Good morning. Andrew here. President Trump’s plan to use Venezuela’s petroleum reserves to drive oil prices down to $50 a barrel poses a dilemma for the American energy industry. Offering U.S. drillers the chance to again tap one of the biggest pools of oil worldwide could yield an influx of new supply, eventually lowering costs for consumers. But that could also threaten the profitability of domestic shale producers, who require higher prices to remain viable. The administration may also be forced to offer federal subsidies or revenue guarantees to incentivize U.S. companies to rebuild Venezuela’s decayed infrastructure. This might mean Washington could end up devaluing oil, hurting its homegrown industry — while footing the bill to expand production abroad. How will this net out? (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Washington’s Caracas capitalismPresident Trump is wasting little time in trying to assert control over Venezuela and its oil industry, as his administration works to persuade U.S. energy giants to resume operating there after the ouster of Nicolás Maduro. But big questions are hanging over the ambitious enterprise. Among them: How will all of this work, and is it even legal? The latest: Trump told our Times colleagues last night that he expected Washington would be running Venezuela, and laying claim to the country’s petroleum output, for years. How long? “Only time will tell,” he said, adding that the U.S. is “going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil,” as well as giving money to the nation. That came after Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that Washington intended to oversee Venezuelan oil production “indefinitely.” But what does that look like? Contours of the administration’s plans emerged slowly yesterday, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisting that Trump officials were “not just winging it.” The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reports that a potential plan involves the U.S. exerting at least some control over PDVSA, as the Venezuelan state-owned company is known. That includes acquiring and marketing most of PDVSA’s oil production, which the Energy Department has already begun doing. One of Trump’s goals, The Journal added, was pushing oil prices to $50 a barrel. (Brent crude, the international benchmark, was trading at $59 a barrel this morning.) Many potential obstacles remain:
Anthropic pursues a $350 billion valuation. The artificial intelligence start-up is seeking to raise $10 billion, The Times reports, just months after its last fund-raising effort — and at a valuation nearly double that round. Separately, OpenAI announced a big push into health care, as the A.I. giant seeks to keep expanding the use of its chatbot amid increased competition from Anthropic and Google. China is said to move toward letting Nvidia resume selling chips there. Chinese companies could be permitted as soon as this quarter to buy some high-end (though not top-of-line) H200 A.I. chips, which the Trump administration had cleared for export, Bloomberg reports. Still, Nvidia is reportedly demanding that Chinese customers pay the full price upfront for the technology, according to Reuters, citing unnamed officials. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. flips the food pyramid. The health secretary, a vocal critic of ultraprocessed foods, has scrambled decades-old nutritional guidelines, telling Americans to embrace red meat and fatty foods. (Alcohol is also getting more tolerant treatment.) Kennedy had criticized previous guidelines as being influenced by food industries, but half of his handpicked experts have disclosed financial ties with beef, food or pharmaceutical companies. A shot across the bowTime and again, President Trump has shown a willingness to rewrite the rules of American capitalism, roiling boardrooms, markets and international capitals. But as he appears to be more emboldened in his second term, even industries filled with stalwart donors don’t seem immune from his latest interventionist tendencies. The latest targets are home builders, military contractors and some Wall Street giants. Shares in those sectors tumbled yesterday after Trump unexpectedly called for transforming how they do business — including compensation and investor payouts. His demands include: Urging Congress to bar big investment firms from buying more single-family homes, in an effort he says will tackle affordability in the country’s housing market. “People live in homes, not corporations,” he wrote on Truth Social, adding that he would say more about his plans at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this month. Progressive (and largely Democratic) lawmakers have floated these ideas before. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sounded skeptical of Trump’s idea, but added yesterday that “Congress should work on legislation to stop corporate investors from buying up homes.” Housing experts say that institutional investors make up a fraction of the housing market. “This may be the shortest floated trial balloon” of all of the administration’s efforts (which have also included proposing the introduction of a 50-year mortgage) to ease the housing crunch, Meredith Whitney, a prominent research analyst, told Bloomberg Television yesterday. Still, investors punished big single-family rental landlords. Shares in Blackstone, one of the biggest such firms — and whose C.E.O., Steve Schwarzman, is a major Trump ally — fell more than 5 percent yesterday. Reining in defense contractors. Trump accused them of prioritizing shareholders and executives over the country’s military needs. “This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!” he wrote on social media. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted the statement, with an approving emoji. Trump proposed capping executive compensation and banning dividend payouts and stock buybacks until defense contractors prove, to his satisfaction, that they’re supplying new equipment and maintaining existing material in a timely manner. (He specifically called out Raytheon; shares in its parent company, RTX, briefly plunged.) Yet contractors’ stocks later rebounded after Trump said he wanted to grow the Pentagon’s budget by roughly 50 percent, to $1.5 trillion. The big question: Given the administration’s increasingly interventionist streak — remember the U.S. government is now a major investor in Intel — investors are left to wonder, who’s next?
Greenland reckons with “a point of no return”Greenlanders are feeling a bit of high-stakes déjà vu over the future of their island territory, which President Trump has long coveted, Vivienne Walt writes. “We really find that we are moving towards a point of no return,” Naaja Nathanielsen, the semiautonomous territory’s minister of business and natural resources, told DealBook yesterday. Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants have been glued to the drama over their fate, playing out without their input, in far-off capitals like Washington and Copenhagen. A recap: Nathanielsen spoke to DealBook a year ago, when Trump expressed his desire to acquire Greenland, a vast mineral-rich territory largely overseen by Denmark. Her big question now is much the same as it was then: To what lengths could Trump go to gain control of the island? After the audacious weekend strike on Venezuela, Trump pivoted quickly to Greenland, a territory he also eyed in his first term in office. He has ramped up the talk of seizing the island. “We need Greenland from a national security situation,” he said on Air Force One this week. “It’s so strategic.” Its reserves of rare-earth minerals could also be crucial for high-tech industries. Denmark announced on Tuesday that it would spend $13.8 billion rearming Greenland’s military, apparently bracing for a possible U.S. attack. It has rejected any notion of relinquishing the territory, and E.U. leaders have united in support and warned that an unwanted incursion by Washington could spell the end of NATO. On the island, the mood has soured. Nathanielsen said people were virtually unable to talk about anything else: “This is the first, second and third topic, night and day.” But the turmoil hasn’t spooked investors. “There has been a lot of interest” in new business opportunities, said the minister, whose job includes attracting new business, particularly in mining. That business has come from Australian, Canadian and European companies. But the U.S. is a veritable no-show. “We are trying to figure out what kind of investments Americans are looking for,” she said. There has been little to no diplomatic outreach either. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that he would meet with Danish officials next week to discuss Greenland’s future. But Greenland’s prime minister and foreign minister appear not to be included so far, despite Nathanielsen telling DealBook they had requested to join. “We have been trying to establish this contact for quite a while,” she said. Government officials had not met Vice President JD Vance or Donald Trump Jr. during their visits to Greenland last year, she added. “I think it makes a lot of sense to look each other in the eye and have a discussion about what it is that America wants,” she said. Answer our burning questionsAs we start a new year, we want to hear how you’re thinking about some of the biggest issues facing business and the economy. Today’s question: What poses the greatest risk to markets in 2026?
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