WSJ What’s News - How Trump’s Agenda Could Fare in Congress

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

A.M. Edition for Dec. 11. Donald Trump picks Andrew Ferguson to succeed Lina Khan as FTC chair, seeking to remake the agency. Plus, Trump pledges to speed up permitting for companies investing over $1 billion—and while reform in this area has garnered bipartisan support in recent years, the WSJ’s Siobhan Hughes says other parts of the president-elect’s agenda could meet resistance in Congress… though we could also see some surprising alliances. And GM walks away from its Cruise robotaxi program after nearly a decade and $10 billion in development. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Plus congressional reporter Siobhan Hughes on how much of the president-elect's agenda is likely to survive the GOP's narrow majorities in the House and Senate. If you thought Republican control in the House in the 118th Congress was slim, wait until you get to the next Congress. And the end of the road for GM's costly robo-taxi program. It's Wednesday, December 11th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

President-elect Donald Trump says he'll elevate Republican lawyer Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission. Ferguson, already an FTC commissioner, won't need Senate approval to assume the role, where he would succeed Lena Kahn, who flexed the commission's enforcement muscle by challenging mergers and the business practices of dominant companies. Ferguson is likely to abandon that approach to mergers, but shares Kahn's skepticism of tech companies, posting on Xysterday that he would work to quote, end Big Tech's vendetta against competition and free speech. Separately, Trump says he'll nominate antitrust lawyer Mark

Metter to be an FTC commissioner and if confirmed, he would give the GOP a majority on the commission. Metter is a former aid to Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee who led the introduction of legislation to break up Google. Meanwhile, Trump is promising to speed approval of large construction projects, signaling that he intends to push the limits of federal law to boost the economy. Posting on Truth Social, Trump said that any person or company investing a billion dollars or more in the U.S. quote will receive fully expedited approvals and permits,

including but in no way limited to all environmental approvals. At the Journal's CEO Council Summit in Washington, Trump's senior advisor Jason Miller described the president-elect as pursuing a golden age of regulation cutting. Whether it be domestic investors, whether it be foreign investors. And so what you're going to see is the president saying coming up with creative ideas like this to say if you want to, whether it's money here in the U.S., you want to bring in money, he's going to move heaven and earth to get that money in the door and get it invested in the United States.

It's not clear Trump will have legal authority to bypass permitting and environmental rules, and state and local oversight, court battles, and a need for congressional approval could complicate the push. But Journal reporter Scott Patterson says permitting changes have begun to garner bipartisan support in Washington in recent years. You had environmental groups who derided the statement as an indication that Trump was in the back pocket of the fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, there is a perspective

among environmental groups or clean energy backers who are in favor of permitting reform and some kinds of environmental reform because they see overbearing regulations as keeping essential clean energy projects from getting built in the United States. And you know this includes mines for critical minerals and battery minerals such as lithium as well as big transmission projects like power lines. General Motors is scrapping its cruise robo taxi program after nearly a decade and $10 billion

in development, citing rising competition and the time and costs needed to scale the business. GM said that it owns about 90% of cruise and intends to buy out the remaining investors while combining cruise and GM's tech teams into a single effort to advance autonomous and assisted driving. GM shares are up in off-hours trading. A judge has rejected the auction sale of conspiracy platform Infowars to satirical news outlet The Onion.

Infowars was put up for sale as part of a bankruptcy case stemming from the nearly $1.5 billion that courts have ordered founder Alex Jones to pay in damages to families of Sandy Hook victims after he falsely called the 2012 school shooting a hoax. In a post on X, the Onions CEO said the company was disappointed with the decision but would continue to pursue the purchase of Infowars. It's said it plans to relaunch Infowars as a satirical site. wars. It's said it plans to relaunch Infowars as a satirical site. And in news likely to move markets today, investors are getting ready to scour November's US inflation report, which is due at 8.30am Eastern. Economists polled by the journal expect to see a second consecutive month of modest price upticks. And retailer Macy's

is set to report earnings this morning, with results from software company Adobe due after the closing bell. Coming up as Donald Trump's future agenda takes shape, how much of that can Congress deliver, especially given the GOP's razor thin majority in the House? We've got that story and more after the break. details at phys.ca. Well, we heard earlier in the show about some of what the incoming Trump administration is hoping to achieve, a decent amount of which will require congressional backing. So how likely are they to get that support? Reporter Siobhan Hughes covers Congress out of our DC bureau. Siobhan, first off, House results from California took a while to come in after election

day, but we've now got a complete picture of the Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, if I understand correctly. What kind of margins in both chambers can we expect the Trump White House to be able to count on here? Well, if you thought Republican control in the House in the 118th Congress was slim, wait until you get to the next Congress. Right now it's shaping up to be a 220 to 215 Republican majority. So that means House Republicans can lose no more than two votes and still pass their agenda,

assuming everybody shows up and Democrats vote against the Republican line. Well, super tight math there, Siobhan, and it will get even closer, right? 217 to 215 for a few months because of resignations. Well, that's a piece of it. Now, in fairness, the Republicans have been pretty careful to put forward only members who are from safe districts. So for example, Mike Waltz, who's going to the Trump administration, comes from a place

that will be a safe Republican place. But it also shows you why Trump probably can't pick folks from the House anymore. That is going to be a losing proposition for his party. Okay, so Republicans overall vote majority pretty tight. And that's obviously an important factor, but so too our ideological divisions within the caucus. Are there some obvious issues heading into this administration on which we might see disagreements emerge among Republicans on Capitol Hill? Well, there are some unresolved tensions within the Republican Party. For example, the war in Ukraine, there is still a very pro-Ukraine contingent in the Republican Party, and the question is whether

or not their influence is going to be entirely stamped out. And then on the issue of tariffs, there are still plenty of Republicans who are concerned about the damage to the economy, the inflationary impact from Trump's tariff plans. And so that has yet to be really worked through. Let's take some other issues that have dollars and cents attached to them. Tax reform, a big priority for Republicans going into the next Congress. What are we expecting to see there? And could that possibly be something that gets some bipartisan support?

Well, so tax reform is going to be complicated. The 2017 Trump tax cuts, as you know, expire at the end of 2025, but a portion of those tax cuts are things that Democrats are going to like to. And so to some degree, Democrats might be willing to play ball. The problem is going to be any tax cuts aimed at businesses or the wealthy, for example, that corporate tax cut, along with the fact that the tax cuts

are expected to cost money, expected to add to the country's deficit. And since the government already spent 1.8 trillion more than it collected in fiscal 2024, that's going to be a problem. Beyond taxes, Siobhan, are there other issues where we might see possible bipartisan consensus? There can be some weird left-right alliances

that crop up. So, for example, somebody like Bernie Sanders might not necessarily be so pro-armed forces and pro-wars, which really brings him into alliance with the Trump wing of the party. There's also an interesting small debate I'm following on the issue of Ozembik. There are some Republicans who think the government should be investing money in Ozembik, arguing that the health benefits are so great, it would actually end up saving the government money. But they align with Democrats on that, but not necessarily with their fellow Republicans.

So they're going to be really, really interesting alliances like that. And then what overall seems to be the top priority for Republican leaders in both chambers? Really border security is going to be a focal point. And I cannot tell you what a big sea change this is from where the Republicans were in 2017 when they were gunning both to cut taxes and to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. The fact that you have somebody like Lindsey Graham saying border security is going to come before extending the tax cuts tells you what a brand new world we are in, which of course carries risks because if you spend all of your time on immigration, is there going to be enough

time left to extend those tax cuts before they expire at the end of next year? And just when we're talking about immigration, you know, efforts in Congress, are we talking about the kind of things that were in that bipartisan deal that that just didn't make it through Congress in the past year or something entirely different, maybe more of a Republican wish list as opposed to something with bipartisan support? Well, Trump has a very different idea regarding the border in that he wants mass deportation, he wants to expel immigrants, and he wants to install walls.

And that's far different from the approach the Democrats have been interested in and so that is part of the reason that Republicans are talking about moving their border agenda, not through the normal process that requires a supermajority in the Senate, but through this fast track muscular approach that allows you to get around the need for a supermajority. Siobhan Hughes covers Congress out of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau. Siobhan, thanks so much as always. Thank you. And finally, clothing companies, long under pressure to cut out suppliers tied to human rights and environmental abuses,

are using an old technology to help them shore up supply chains. Journal reporter Dylan Tokar says that Shian and Patagonia are among the brands turning to isotopic testing, a forensic method that allows them to peer into the atomic makeup of materials in their products and hopefully pinpoint their origin. Since 2021, we've had this law in the U.S. called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which essentially bans goods from the Xinjiang region of China on the presumption that they were made using forced labor. We've been told that Xi'an, which started doing this testing in 2022, initially found that 2% of the tests were positive for Xinjiang cotton, and that since taking action against some suppliers, they've

had that number fall to 1.7%. That's a fairly modest improvement but it's not just companies doing this. US customs officials have also started using isotopic testing so there's the very real possibility that if companies aren't doing this themselves, someone else will. And that's it for What's news for Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevant and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show and until then, thanks for listening.