Central Texas Global Business Pulse - March 30th 2025 - Big Plan

Central Texas Global Business Pulse

Big Plan Highlights

A strong coalition of business leaders came together at MotoGP in Austin, TX! Pictured are Austin Downtown Alliance CEO Davon Barbour, Austin Chamber CEO Jeremy Martin, Texas Association of Business CEO Glenn Hamer, and Big Plan CEO Fang Fang. Moments like these highlight the power of collaboration in shaping the future of business and economic growth in Texas.

News & Updates

International

Trump announces new 25% tariff on imported cars and car parts

President Trump said on Wednesday that he will impose 25% tariffs on imported cars and car parts starting next week, using his national security powers to take the action.

"I think our automobile business will flourish like it's never flourished before," Trump said in remarks from the Oval Office.

The United Auto Workers union praised the move, saying it could mean more shifts for workers at plants with spare capacity.

South Korea, China, Japan agree to promote regional trade as Trump tariffs loom

South Korea, China and Japan held their first economic dialogue in five years on Sunday, seeking to facilitate regional trade as the three Asian export powers brace from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The countries’ three trade ministers agreed to “closely cooperate for a comprehensive and high-level” talks on a South Korea-Japan-China free trade agreement deal to promote “regional and global trade”, according to a statement released after the meeting.

China's Xi calls on top executives to help ‘uphold global order' as trade tensions with U.S. rise

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday met with global executives and made a case for investing in the country, as Beijing focuses on reaching out to businesses amid escalating trade tensions with the U.S.

More than 40 people, mostly foreign executives and business officials, attended the roundtable meeting with Xi, including Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters and Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwartzman.

Samsung Electronics Co-CEO Dies, Worsening Tech Firm’s ‘Crisis’ Moment

The head of Samsung Electronics’s smartphone and consumer electronics business died from cardiac arrest on Tuesday, jolting the South Korean technology company during a business slide that leaders have called a crisis.

Jong-Hee Han, 63 years old, was appointed co-CEO of Samsung Electronics in December 2021. The company’s other CEO, Jun Young-hyun, oversaw the unit making semiconductors and other tech components.

USA

Trump says Wednesday's reciprocal tariffs will hit all countries

President Trump said Sunday his reciprocal tariffs launch this week will affect "all countries."

Trump is expected to announce wide-ranging levies on Wednesday, which he is calling "Liberation Day," but the administration has yet to reveal many key details of this plan or when levies will be implemented.

Trump's economic policy that's designed to protect domestic companies has already ignited a trade war, with counter-tariffs announced by the European Union and China, and Canadian officials have promised a swift response if the planned auto tariffs take effect on Wednesday.

"You'd start with all countries," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One of the sweeping plan, as they traveled back from Florida to D.C. "Essentially all of the countries that we're talking about."

Hyundai announces a $20 billion investment in the United States

South Korea-based Hyundai and President Donald Trump announced a $20 billion investment in US on-shoring on Monday, which includes a $5 billion steel plant in Louisiana, at the White House Monday.

The $5.8 billion Louisiana facility will be the car manufacturers’ first steel manufacturing facility in the US and will produce more than 2.7 million metric tons of steel a year and create more than 1,400 jobs. It will supply steel to auto plants in Alabama and Georgia, Trump said in remarks at the White House.

Economic Growth Now Depends on Electricity, Not Oil

Americans have long equated energy security with oil. The country wanted as much as possible because of the havoc an interruption to supply—from wars, disasters and political convulsions—can cause.

In coming years, though, energy security will mean electricity.

Power demand, stagnant for decades, is now growing rapidly, for data centers to run artificial intelligence and other digital services and, in time, transportation and buildings.

The AI Data-Center Boom Is Coming to America’s Heartland

Manufacturers have passed over this patch of farmland for nearly two decades, a string of setbacks that left this one of the poorest corners of Louisiana.

A quarter of the 20,000 residents in Richland Parish live in poverty. Farm jobs dwindled when agriculture became more efficient, forcing people to move away for work. Hopes for an auto manufacturing plant later went bust.

Now, the community is hoping for a new savior: AI.

Texas

Grid reliability, housing affordability: Texas Senate passes slate of priority bills

Amid growing electric demand, Senate Bill 6 seeks to strengthen Texas’ power grid and better protect residential customers from outages during emergencies.

“If we don’t do this right, we will someday again have what we had during [Winter Storm] Uri,” bill author Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the Senate floor March 19. “You had large loads online in a city, and next door you had communities that were dark—people literally died in their homes and froze to death. That can never happen again.”

Senators also said they hoped to make housing more affordable by loosening density restrictions for new neighborhoods. In large Texas cities, Senate Bill 15 would allow property owners in new neighborhoods to construct single-family homes on lots as small as 1,400 square feet.

Texas Senate passes bill to expedite permits for home solar, battery systems

The Senate Business and Commerce Committee unanimously passed a bill to speed up the permitting process for home solar and energy storage installations.

SB 1202 aims to expedite the approval process by allowing authorized third parties, such as a licensed engineer, to review development documents and conduct inspections required by regulatory authorities to install home backup power generation instead of by the regulatory authority. The authorized third party would then be required to provide notice of the results within 15 days to the regulatory authority.

Smiths (UK) expands US manufacturing of chip testers, after trade restrictions

Engineering company Smiths Group has become the latest manufacturer to establish a route around US President Donald Trump’s trade policies, by preparing to make some of its semiconductor testing devices in Texas instead of China.

Chief executive Roland Carter told the Financial Times the FTSE 100 conglomerate had been shifting manufacturing of its semiconductor “sockets”, used to trial newly made chips, from Suzhou, in China, to Texas.

Austin

Construction of Meta's data center campus north of Austin to continue through 2026

Construction of California-based Meta Platforms Inc's $800 million-plus million hyper-scale data center campus in Temple "is progressing well" but won't be finished before 2027, a company representative said.

The Facebook parent initially broke ground three years ago on the 900,000-square-foot project on 384 acres at 3101 Industrial Blvd. but paused construction in 2022 before restarting it in 2023.

Musk's social media firm X bought by his AI company, valued at $33 billion

Elon Musk's xAI has acquired X in a deal that values the social media platform at $33 billion and allows the value of his artificial intelligence firm to be shared with his co-investors in the company formerly known as Twitter. The deal could also help xAI's ability to train its chatbot known as Grok.

"xAI and X's futures are intertwined," Musk, who also heads automaker Tesla and SpaceX, wrote in a post on X, opens new tab: "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent."

Opinion Editorials

Will Texas self-destruct its clean energy industry?

How the Reversal of the ‘American Exceptionalism’ Trade Is Rippling Around the Globe

Events

UT Energy Week 2025 (March 31 to April 4, 2025)

City of Austin Career Expo (Apr 2, 2025)

Infrastructure Summit (April 8, 2025)

ERCOT Innovation Summit (May 6th, 2025)

IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Expo (Oct 19 - 23, 2025)

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