. Elsewhere, Meta announced it would increase its spending on data centers this year to as much as $65 billion.
Greenland’s investors and ‘the language of force’
Greenland’s minister of mineral resources and her staff on Monday piled into the prime minister’s office in the capital Nuuk to catch President Trump’s inaugural address. “We watched it with intensity,” Naaja Nathanielsen told DealBook’s Vivienne Walt. “We were very curious to hear if he mentioned Greenland. He did not.”
The relief was fleeting. Trump said on Tuesday he still intends to acquire the self-governing Arctic island — by force if necessary — from Denmark, of which it has been a part since the 1810s. “I am confident Denmark will comply,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. (Denmark’s prime minister reportedly insisted otherwise in a contentious phone call with Trump last week.)
Trump’s interest has started to spook some potential investors, and the stakes are high. As well as being a strategic gateway for Arctic shipping, Greenland holds some of the world’s richest rare-earth deposits, which are coveted by the West and China because they are crucial for making high-end electronics and electric vehicles.
Nathanielsen, 49, not only oversees the ministry in charge of Greenland’s mineral reserves. She is also the minister for business, trade, and gender equality.
And now she has another job: parsing Trump’s Greenland statements to anxious staff and investors. If talks were to turn serious — a big if — her department and adjacent agencies would likely be a key part of them.
The message is muddled. Since Trump’s election, Greenland’s roughly 57,000 residents have watched the debate over their island unfold from thousands of miles away. “We feel unexpressed and insecure,” one told DealBook. “It is as if we have become part of a reality show.”
A psychologist by training, Nathanielsen said it’s been difficult to analyze the president’s intentions. Trump’s comment that U.S. ownership and control of Greenland is necessary for the security of the United States and the world “caused some confusion,” she said. “What is it the U.S. wants to do?”
Any negotiation between the two sides would be lopsided: The United States, with the world’s biggest economy and military, and a gross domestic product of $27.7 trillion, has set its sights on Greenland, the world’s biggest island with a minuscule G.D.P. of $3.24 billion, according to the World Bank.
If the island wants to talk to someone on Trump’s side, who does it call? Donald Trump Jr.? He made a one-day visit to Nuuk on Jan. 7, but set up no government meetings, puzzling local officials. Nathanielsen said Greenlanders had little interest in becoming part of the United States. “We have issues with the Danish state about our time as a colony,” she said. “But it does not follow from that that we want to be Americans.”
“Investors are concerned about what is going to happen,” Nathanielsen said, especially given “the language of force.”
American companies are particularly sparse on the ground, heavily outnumbered by Canadian, British and Australian businesses. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have backed KoBold Metals, a company that is using A.I. to hunt for rare earth minerals on Greenland’s west coast. But they invested through a British company, Blue Jay Mining.
But there are plenty of business opportunities on the island. Shipping routes are expanding as the polar cap melts, and there are vast untapped reserves of water for hydropower, and strategic minerals — all within a four-hour flight from New York.
That flight will be possible starting in June, when United Airlines opens the first-ever U.S.-Greenland route. “It will absolutely change the way we do things,” Nathanielsen said. She listed one immediate idea: Arctic deepwater fish, delivered fresh to New York’s top restaurants.
Time to talk to Washington. Nathanielsen told DealBook her 30-person team is trying to start a tourism industry, shepherd new mining projects, attract investors and issue business licenses.
To drum up U.S. business, Greenland opened a two-person office within the Danish Embassy in Washington in 2020. “We had been stepping up direct marketing efforts, actually funded by the U.S. State Department,” Nathanielsen said. That work has been complicated by Trump’s talk of tariffs.
A welcome respite: After weeks of worry and talk about Trump among Nathanielsen’s staff, this week two heavy snowstorms hit Nuuk, ripping the roofs off some factories. As the ministry’s permanent secretary, Jorgen Hammeken-Holm, put it: for a few days, “that turned our interest in another direction.”
Barry Sternlicht’s second act
Sleek W hotel lobbies and the Heavenly Bed: These are some of the legacies of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, the hospitality giant that the real estate investor Barry Sternlicht founded 20 years ago, and that eventually sold to Marriott for more than $13 billion.
The Starwood name disappeared years ago. But, DealBook’s Michael de la Merced is first to report, Sternlicht is bringing it back, as he seeks to make another mark on the hotel industry.
Sternlicht left the original Starwood in 2005, after turning it into a formidable competitor to older hotel giants like Marriott and Hilton, to focus on real estate investing. He re-entered the hotel-management business a decade later, creating SH Hotels and Resorts as the parent company of three new brands — but his aspiration was always to reclaim the Starwood name.
He finally bought it back last year from Marriott, which had stopped using it.
The new Starwood is his effort to prove he still has what it takes. Starwood 1.0 saw the creation of W as an international lifestyle brand, and put an emphasis on guest experiences that rivals copied. “The industry needed an outsider to say, ‘What’s important to hotel guests?’” Bjorn Hanson, a hospitality consultant, told DealBook.
This time around, Sternlicht’s hotel business is focused on several lifestyle brands: Baccarat, a high-end chain full of French crystal chandeliers; 1 Hotels, an environmentally minded upscale brand; and Treehouse, a more playful concept.
He’s also focusing on international expansion, with new outposts expected in Crete, Mexico, Italy, the Maldives and Saudi Arabia. (Sternlicht told DealBook he has considered selling a small piece of the business to fund international growth.)
What’s driving Sternlicht? “I’m kind of like a singer having one song,” he told DealBook. “I want to have two songs.”
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