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This episode is sponsored by Morgan Stanley's Thoughts on the Market. Today's Financial markets move fast. Morgan Stanley moves faster with their daily podcast, Thoughts on the Market. Thoughts on the Market covers daily trends across the global investment landscape with actionable insights from Morgan Stanley's leading economists and strategists. And with most episodes under five minutes long, staying informed has never been easier. Listen and subscribe to Thoughts on the Market wherever you get your podcasts.
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A deadly collision between a plane and fire truck closes New York's LaGuardia Airport. Plus, Iran surprises defense experts by debuting an intermediate range ballistic missile.
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The capability wasn't surprising, but the fact that Iran was willing to use it is what stunned a lot of people.
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And Cuba says it's readying for a US Military operation as the island weathers another nationwide Blackout. It's Monday, March 23rd. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal and here is the AM edition of what's news, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Iran has just hours left to open the Strait of Hormuz or face US Attacks on its power plants. President Trump issued that ultimatum over the weekend, threatening to obliterate the plants starting with the largest one. Iran in turn threatened to attack energy, water and IT infrastructure across the Middle East. That promised reprisal has led Gulf states to try and the US out of the plant attacks, though it's unclear if those appeals are getting through. We report that officials from several countries in the region have been angry for days that they don't have any influence with the Trump administration despite their financial investments in the U.S. meanwhile, the head of the International Energy Agency says he believes the world leaders continue to underestimate the potential economic impact of the war. Fatih Birol described the current situation as being worse than the pair of oil crises that occurred in the 1970s combined and said that intervention, the tensions taken so far to limit an energy shock only amounted to a band aid. Now we have recently released some demand side measures how we can reduce the demand, but what we are doing is, to be very frank, to reduce the pain on the economy. The single most important solution to this problem is opening up the Hormo Strait. As the things stand now, B Roll's comments come as commodities beyond energy and fertilizer are becoming impacted by the war. Qatar is reporting that attacks on its largest LNG plant last week could take years to repair and will cut annual helium exports by some 14%. The gas is a critical component in semiconductor manufacturing. Meanwhile, Iran has brought much of Europe into the range of its missiles after targeting a US UK Military base in the Indian Ocean on Friday. The attack on the Diego Garcia base some 2,500 miles away from Iran, roughly the distance to London or Paris, was unsuccessful but revealed that the country has longer range missiles than many analysts realized. As recently as last month, Iran's leaders said they had limited their missile ranges to the equivalent of half the distance to the base. Wall Street Journal senior national security correspondent Shelby Holiday says that Iran's first ever use of intermediate range ballistic missiles, or irb, is a game changer.
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What matters is that Iran showed the world that it had irbms, that it had this capability, and more importantly, that it was willing to use it. And that's important because Iran has long maintained this political policy of capping its missile ranges so that it could threaten Israel and parts of the Middle East. But it tried to avoid provoking Europe and provoking countries that were farther away. And now, experts say all bets are off. The cat is out of the bag. There's no going back. Iran has this capability. It's creating a new security reality overnight for European capitals and countries that are in Asia, countries that are in Africa, countries that are now within range of an Iranian missile.
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Following the attack, the UK Granted the US Greater access to its global bases to strike targets in Iran and prevent it from firing missiles or threatening international shipping. Two pilots have been killed after an Air Canada Express plane arriving from Montreal collided with a firefighting vehicle shortly after landing at New York's LaGuardia Airport. The port Authority of New York and New Jersey said that the firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident just before midnight. There were 72 passengers and four crew members aboard the aircraft, with photos showing the front end of the plane sheared off. The FAA says LaGuardia will be closed until at least 2pm Eastern. Meanwhile, President Trump says he'll move Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to airports starting today if Democrats don't support an agreement to fund the Department of Home Security. Travelers have been experiencing long security lines at some airports during the spring break travel period, with the funding impasse leading some TSA officers to quit or call in sick. It wasn't immediately clear what type of security ICE would provide, though White House borders are Tom Homan said on Fox News Sunday that ICE personnel could perform airport security tasks that don't require specialized training.
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But the president's made it clear he's not going to let America be held hostage anymore. We're going to try to move those lines quicker, give TSA support. They're our brothers and sisters when the DHEA and we simply need to get these officers paid. But until then, the President came up with a great idea. Let's send additional resources to the airports to support the American people and support the men and women with TSA who are not getting paid but showing up for work every day.
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TSA officers are set to miss more than a month of paychecks if Congress doesn't agree on DHS funding by Friday and heads out on a scheduled two week recess. Cuba's government has said it is prepared for any US Military operation on the island. In response to President Trump's comments that he he could do what he wants with the country, here was Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos Fernandez de cocio, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press.
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Our military is always prepared and in fact it is preparing these days for the possibility of military aggression. We would be naive if, looking at what's happening around the world, we would not do that. But we truly hope that it doesn't occur. We don't see why it would have to occur and we find no justification whatsoever. Why would the government of the United States force its country to take military action against a neighboring country like Cuba?
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Over the weekend, Cuba's energy grid collapsed, leaving millions of people in the dark for the third time this month. The country is facing an unprecedented energy crisis, which it's blamed on a US Oil blockade. And Earth is suffering from its worst energy imbalance ever recorded as the planet stores an accelerating amount of heat. That report from the World Meteorological Organization Organization confirmed that the last 11 years have been the 11 hottest on record, fueling unabated glacial melting. The heat buildup comes as US Climate scientists forecast that a new El Nino warming cycle could begin later this year, likely driving up global temperatures next year. Coming up, we've got the rest of the day's news, including Elon Musk's plans to open a chip factory in Texas and Amazon finally scoring a box office. Blockbuster those stories and more after the break.
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It's time to rip up your textbooks because buried amidst a torrent of war related headlines, last week, one of the world's most vocal champions of free trade signaled a policy shift. And Dow Jones economics editor Paul Hannon joins me now to talk about it. Paul, I think we'd all be forgiven for missing this World bank report, though. Kudos to you. You didn't tell us what it said and why it's so important.
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What it said was that industrial policy, tariffs, subsidies, and other ways in which the government can intervene in the economy in support of a particular sector, that that's okay. That that's in fact, in many cases a good thing. And that's quite a shift for the World bank, which for three decades had warned governments around the world against precisely those kinds of policies on the basis
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of how they interpreted what South Korea. Right. Was doing in the 1970s.
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Yeah, they were looking at a number of economies in East Asia that had delivered fairly spectacular growth rates in the decades running into the 90s. And to a lot of people, this looked like a justification for big government intervention. You have to remember that the 1990s was the decade of pro market reform. After Reagan, after Thatcher, free markets were seen as the solution to more or less every economic problem. And the performance of these economies that had not done it that way raised some questions about that policy.
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Does the World bank now say that industrial policy is working in the present context? And is it essentially recommending that countries embrace protectionism, if we could call it that?
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It's not quite that blanket and not that one size fits all. And it says that some of these things suit different kinds of economies. So it's actually okay with tariffs, which is quite a development in and of itself. But it thinks that they're better suited to really big economies that have a lot of capacity to manage them and to target particular industries for support. So that would fit, I think the US it warns against using tariffs if you're a poor country with a small domestic market. The whole idea of using tariffs to boost industry is that that industry would have a lot of customers to get going and expand before you take the barriers down and let it grow internationally. But if you're a small, poor country, maybe tariffs aren't right and what you need to focus on is industrial parks or particular kind of skill sets in the workforce.
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Finally, is this all just semantics? I mean, I'm curious. You know, obviously this is a big reversal for an institution that had been staunchly in favor of trade liberalization for a long time. But your Reporting also notes that the 80% of the world Bank's country economists had said their clients were already seeking advice last year on industrial policies. It's not like they were waiting for this official mea culpa in order to be going that direction.
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No, it feels quite client led, if you want to think about it that way. And it is a world that has changed a lot. The fact is that industrial policies are used pretty much everywhere. In some cases they are kind of manifestly successful, like for example, China. Obviously these governments around the world are using them. And I think it seems a little like the World bank decided that rather than just leave it open to governments maybe botching it, as they say, they should provide kind of like a playbook for doing it well in a way that suits your particular circumstances. So it's quite a big shift, but in a sense it's a little bit late and it sort of adapts to reality rather than attempting to create a reality.
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That was Dow Jones Economics editor, Paul Hannan. Paul, appreciate you as always. Thanks so much.
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Thanks again, Luke.
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We are exclusively reporting that activist investor Elliott Investment Management has taken a multi billion dollar stake in chip designer synopsys. Elliott is aiming to push the business to make more money from its software and services to customers including Intel, Alphabet, Tesla and Nvidia. Amid the AI boom. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has announced that Tesla and SpaceX will partner to build a massive chip factory in Austin, Texas. The so called Terrafab will produce chips for Tesla's vehicles, its Optimus humanoid robots and for SpaceX satellites. Musk didn't provide a timeline for completion, but analysts at Morgan Stanley said that building a chip fab would take years to complete and cost well over $20 billion. And finally, Amazon has scored its first major box office hit with big budget sci fi adventure project. Hail Mary.
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Dr. Grace, I need your help.
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I am a teacher at Grover Cleveland Middle.
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You have a doctorate in molecular biology.
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I'm not an astronaut.
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Starring Ryan Gosling, the film debuted to a global total of over $140 million, topping the charts in almost every international market. The milestone marks Amazon's most successful opening since entering the movie business a decade ago. And that's it for what's news for this Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Till then, thanks for listening.
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The Future of Everything is the Wall Street Journal's flagship Live event, returning to New York City May 4th through 5th. Be there as CEOs, policymakers and innovators Sit down journalists to answer the most pressing questions of the day. From finance, tech and economic policy to sports streaming and style. We're bringing together today's most compelling newsmakers for two days of conversations on what's ahead. Listeners of this podcast can access exclusive discounted rates by visiting WSJ.com future that's WSJ.com future.