Business News

Louisiana's significant energy potential, encompassing oil, gas, and carbon capture, is being systematically undermined by a heavily funded, out-of-state campaign. A Pelican Institute report details over $115 million flowed to local environmental groups from 2020-2025, with over 70% originating from California, D.C., and New York, backed by billionaires like Bloomberg and Bezos. This "lawfare" manifests through challenges to carbon sequestration primacy, legal assaults on LNG

Vehicle manufacturers have built a rigged market, and Louisiana's independent repair shops are paying the price. Automakers restrict independent mechanics from accessing the same diagnostic data and software tools they freely hand to their own authorized dealerships. The result is artificial scarcity, inflated costs, and the slow strangulation of a sector that employs millions of Americans and tens of thousands of Louisianians in every parish across the state. The REPAIR Act

First it was manufacturing. Then it was data centers. Now Louisiana is chasing rockets, and the Legislature just rewrote state law to make sure the state has a real shot at landing one of the biggest prizes in the private aerospace race. Over the course of the session that wrapped June 1, lawmakers passed and Governor Jeff Landry signed a full package of aerospace incentive bills, all sponsored by Rep. Tony Bacala, R-Prairieville, who chairs House Ways and Means, and Rep. Jac

Louisiana just closed the door on one of the biggest legal threats facing its energy industry, and business owners across the state should be paying attention, because the protection doesn't stop at the oil patch. Governor Jeff Landry signed House Bill 804, the Louisiana Energy Protection Act, into law in June, capping off one of the session's signature business wins. The law bars civil lawsuits filed in Louisiana state courts that seek personal injury, property, or economic

Louisiana just found an extra $50 million for one of the few insurance fixes that has actually shown results, and it did it without raising a single tax or fee. Governor Jeff Landry signed House Bill 1187, sponsored by Rep. Paul Sawyer, R-Baton Rouge, in late May, directing $50 million in surplus funds from Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation into the state's Fortify Homes Program. The money comes from an unusual source: excess funds Citizens collected through a

Louisiana's economic development strategy of the past eighteen months has often been discussed in silos. Data center announcements in Richland Parish. AI facility decisions in Rapides. Advanced manufacturing commitments in Northeast Louisiana. Each celebrated separately, each impressive on its own. But they're not really separate at all. They're pieces of something larger: a deliberate diversification away from energy-dependent extraction and toward technology-forward product

Faith Technologies Incorporated announced this month what may be the most significant private investment Northeast Louisiana has seen in years: an $80.5 million commitment to build a sprawling 500,000-square-foot Excellerate manufacturing facility in Ouachita Parish, creating at least 200 direct jobs and rippling across the region with over 500 indirect positions. Construction is already underway, with the facility expected to open by spring 2027. For Monroe, a city that's we

Jamie Dimon does not mince words. The JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO made that abundantly clear last week when he told Fox Business that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is "full of s--t" and promised that the banking industry would mount an aggressive fight against the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill now advancing through Congress. Washington's political class clutched its pearls. The crypto lobby fired back. Senator Cynthia Lummis called his remarks "distasteful.

New details emerged this week about how New Orleans landed a spot in Elon Musk's Boring Company tunnel competition, and what the city actually proposed to get there. Documents obtained by The Times-Picayune show that Mayor Helena Moreno submitted a four-page proposal in February to The Boring Company's Tunnel Vision Challenge — a competition the company launched in January inviting any entity, public or private, to pitch a one-mile tunnel concept. The company pledged to fund

Governor Jeff Landry stood at England Airpark on Tuesday and made an announcement that Central Louisiana's economic development community has been waiting years to hear. Applied Digital Corporation — a Dallas-based company that designs, builds, and operates data centers for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing — will develop Delta Forge 1, a $3.6 billion AI factory campus in Rapides Parish. It is the largest economic development project in the region's moder

The numbers coming out of Baton Rouge over the last two years are the kind that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. Since Governor Jeff Landry took office, Louisiana has secured more than $90 billion in capital investment and nearly 80,000 new job opportunities statewide. In 2025 alone — the largest capital investment year in state history — Louisiana announced more than $61 billion in new projects. The state has won Business Facilities' Platinum Deal of the Year awar

Louisiana's tax reform story over the last two years is one worth telling. The 2024 special session produced genuine, structural change: a flat 3% individual income tax, a reduced corporate rate of 5.5%, the elimination of the corporate franchise tax, and permanent full expensing — making Louisiana one of only three states in the country to fully decouple from federal phasedown rules on business investment. The Tax Foundation took notice. Louisiana jumped six spots in its Sta