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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

Louisiana officials are betting that SpaceX's new Starbase Louisiana facility in Vermilion Parish will do more than launch rockets, it may fundamentally reshape where people in this state choose to live. Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois says the $100 billion project could push the Lafayette metro area past both New Orleans and Baton Rouge to become the state's largest population center within the next decade or so, a claim she acknowledges sounds bold

Louisiana built its reputation as "Hollywood South" on generous tax incentives that lured movie and TV productions to shoot everywhere from New Orleans streets to the state's bayous and live oaks. Now a new wave of technology, first popularized by "The Mandalorian," is giving the state's film industry a reason to matter well beyond its scenery. When Jon Favreau's Star Wars series debuted in 2019, its production team did something no one had attempted at that scale: they shot

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

Louisiana's run of headline-grabbing economic wins is about to add its most futuristic chapter yet. The state is in the final stages of a deal that would bring Elon Musk's SpaceX to a remote stretch of coastal Vermilion Parish, where the company plans to build a spaceport capable of launching rockets into orbit from an 18-mile stretch of marshland known as Pecan Island, about 45 miles southwest of Lafayette. The scale of the site alone sets this apart from anything Louisiana

Louisiana's economic development officials aren't just touting another good year. They're describing a trajectory that keeps bending upward, and the newest numbers back it up. The state has now secured more than $150 billion in corporate investment and roughly 16,000 new jobs in recent years, according to Louisiana Economic Development, with Secretary Susan Bourgeois telling reporters she expects the total to cross $200 billion within months. What stands out isn't just the si

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

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'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