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I work in manufacturing here in Louisiana, and we've seen this movie before. In 1990, America made 40 percent of the world's semiconductors. Today it's 12 percent. We let that slip away the same way we let solar panel and battery production slip away — by assuming free markets would sort it out, while China's state-directed economy simply took the ground we gave up. Now Congress has a chance to not repeat that mistake with AI chips, and some in Washington want to weaken expor

Louisiana's refining industry is positioned to be one of the biggest winners as Venezuela's oil sector comes back online. The state's infrastructure was essentially built for this kind of crude, and that head start is now paying off as the Trump administration pushes to ramp up Venezuelan production. The reason Louisiana fits so well is straightforward. Venezuelan oil is heavy and high in sulfur, which means it needs specialized refining equipment that not every Gulf Coast fa

Every time a local company gets bought by a private equity firm, the reaction in Louisiana tends to run the same direction: worry. Another headquarters moves out of state, another boardroom stops being local, another piece of Louisiana's economy answers to someone in Houston or New York instead of Baton Rouge or Metairie. The recent sale of Livingston-based Epic Piping to a Houston firm, the third deal like it in south Louisiana in a single month, has renewed that anxiety. Bu

Governor Jeff Landry spent part of last week in Washington making the case that Louisiana isn't just riding the AI and data center boom, it's helping write the rules for how the rest of the country pays for it. Landry and Richland Parish Schools Superintendent Sheldon Jones joined President Trump at a White House roundtable focused on the administration's ratepayer protection plan, and Louisiana walked away with one of the clearest wins in the room. The plan itself is straigh

While the biggest headlines out of Louisiana's economic development office tend to go to the multibillion-dollar mega-projects, some of the most reliable growth in this state comes from a quieter pattern: companies that are already here choosing to expand rather than look elsewhere. That's exactly what's happening in Acadiana, where Quality Companies LLC is investing more than $7 million across two sites in Iberia and Lafayette parishes. The Youngsville-based energy services

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

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 families know what it feels like to stretch a budget. They know what it costs to fill a prescription. And most of them have no idea that a significant reason American drug prices are so high is that wealthy foreign governments — our own allies — have spent decades rigging the system to avoid paying their fair share. That imbalance is now squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, and Louisiana has every reason to pay close attention. A recent analysis f

By Sean Corkery One of the first things I did when I turned 18 was open a brokerage account and buy my first stock. The rules were clear, the broker had to be registered with FINRA, material risks had to be disclosed in the prospectus, and fraud carried real legal consequences. These aren't bureaucratic hurdles, they are the bedrock of a system that made American capital markets the deepest and most trusted in the world. Now Congress is considering legislation that would exem

Something unusual is happening in the wetlands south of Pecan Island, and in the committee rooms of the Louisiana Legislature, and in the quiet corridors of the Landry administration. Hunting leases are being cancelled. ExxonMobil is shelving a major carbon capture project. A coordinated package of aerospace incentive bills materialized in the Louisiana Legislature within 48 hours of the March 31 filing deadline, carried by two of the most powerful committee chairmen in the H