TheChek News Flow

DoorDash has asked a California Superior Court judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Uber that accuses the food delivery company of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals.

DoorDash argues in its motion that Uber’s claim lacks merit on all fronts. On a post on its website on Friday, DoorDash said, “the lawsuit is nothing more than a cynical and calculated scare tactic from a frustrated competitor seeking to avoid real competition. It’s disappointing behavior from a company once known for competing on the merits of its products and innovation.”

In its post, DoorDash added that it will “vigorously” defend itself, and positioned the company as one that “competes fiercely yet fairly to deliver exceptional value to merchants.”

A hearing has been set for July 11 in California Superior Court in San Francisco County.

Uber filed its lawsuit against DoorDash in February. The ride-hailing giant alleged DoorDash, which holds the largest share of the food delivery market in the U.S., threatens restaurants with multimillion-dollar penalties or the removal or demotion of the businesses’ position on the DoorDash app.

Uber responded to the DoorDash request in a statement sent to TechCrunch.

“It seems like the team at DoorDash is having a hard time understanding the content of our Complaint,” reads the emailed statement from Uber. “When restaurants are forced to choose between unfair terms or retaliation, that’s not competition — it’s coercion. Uber will continue to stand up for merchants and for a level playing field. We look forward to presenting the facts in court.”

Uber requested a jury trial in its original complaint. The company has not specified the amount of damages it is seeking.

Separately, Deliveroo confirmed Friday that DoorDash offered to buy the European food delivery company for $3.6 billion.

We visited Ghosn in Lebanon where he’s avoiding arrest warrants from Japan and France

Key Points

• Carlos Ghosn, five years after fleeing Japan, remains in Lebanon, evading arrest warrants from France and Japan.
• Ghosn runs executive leadership programs at a Lebanese university, engaging with students and former business associates.
• Facing accusations of financial misconduct, Ghosn denies wrongdoing and criticizes Nissan and Renault’s performance since his departure.

He wakes up every morning at 5:30 a.m. His wife, Carole, wakes up later, and the two walk the beach with their golden retriever, Melqart—named for a Phoenician god who symbolized life and death—or exercise with a personal trainer in the $20 million pink mansion that Nissan claims is owned by the company. Other days, Ghosn takes out his 120-foot yacht, which Nissan also claims, though he never leaves Lebanese waters.

With Lebanese, French and Brazilian passports, Ghosn once described himself as a citizen of the globe. But after fleeing from Japan by hiding in an audio-equipment box on a private jet, he remains an international fugitive and is stuck in Lebanon, hemmed in by arrest warrants issued by French and Japanese prosecutors.

We met recently at a Lebanese university where Ghosn runs an executive-leadership program, and his aides handed out paper cups of espresso with the phrase, “Coffee increases happiness,” while his bodyguards kept watch outside.

A university colleague had stressed the need to arrive 30 minutes early, as Ghosn is always punctual. Ever the corporate executive, he wore a blue suit, with a shirt and a sweater, his hair graying gracefully for a 71-year-old.

“The ladies are taking care of you?” Ghosn asked as we sat down, still accustomed to the personal-assistant trappings of an international CEO.

No longer running a car empire, Ghosn explained that he has more time to read, and was currently halfway through the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Trust,” about a Wall Street titan who attempts to recast what he perceives to be a false narrative about his life. He’s also an investor in a winery that produces red and white blends, with vineyards dotted across the mountains of Lebanon.

Ghosn has worked, without a salary, for almost five years on the executive leadership programs for entrepreneurs at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, which is about 30 minutes north of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

For the first program, named “Business Strategies and Performance with Carlos Ghosn,” he roped in former associates from the business world to help provide lectures. These included Daimler’s Dieter Zetsche and Thierry Bolloré, the former chief executive of both Renault and Jaguar Land Rover.

The program initially cost $10,000 for Lebanese attendees and $20,000 for foreigners, with the proceeds going to the university. It was eventually perceived as too elitist, Ghosn said, and has since evolved into the less expensive, three-day “Strategic and Crisis Management Bootcamp with Carlos Ghosn” for midlevel managers largely from Lebanon. About 64 people are signed up for next month’s program.

Some students recognized the international fugitive as he walked around campus. “Carlos, you’re the best,” one called out as they crossed paths on the stairs.

“I feel good, because people consider that I’m a victim,” Ghosn said.

Ghosn denies any wrongdoing, arguing a cadre of Nissan employees worked to oust him as he fought to keep alive an alliance between the carmaker and Renault. He has said he faced a drawn-out Japanese legal process and a near-perfect conviction rate, leaving him with no option but to flee Japan in December 2019.

Japanese and French prosecutors issued warrants for Ghosn’s arrest. But Lebanon—where Ghosn spent much of his childhood—doesn’t extradite its citizens, and Ghosn was left safely beyond reach in the Mediterranean state.

There was collateral damage, however. A former U.S. green beret, Michael Taylor, and his son, Peter Taylor, who helped Ghosn escape were extradited from the U.S., and both spent 20 months in Japanese prison for helping Ghosn escape.

Ghosn’s wife, an American citizen, can’t leave Lebanon, facing an Interpol “red notice” over allegations she gave false testimony in Japan related to his case.

Ghosn said her only chance is that the Trump administration leans on Japan to rescind the notice, which he believes is inhumanely blocking his wife’s travel over a misdemeanor offense. “My wife is a prisoner for a very simple reason, because she’s my wife,” he said.

The White House directed queries to the State Department, which declined to comment.

Ghosn’s cross-border legal troubles haven’t clipped his enthusiasm for an interconnected world. Despite the recent volatility in markets, he was optimistic about the direction of the global economy. Trump’s tariffs, in his view, are just an attempt to redress the lopsided trade balance between the U.S. and other countries, particularly China, but don’t represent the end of globalization.

“Thinking today that this is the end of globalization, frankly, is a joke,” Ghosn said, a day after the Trump White House had introduced a new tariff regime that was roiling markets.

“On the contrary, people want to know what’s going on everywhere,” Ghosn said. “They are influenced by different cultures.” The irony of that message isn’t lost on Ghosn, who acknowledges he isn’t seeing much of the world himself.

Born in Brazil, Ghosn moved to Lebanon when he was a young child and was largely raised by his mother, after his father was jailed in connection with the murder of a priest. He excelled at school before moving to study in Paris. After graduating, he went to work at Michelin and then Renault, developing a reputation for turning around operations.

As an executive at Renault, he helped shape an alliance with Nissan in 1999, pioneering trans-contentinental partnership and led both companies for more than a decade. He says the carmakers’ divergence since his departure has contributed to Nissan’s growing financial difficulties. Nissan “is begging for some financial help,” Ghosn said, “and Renault is back to what it was before 1999, it’s a small European company.”

Renault declined to comment and Nissan didn’t respond to requests for comment.

French prosecutors are preparing to put Ghosn on trial. While Japan does not allow trials in absentia, France does—though Ghosn has not ruled out the possibility of attending in person. Ghosn said that he’d previously asked to travel to Brazil to see his mother, who he said has Alzheimer’s disease, but Lebanese authorities denied his request because of the international arrest warrants under his name.

“If you spend your next 10 years only fighting these battles and raging about it, you’ve lost 10 years of your life,” he said.

Washington opposes Tehran’s insistence on retaining the ability to enrich uranium, as two sides begin third round of talks

MUSCAT, Oman—U.S. and Iranian negotiators resumed nuclear talks Saturday, with the two sides at odds over the fundamental question of whether Tehran can continue to enrich uranium.

The capability would supply what Iran says are civilian nuclear purposes but would leave the country in control of a key precursor to building a nuclear weapon.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that Iran could have a civilian nuclear program as long as it uses imported nuclear fuel, an arrangement that is intended to block Tehran’s pathway to a bomb.

Iran, which insists its nuclear program is peaceful, has long balked at depending on external sources and has insisted that it has the right to enrich its own nuclear material.

The issue has emerged as a major sticking point in talks that also include other thorny nuclear issues as well as the Trump’s administration’s demands that any accord cover Iran’s missile program.

The Obama administration agreed to let Iran continue enriching its own fuel, which paved the way to a nuclear deal in 2015 aimed at restraining weapons development. That accord initially set the enrichment cap at the 3.67% common for civilian purposes but allowed Iran to eventually achieve enrichment levels that went well beyond that.

After President Trump pulled out of the Obama-era nuclear deal during his first term, Iran stepped up its nuclear program and is now producing 60% high-enriched uranium, the only country without nuclear weapons to do so. That material can be swiftly converted into the 90%-grade material needed for a bomb.

Iran is producing the enriched uranium needed for a single nuclear weapon each month and would need only a week or two to turn it into weapons-grade material, U.S. officials say. It would take months more to make an actual nuclear device, and U.S. intelligence believes Iran’s supreme leader hasn’t given the go-ahead to do so.

Trump has given a deadline of two months to conclude a pact and has repeatedly threatened to turn to military force if Iran balks at a deal.

“I think we’ll have a deal,” he told reporters Friday. “I’d much rather have a deal than the alternative.”

Iran is seeking relief from crippling sanctions as part of any agreement, hoping to boost its struggling economy.

Concerned a deal might not be reached within 60 days, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi offered to discuss an interim agreement with the U.S., Arab and Iranian officials said.

Steve Witkoff, a real-estate magnate and the Trump administration’s special envoy, flew to Oman for the talks from Moscow, where he held his fourth meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to end the conflict in Ukraine.

The Iran talks will feature the first meeting during the Trump administration of technical teams on both sides, who will discuss the highly detailed questions of how to constrain Iran’s nuclear work and verify compliance in return for sanctions relief.

Tehran is planning to detail the status of its nuclear facilities and discuss how a new nuclear pact could be verified and where its stockpiles could be stored, Arab and Iranian officials said. Iran has been considering options to store nuclear material under Russian supervision.

The U.S. technical team is led by Michael Anton, the head of the State Department’s office of policy planning and a conservative academic who served as a spokesman for the National Security Council during Trump’s first administration. He will face veteran Iranian nuclear negotiators Majid Takht-Ravanchi and Kazem Gharibabadi.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog, is also planning on sending a team to Iran in the coming days.

The agency is seeking better cooperation from Tehran to answer questions about its nuclear work and its activities at sites related to the nuclear program. That includes a push for Tehran to explain the presence of tunnels around the Natanz nuclear facility, which houses thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. On Thursday, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security released satellite images of the site showing a new tunnel as well as a new security perimeter.

Britain, France and Germany have threatened to reimpose sanctions lifted under the 2015 deal if Tehran fails to cooperate with the IAEA by October. Iran has warned it could kick out inspectors and leave the international treaty which obliges it not to seek nuclear weapons if they do so.

US private equity firm is preferred bidder for UK utility trying to avert renationalisation

KKR’s dealmakers are no strangers to trying to make money from messy situations. 

Even so, a trip to Thames Water’s sprawling Beckton Sewage Treatment works is not the most inviting assignment. Originally built as part of the Victorian sewage system overseen by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Beckton is now the biggest waste treatment works in Europe, serving more than 4mn Londoners. It has required extensive upgrades to try to curtail human waste flowing into the river Thames during torrential rain.

Executives from the US private equity firm recently took in the sights and smells of Beckton during a whistle-stop tour of Thames Water’s major facilities, as part of the intensive due diligence KKR is undertaking to try to take over the near-insolvent utility and rescue it from the brink of nationalisation as it struggles under nearly £20bn of debt.

KKR’s £4bn proposal made it Thames Water’s preferred bidder to take control of the water company that serves 16mn people across London and the Thames Valley. The US firm, which has $638bn in assets, is in the middle of a 10-week exclusivity period in an equity-raising process for the water company, whose existing shareholders essentially walked away last year. Thames Water is seeking to agree a deal by June.

KKR faces the challenge not only of wringing profit out of Thames Water’s creaking infrastructure but also securing the blessing of regulators and warring factions of hedge funds that hold the utility’s bonds. If this were not hard enough, KKR must do this in an environment where Thames Water has become a lightning rod for widespread public anger at the state of the nation’s waterways.

Even KKR’s due diligence efforts could stoke controversy, given that Thames Water is covering part of the bill for the roughly 100 people the firm has evaluating a deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

While it is not unusual for companies to cover some costs for potential acquirers — which for KKR include employing advisers at investment bank PJT Partners, law firm Kirkland & Ellis and management consultant Roland Berger — Thames Water’s £15mn monthly bill on restructuring advisers has already provoked outcry.

Some campaigners have also highlighted KKR’s buccaneering past, with the early pioneer of leveraged buyouts infamously dubbed the “Barbarians at the Gate” in the late 1980s for its raid on US conglomerate RJR Nabisco.

Charlie Maynard, a Liberal Democrat MP who spearheaded a public-interest court challenge to Thames Water taking on more high-interest debt, said that allowing the utility to remain heavily indebted under new private equity ownership was “like watching a rerun of a horror movie”.

“This is what got Thames Water into trouble in the first place,” he added.

Thames Water responded that the bid was a “holistic and fundamental recapitalisation”.

People close to KKR have emphasised that its infrastructure division targets lower annual returns — about 10 per cent to 15 per cent — than its higher-octane private equity funds, while holding on to assets for longer periods of time than traditional funds would be comfortable with.

This $86bn infrastructure division is of growing importance to KKR, as macroeconomic turbulence has curtailed dealmaking, making it harder to return cash to investors in its private equity funds.

Infrastructure is a key part of KKR’s recent push into raising money from wealthy individuals, who are lured by the prospect of owning uncorrelated, cash-generative assets. One of the firm’s Luxembourg infrastructure funds targeting individual investors has recorded an annualised return of about 13.5 per cent since its June 2023 launch, recent filings show.

Not all of its recent infrastructure investments have lived up to the plain-sailing pitch, however.

The Luxembourg fund’s second-biggest asset is FiberCop, the fixed-line telecommunications network carved out from Telecom Italia last year in a marquee €22bn deal.

KKR has clashed with FiberCop’s management over a projected €449mn earnings hole, the Financial Times has previously reported, sparking the US firm to take greater control over the politically sensitive business.

FiberCop, which like Thames Water traces its roots to a state-owned enterprise, has previously said the 2025 budget was in line with the original shareholders’ agreement and denied that there was tension among its owners.

One of the architects of the FiberCop deal, KKR partner James Gordon, is also spearheading the Thames Water buyout. 

As with several of his senior KKR infrastructure colleagues, Gordon spent much of his early career at Australia’s Macquarie, Thames Water’s former owner that has faced criticism for saddling the utility with more debt before cashing out in a 2017 sale. 

None of KKR’s prominent Macquarie alumni were involved in the prior Thames Water buyout, according to people familiar with the situation.

Still, the difficult legacy of the Australian group’s ownership is just one reason why any bid for the utility faces heightened scrutiny.

Ofwat, the sector regulator, was frustrated at Thames Water’s decision to grant KKR a period of exclusivity that has frozen out other bidders, according to people familiar with the matter. While the watchdog has no say in how Thames Water manages its equity raise and officials believe KKR is a credible potential owner, they would have preferred continued competition among bidders, the people added. Ofwat declined to comment.

Thames Water said in a statement that “there is no certainty that a binding equity proposal will be forthcoming as it remains subject to diligence, documentation and regulatory and other approvals.

“As a result, certain senior creditors continue to progress in parallel alternative transaction structures to seek to recapitalise the business. Given this, inherent competition remains during the process.”

KKR’s most serious competition was CK Infrastructure, part of Hong Kong’s wider CK Hutchison group that has deep roots in Britain. CKI and KKR are already co-owners of Northumbrian Water, holding majority and minority stakes, respectively.

People close to the talks note that KKR took a more conciliatory approach towards Thames Water’s influential top-ranking creditors. CKI’s bid, in contrast, was conditional on bondholders in Thames Water’s near-£20bn debt stack taking deeper haircuts.

While the precise contours of the restructuring that would accompany KKR’s planned £4bn equity injection are yet to be hashed out, Thames Water’s senior bonds could face writedowns of 25 per cent or more, according to those close to the discussions.

KKR’s preliminary bid included a component offering these bondholders the opportunity to invest in Thames Water’s equity and take as high as a 50 per cent stake, according to a person close to the talks. This could allow US hedge funds such as Elliott Management and Silver Point Capital that hold the debt to become shareholders alongside KKR.

Given the disparate holders of these bonds, which also include large insurers and asset managers, several creditors expect to be offered a “Chinese menu” that allows them to take on different proportions of new debt and equity based on their risk tolerance.

KKR is planning on wiping out Thames Water’s £1bn of lower-ranking class B bondholders, although it will need to demonstrate to London’s courts that writedowns have been applied fairly. The courts only approved last month a £3bn emergency loan from senior bondholders after a protracted legal challenge from junior creditors.

If KKR fails to appease bondholders, creditors could present their own rival bid for the utility. Failing that, Thames Water could still face temporary nationalisation through the government’s special administration regime.

Even with a deal, the hard part of running a beleaguered utility that serves nearly a quarter of the UK population begins.

KKR executives have emphasised that a full turnaround could take anywhere between seven to 12 years, only after which could they potentially cash out through a listing.

The utility has paused its challenge to Ofwat over its most recent determination on the amount by which Thames Water can raise customer bills. However, KKR wants to persuade the regulator to lessen legacy fines, according to people close to the firm.

KKR has proved willing to take on regulators elsewhere. In September, the firm and other investors in a Finnish electricity network took legal action against the Nordic country,after the Finnish Energy Authority tried to curb rising power transmission prices. The dispute is ongoing.

Yet the scale of the challenge at Thames Water remains formidable even for the most hard-nosed investor.

“There are lots of easier deals KKR could do and still meet its [minimum expected return],” said an adviser to some of Thames Water’s creditors. “Equally large and more experienced infra funds have failed after seven years of trying [to turn Thames around].”

Shares of European aircraft and military manufacturer Airbus could be set to take off following recent turbulence. The company is outpacing its main rival, U.S.-based Boeing, which has suffered from two 737 MAX crashes, a plane door falling off, and a major strike, not to say stranding two astronauts in orbit after Boeing Starliner problems. Airbus should also benefit as Europe builds up military capabilities.

“As a long-term holding, Airbus is a good name,” says Nick Owens, an equity analyst at Morningstar. He thinks the fair value of the stock is priced at 165 euros ($188), or 19% higher than the recent €139. “Airbus has a strong franchise and long-term viability,” he says.

Some financial pros see the stock price going even higher. The average analyst forecast is €185, with the highest at €233 and the lowest at €140, according to data from MarketScreener.

Investors comfortable with taking on risk should consider buying the company’s stock (ticker: AIR) or its American depositary receipts (EADSY).

The stock has fallen about 10% year to date, largely due to the imposition of broad tariffs on U.S. imports. The stock is relatively cheap, with a recent forward price/earnings ratio of 20, compared with its average forward P/E of 23 over the past five years. It has a 1.5% dividend.

Boeing long dominated the market for commercial passenger planes. But that has changed dramatically. Last year, Airbus shipped 761 commercial planes while Boeing produced 333, according to a report from aviation analytics provider Cirium.

China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific, including India, are key airplane growth markets, says Brian Glenn, chief investment officer at Premier Path Wealth Partners. “Both have had such a strong middle-class growth in the last 10 to 20 years,” he says. Markets such as Europe and the U.S. are mature, meaning that sales largely involve replacement planes.

In 2024 Boeing looked as if it was making a comeback, with deliveries of its 737 MAX plane to China after an almost five-year hiatus, according to a Cirium report. However, the good news was quickly upended when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs as high as 245% on Chinese goods. Cirium recently confirmed that three of five airplanes are being sent back to the U.S. from China.“China doesn’t want to buy Boeing,” says Jay Van Sciver, head of industrials at Hedgeye Risk Management.

Meanwhile, Airbus already dominates sales to India and the non-Chinese Asia-Pacific.

The big issue for Airbus is that new U.S. tariffs could disrupt global supply chains aerospace companies reply on. “In the current environment, it is really hard to know how the industry is going to grow in the face of tariffs,” says Van Sciver. He notes that aerospace supply chains are exceptionally complex, and it isn’t clear which countries will retaliate against the U.S. Airbus has more than 18,000 suppliers across the globe, which dramatically raises the probability of supply-chain disruptions.

On the plus side, Airbus looks likely to benefit from increased European Union military spending, according to a recent report from the United Kingdom’s Hargreaves Lansdown: “The Defence and Space division offers some diversification and has the potential to be a great asset for the company in the current elevated threat environment.”

In 2024 Airbus’ defense and space division accounted for 18% of Airbus revenue. But that could easily grow with more EU defense spending. A Goldman Sachs report says spending could grow from 1.8% of gross domestic product in 2024 to 2.4% in 2027, raising defense spending by €80 billion over time.

Despite tariff uncertainties, Airbus looks like a good long-term bet for investors.

Hess CEO Buys $2 Million of Goldman Stock

One of Goldman Sachs Group’s newest directors just bought a large block of shares of the bank on the open market.

Goldman stock has dropped 11% this year, compared with a 10% drop in the S&P 500. The bank’s shares had been down less than 2% in 2025 until President Donald Trump unveiled a raft of tariffs on April 2, sending Goldman shares and the market in general lower.

John Hess, the CEO of Hess Corp., paid $2 million on April 15 for 3,904 Goldman shares, an average price of $511.68 each, according to a form he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is his first insider stock buy since joining Goldman’s board in June 2024. Those shares represent his Goldman holdings in a personal account.

Hess Corp. didn’t immediately respond to a request to make its CEO available for comment.

Hess wasn’t required to buy the stock. Goldman’s latest corporate governance guidelines state “that each director must maintain beneficial ownership of at least 5,000 shares of the Company’s common stock and/or fully vested restricted stock units at all times during his or her tenure on the Board.” The guidelines note that new nonemployee directors “have up to seven years of service on the Board to meet this ownership requirement.” Goldman directors receive an annual retainer of $100,000 in RSUs or cash, and an annual grant of $350,000 in RSUs, according to its latest proxy.

Goldman has 14 directors on its board. Two joined after Hess.

The Trump administration’s move last week to halt a wind project under construction has put the industry in a state of emergency.

The offshore wind industry was struggling even before Donald Trump took office. But his administration’s move last week to halt a wind project under construction has put the industry in a state of emergency.

Billions of dollars worth of investment in at least half a dozen other projects up the East Coast are at risk. The projects are owned by companies ranging from Virginia utility Dominion Energy, to financial giants Apollo Global Management and BlackRock, to large European energy companies from Denmark’s Orsted to Norway’s Equinor. Industrial companies like GE Vernova and Vestas Wind Systems supply the industry. The ramifications could spread to seemingly unrelated industries, like shipbuilding.

For investors, offshore wind remains a risky investment that’s “in the bull’s-eye” of the Trump administration, says Shawn Kravetz, president of Esplanade Capital, which invests in renewable energy. It should eventually bounce back, but the short and medium term looks problematic.

“Often, when a sector truly seems ‘uninvestible,’ that is a promising contrarian moment to take a serious look,” Kravetz wrote in an email. “Unfortunately for offshore wind, this is likely one of those moments when it both feels and is uninvestible.”

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issued an order last week for New York’s Empire Wind project to stop construction, saying that there were deficiencies in the project’s permitting process. The department didn’t respond to a request for information on those deficiencies. Offshore wind opponents say the Biden administration rushed approvals through, giving too little attention to the potential environmental harms of offshore wind. While the rigor of the project’s review may be up for debate, it was longer than most similar reviews. The project went through a 46-month approval process, the second-longest of any offshore-wind project, according to Bloomberg NEF.

What made Burgum’s order particularly surprising was that Empire Wind had been fully permitted and project owner Equinor had begun construction. More than 1,500 people had worked to build a staging port in Brooklyn, N.Y., and others had been laying crushed rock underwater at the sites of the turbines it planned to install. Officials from New York state and Equinor both said they are evaluating their legal options in regard to the stop work order.

Burgum said that his department will undertake reviews of all projects, including those already under construction. In a statement to coincide with Earth Day on Tuesday, Trump said that he was stopping some wind projects because they have a “detrimental environmental impact, particularly on wildlife, which often outweighs their benefits.” New York had been counting on the project to help it decarbonize its power system.

Any more setbacks for the offshore wind industry could have ripple effects. The American Clean Power Association, an industry group, said that offshore wind supports 25,000 jobs, and companies have invested $15 billion in projects to build out or support the industry. Blocking the industry goes against Trump’s stated intentions to boost America’s energy resources, said Jason Grumet, CEO of the association. But Trump appears to dislike the industry in part because the biggest players are European. In an executive order relaxing fishing regulations, he wrote that fishing grounds had been taken over by “foreign offshore wind companies.”

The American offshore wind industry is ramping up, and proponents had hoped it was about to become a full-fledged success story. Offshore wind is a much bigger industry overseas. It started in Europe decades ago, and China has been ramping up for years. In the U.S. there’s only one active large-scale project today—South Fork Wind’s 12 turbines provide power to New York. But the Biden administration approved 10 other projects with the capacity to power millions of homes.

Some of those projects are stalled because of rising supply-chain costs or regulatory uncertainty. Danish wind developer Orsted stopped developing two New Jersey projects last year because of rising costs. Shell has pulled out of two projects on the East Coast too.

At least three projects are under construction. The biggest of those is in Virginia, where Dominion Energy says it is more than halfway through construction on what could be the country’s largest offshore wind project. It’s set to have 176 turbines generating 2.6 gigawatts worth of power, or enough for 660,000 homes. The company has installed 78 monopile foundations, which are the bases of the turbines. The project is on schedule and should be producing power by the end of next year, Dominion says.

That project faces mounting legal and political risks, however. Opponents are hoping the Trump administration steps in to shut it down as it did with Empire Wind. The conservative think tank Heartland Institute and other groups filed lawsuits against Dominion and the federal government last year, saying that environmental reviews hadn’t been adequate.

The federal government is technically on Dominion’s side. But it’s unclear whether the Trump administration will continue to fight for the project. The government’s next deadline for legal filings is Wednesday. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on where it stands.

If the project is stopped, it would be a major blow to Dominion. The project’s estimated construction costs are $10.7 billion. But the impact would be even wider. European company Siemens Gamesa is making the turbines, for instance. And Dominion paid for a massive ship, called the Charybdis after a sea monster from Greek mythology, to install the turbines. The Charybdis is 472 feet long and is the first large-scale U.S.-made vessel designed to install turbines. It cost $715 million to build at a shipyard in Brownsville, Texas.

The fact that it’s American-built is important, and not just to fulfill Trump’s Made in the USA ambitions. A law called the Jones Act forces companies to use domestic ships when they transport goods from one U.S. port to another. To comply with the law, offshore wind projects have been transporting turbines from Canadian docks, imposing extra costs and delays.

The Empire Wind project also signed a contract with a U.S. shipbuilder for a smaller vessel for its project, and it isn’t clear what happens to that contract if the project is halted indefinitely. The Louisiana shipbuilder Edison Chouest didn’t respond to a request for comment.

At least two other projects have started construction. One is Revolution Wind, which will supply power to Rhode Island and Connecticut. It’s owned by Orsted and a unit of BlackRock. Orsted didn’t respond to a request for comment and BlackRock declined to comment. Eversource Energy, a utility that sold its stake in the project to the BlackRock unit, could be on the hook for costs if the project doesn’t go through, according to Jefferies analyst Paul Zimbardo.

Another project known as Vineyard Wind, which will supply power to Massachusetts, is also under construction after some mishaps—including a blade falling off a GE Vernova turbine. It’s owned by private investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and a unit of Spanish power company Iberdrola.

The offshore wind industry was on the brink of its largest successes to date. Now, it looks like its emergence will take years longer than expected.

Officials have drafted a framework for staggered reciprocal trade negotiations

WASHINGTON—U.S. officials plan to conduct staggered trade negotiations using a new template that sets common terms for many of the talks, according to people familiar with the plans.

In an attempt to streamline talks over President Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, officials plan to use a framework prepared by the U.S. Trade Representative’s office that lays out broad categories for negotiation: tariffs and quotas; non-tariff barriers to trade, such as regulations on U.S. goods; digital trade; rules of origin for products; and economic security and other commercial issues, according to people familiar with a draft document outlining the negotiating terms.

Within those categories, U.S. officials would spell out demands for individual nations, people familiar with the matter said, emphasizing that the document could change as the administration gets more input.

“USTR is working under an organized and rigorous framework and moving ahead quickly with willing trading partners,” said a USTR spokeswoman. “President Trump and USTR have made U.S. objectives clear and our trading partners have a very good sense of what they can each individually offer.”

The U.S. is looking to negotiate within the new framework with about 18 major U.S. trading partners on a rolling basis over the next two months, the people familiar with the matter said. The initial plan is for six nations to come in for talks in one week, six nations in a second week, and six nations for a third week of talks—an 18-nation cycle that would then repeat until the administration’s self-imposed July 8 deadline. At that point, reciprocal tariffs would hit nations that can’t reach a deal, unless Trump further extends his 90 day pause.

The planned negotiating timeline could slip if talks hit a snag, one of the people said. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt this week said that the administration has received 18 trade proposals on paper from trading partners that it is currently reviewing.

It wasn’t clear which nations will be entering the planned negotiations under USTR’s template, and which will have a different path for talks. Some nations, such as India, appeared further along in trade talks than most nations, with that government having agreed to broad terms of negotiation when Vice President JD Vance was in New Delhi this week.

Mexico and Canada—the U.S.’s two largest trading partners—aren’t likely to be involved in talks using the new trade template since Trump’s reciprocal tariff order didn’t apply to them. And China, the third largest U.S. trading partner, is likely on a different track as well, as Trump has singled out Beijing for much higher tariffs of at least 145%.

Trump this week said that his administration has been in touch with China “every day,” although Chinese officials have denied any substantial contact on trade. On Friday, Trump told reporters he had spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping, although he wouldn’t say when. Trump reiterated he wouldn’t unilaterally drop tariffs on Chinese imports unless he sees something “substantial” from Beijing.

For other nations, trade talks remain high-level and general, said people familiar with the discussions, and some trading partners say the U.S. has yet to transmit concrete requests for its negotiations. The European Union’s economy commissioner, for instance, told The Wall Street Journal this week that the 27-nation bloc is still awaiting specific demands from the Trump administration. The USTR spokeswoman disputed that, saying the agency has repeatedly made its framework known to the Europeans.

Meanwhile, Europe and others are trying to set their own parameters for negotiations. The EU won’t negotiate changes to its value-added tax or agricultural subsidies, Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said this week. And the United Kingdom sought to take any changes to its food or automotive safety standards off the table, saying those are decisions for its government alone.