If you listened to debates in Congress in 2024, the Democrats often said to the Republicans have you gone to Mar-a-Largo to see Mr. Trump. This was a valid comment because Mr. Trump was the Republican nominee, but he had not won. Then the election was held, and it has been a tidal wave of people going to see then President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Trump’s days include meeting with people in the day, going golf in the afternoon and attending dinner functions in the evening.

In an article by Adriana Gomez Licon and Michelle Price of the Associated Press, sightings of those turning up offer a glimpse into the workings of Mr. Trump’ incoming White House and how he is setting priorities for office.

The fee to belong to Mar-a-Lago is about $200,000 with $14,000 in annual dues. It stands to reason the vast majority of the people who belong are the 1% or companies paying the fee. It is also a place where people go to get a job or seek favors from the new administration. Essentially it is the place to be.

Elon Musk has been living in the area and is reported considering buying a penthouse condo nearby for $100 million. All the big tech companies known as the Magnificent 7 CEOs have been seen – Mark Zukerberg of Meta or Facebook; Tim Cook of Apple; Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet or Google; Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Various world leaders have dropped in for dinner including Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum; Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Argentine President Javier Milei and Akie Abe, widow of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In addition, many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies including all the bankers have been in Florida.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the world of corporate public relations, people go to be seen but they also go to ensure their agenda is taken care of. Part of the agenda is to ensure the government does as little wrong as possible, in the eyes of the CEO. For the investments you own, has your CEO been to Mar-a-Largo?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In all economies there are natural advantages and often times for lots of reasons, they have not been taken advantage of. The reasons tend to be the owners of resources look after themselves, but over time the government of the country evolves to take advantage of the resources for everyone. A classic case is Ecuador, South America.

The country is located south of Columbia and north of Peru and it is rich in resources the Andes Mountains run through it, and closer to the Pacific there is the Amazon jungle.

In an article by Julie Turkewitz and Jose Maria Leon Cabrera of the New York Times News Service, 2 decades ago there was a vision – the water running down the mountains could be and should be tapped for hydroelectric power. The government of Rafael Corra in 2007 set out to do such a thing. The government had little money, but Chinese lenders did and a dozen new hydroelectric projects, including dams were built. With Chinese banking, came Chinese companies to do the work. The country’s overall energy generation capacity rose 60% according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. This was a good thing and energy costs fell.

Mr. Corra flew Ecuador for Belgium because of corruption charges related to the hydro projects.

The problem in the country is whether its due to climate change or bad management of the hydro system, Ecuador has been experiencing drought conditions and the output of the hydro has decreased leading to blackouts. This has meant Ecuador is buying power from Columbia and every election the cost of power is the number one election issue. Power cuts began in 2023, then became daily occurrences in September of 2024 shutting down businesses and ending entire industries into crisis. Power costs for a small business went from $3,000 a year to $15,000 because of the need to use diesel generators.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, all companies start off with a number of advantages, costs are less than competitors, which is why they were able to generate profits to pay dividends. Over time things change, sometimes because of management decisions, some of them due to what happens in the world, but things change. The issue is how to deal with them to maintain margins.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In 2016, Alex Ross wrote a book published by Simon & Schuster, NY called The Industries of the Future. The chapters include here comes the robots; genetic code code-ification of money, markets and trust; big data; and weaponization of code. All the above are coming into normal life – although robots are more in the factory than in the house. Genetic code and predicting life is getting closer eventually the insurance world will adopt it. The code-ification of money includes using cellphones as ATMs and bit coin; the emergence of AI and the use of big data is commonplace. However, unfortunately the weaponization of code means every company and maybe every person will need cyber security features as a given or at least a need to pay for it.

In an article by Surbhi Misra and David Shepardson of Reuters, the Chinese-linked Salt Typhoon targeted AT&T and Verizon but limited to a small number of individuals of foreign intelligence interest. Those individuals were connected to President Trump and what he and people around him were texting and audio recordings about China and China’s interests.

In a Department of Justice investigation gaining hold of someone’s text messages is an important part of the case to be made against someone. The department goes through a judge and shows intent and has permission to if people are breaking the law.

The cybercrime is involved without permission, gaining information to leverage against in this case politicians and those around them.

In response to the last attack, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency urged senior government and political figures to move mobile communications to end-to-end encrypted apps.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, we want and love open communications then the other side happens and the world slowly closes. If the companies you invest in are not using encrypted apps, one has to ask why not? what processes do they use to fight cyber crime?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In every community, there is an economic development committee which attempts to increase jobs in the area. Ideally the focus is what is existing and develop those businesses along with others to complement. But the sexy headline in the newspaper is a large multinational firm relocating to the area to jump start investment and jobs. If a large multinational firm decides to locate, there will be a demand for housing, increased retail sales and perhaps new schools and other services. A number of regular economic activities happen and more can happen.

In an article by Peter S Goodman of the New York Times News Service, the same thing that happens in Mexico. For years, first NAFTA was in place, then President Trump renegotiated the deal to USMCA, but it amounts to free trade of goods and many multinational firms have built operations in Mexico to send goods to the US to achieve higher margins and profits.

During the USMCA, companies that relied on China to ship goods to the US, did not move operations to the US, many moved them to Mexico. The companies include Trane, a company that makes heating and air-conditioning units. The practice of moving to Mexico is called near-shoring or in this case closing the distance between plants in Asia and customers in the US.

The proposed tariffs across the board, leads to companies similar to Trane which makes parts in Mexico, but the final assembly is in Tennessee.

At the moment, business leader in Mexico believe that Trump hates China more than he hates Mexico, and given the long standing agreements, Mexico will benefit.

One of the cities that has benefited from near shoring is Monterrey, which has over 5 million people. The city is within 3 hours of trucking to the US and in 2024 over $23 billion of foreign investment was committed to more than 100 projects. 2 of the projects are Volvo making trucks and John Deere making construction equipment. Intel is looking at possible operations. Bosch, a German home appliance giant shifted some operations from China to Mexico.

A Tennessee company called Plaastiexports which does custom injection molding expanded into Mexico and uses robotic arms to pluck lids for plastic storage containers from the steel molds. The factory has 41 machines, and it is expected to double to 82 in 2025.

Wisdom Digital Logistics which operates warehouses and arranges trucking on both sides of the border opened a 4th warehouse and is considering expansion to number 5.

Besides US and European companies, Chinese companies have opened operations in Mexico. According to the Rhodium group, in 2023, Chinese companies made 42 investments worth $3.77 billion. According to the USMCA agreement, as long as the rules of origin are satisfied, requirements that certain percentages of the parts are drawn from North American suppliers, the products are classified as Mexican and are duty-free to the US. Chinese companies employ Mexican workers while buying parts and materials from the US and Canada.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the basic rules around manufacturing are the same whether you are in the US or another country, it really depends on where the senior executives want to spend their time. For once a plant is built, through the capital allocation, then it needs ongoing support from the senior team. As robots are involved in more manufacturing at all levels, the advantage of cheaper labor is offset to a degree. There are a host of factor that need to be checked off, but investors are expecting wherever the plant is located, margins remain high enough to ensure profits are made on sales and dividends can be paid.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

If you own a piece of land to build a house on it, you will quickly determine to build takes time. It takes a while before all the moving parts to make the house function like a home happens. It is no different with the supply system.

In an article by Meaghan Tobin and John Liu of the New York Times News Service, US President Trump talked about implementing tariffs on day 1 or short afterwards. If you are a company, you need to take that seriously and had to start planning long before.

Foxconn has been preparing for this possibility for years. Foxconn produces a significant share of the world’s consumer electronics at its factories in central China. For decades it has produced the iPhones for Apple and it says makes half of all computer servers that power artificial intelligence or AI systems.

Foxconn has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on land and equipment to make iPhones in Bangalore and Tamil Nadu in India. It makes AI severs in Jalisco in Mexico. It received $300 million from Thailand to make parts and equipment for computer chip business. Foxconn paid $33 million for 10-acre tract north of Houston.

Just because Foxconn makes an investment does not mean success. Two examples are an announcement in 2011 in Brazil for an expected 100,000 jobs has produced 3,000 jobs. Plans for Indonesia $1 billion investment fell through. In the US, a $10 billion investment in Wisconsin has produced empty land and a few warehouse buildings but infrastructure was paid by the state.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, diversification takes time and preplanning, if the companies you invest in are in process, then there will be a time delay when governments make announcements.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In every community, the desire to be connected to the internet is around and every level of government has embraced the idea. There are some governments around the world which says connection to the internet is a right. If it is right, that means the government has to ensure all its citizens have internet access and it is affordable or essentially free. Most governments want its citizens connected for people to search the internet and generate economic returns. Technically the more places are connected, the more people can work from anywhere even though if you listen to people in Washington, they want people in the office.

In an article Eessi Lehto and Andrius Sytas of Reuters, in Finland an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia was damaged and 4 internet lines were broken. Was it an accident or done on purpose. The main culprit is a Russian ship carrying oil named the Eagle S. In the world of shipping, ships are registered in tax hazens around the world and the Eagle S is registered in the Cook Islands which is in the South Pacific Ocean.

The Finnish Coast Guard crew boarded the Eagle S to investigate according to the director of Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, Robin Lardot. This was grave sabotage.

The Eagle S is believed to be part of Russia’ shadow fleet of aging tankers that seek to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil.

Two of the fibre-optic cables owned by Finnish operator Elisa linked Finland and Estonia. A third cable is owned by China’s Citic. The 4th cable is owned by Finnish group Cinia runs between Finland and Germany.

Both the Finnish and Estonian governments held extraordinary meetings to access the situation.

Baltic Sea nations have seen a number of internet connections broken since 2022, although it is always a possibility that it was a technical malfunction and/or an accident.

The Eagle S Panamax oil tanker crossed the Estlink 2 electricity cable at 10:26 GMT, a Reuters review of Marine Traffic ship tracking data showed, identical to the time with the power outage occurred. The time to fix the outage can be months.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, infrastructure is a key element of every country and working infrastructure allows for economic growth. If the infrastructure is damaged, then something will be weakened. Supplies, access, customers go the ability to make profits. The world has changed to what infrastructure is and what countries will do if the infrastructure is damaged.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

A few year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine and the Russia was expecting the same response from Europe as the previous time. A slap on the wrist and then everything would be normalized. This time, the western countries said no and the war between Russia and Ukraine became a normal awful war and Europe and the US imposed sanctions on Russia. Financial assets were seized, they are helping to pay for the war, as well as shutting down oil and gas from Russia. Although the world concentrates on the Middle East as oil producing countries, Russia is one of the world’s largest producer of oil and gas and much of the economy was based on budget surpluses from the sale of the products.

Since the war, Russia has concentrated on alternatives to China and India and Europe paid the price of the sanctions. Germany and Italy were the biggest customers, and the result was oil and gas prices went from the lowest prices in Europe to some of the highest prices, with a direct effect on the economies of the countries and manufacturing costs.

In an article from Reuters, Russian oil and gas is slowly making a comeback into Europe with Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said exports are up 18% from last year.

The increase admittedly is coming from a low base, when European supplies fell 55.6% to 28.3 bcm, but they are now up to 32 bcm according to Gazprom.

There are problems for the oil and gas, even though there is conflict between Russia and Ukraine, about half of Russian gas flows from Russia to Ukraine to Europe. The exports are allowed by a 5-year agreement which expires in 2024 and Ukraine said will not be renewed.

The other half goes through the TurkStream pipeline on the bed of the Black Sea.

LNG supplies have been on the rise with Europe taking half of the Russian exports. The EU said it will try to take less LNG and go to alternatives from Norway, the US and Qatar. (President Trump has said he wants more LNG supplies to go to Europe).

Linking to dividend paying stocks, geopolitics is something companies get involved in once they export and import from other countries. The best solution is always peace and stability, but the world is complicated, with every country having their own agenda and hopefully they are similar to where you have your investments. If they are, life is simpler and that is a good thing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

In every industry there are trends and disruptions which eventually leads to changes in business models or adaption or mergers and acquisitions. For example, we all know that sports programming because it is live, has many viewers which means it is valuable. However, how people watch the sports has changed from a TV to streaming services. At some point in the past, after buying a stereo and a TV, people needed to pay a cable company for access to programming. Then came Netflix and streaming services and people cutting the cord or only paid for streaming services. The cable companies make less money and need to do something.

In an article by Scott Murdoch, Anousha Sakoui and Chandin Monnappa of Reuters, News Corp which is based in Australia and owned by Rupert Murdoch has agreed to sell its Australian cable TV unit Foxtel to a British sports network DAZN for $2.1 billion.

News Corp will gain a board seat with DAZN and hold a 6% share in the company. DAZN gains rights to Australian Football League and the National Rugby League.

Foxtel saw the rise in sports rights costs and competing against global digital companies, Brain Ha, an analyst with Morningstar, said the sales multiple of 7 times earnings was higher than expected.

DAZN, which streams in North America, Europe and Asia and the portfolio is valued at $35 billion. the majority ownership is Len Blavatnik, a dual US and British citizen. Mr. Blavatnik owns DAZN through Access Industries which owns a majority stake in Warner Music Corp.

In Europe, DAZN broadcasts European football in partnership with Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s LaLiga, Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1.

In Australia, the Australian Football League has a $4.5 billion Australian dollar 7-year deal with Foxtel that runs until 2031, while Cricket Australian receives $1.5 billion.

News Corp will focus on its core operations of Dow Jones (think of the Dow Jones Index) and other financial assets including the Wall Street Journal, digital real estate company REA Group and book publisher HarperCollins. The deal with DAZN is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every industry has trends and disruptions in their midst and it is a tough battle to remain profitable and pay dividends. Companies have to adjust, acquire new partnerships sometimes with companies that did not previously exist in their orbit a few years before. If the companies, you invest in are standing still standing still, you should be looking at alternatives. Many years ago, there was a company who was content to wrap up its annual meeting in less than 10 minutes and was happy about it. In the present environment that is a recipe for selling off assets.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

All companies look at the landscape to determine what is? and what can be? Nobody knows the future although there are hints what is coming in the next few years because most of the future is dependent on many things happening before profits are made. If you live in a city, you look at the office buildings, are people working from the office or home? If they work from home, do we need more office buildings. However, developers believe we will continue to work from offices and if they can received signed leases they are happy to build more office buildings because of what is.

In an article by Eric Atkins of the Globe and Mail, a couple of years ago, Canadian Pacific merged with Kansas City Southern to become CPKC. The CP runs east and west across Canada and the KC runs north and south from Mexico through Kansas City to Chicago and up to Canada. The merger was done at a cost of $27 billion and went through. One of the biggest shareholders CPKC is Bill Ackerman who holds it as a core company.

Part of what is includes free trade as first through NAFTA and then renegotiated to USMCA act which essentially keeps the idea of free trade. Trans-border shipments made up 41% of CPKC’s revenue in 2023. CPKC offers customers longer hauls with fewer interchanges which is a time-saving and efficient service or lowers costs for CPKC.

The railway has partnered with Americold Realty Trust to build a chilled container facility in Kansas City that will send pork and beef to Mexico. The hub will have Mexican food inspectors on-site to ensure rapid shipments south and a seamless border. (it is less expensive to cut meat in Mexico).

The 2 companies are looking at moving Mexican fruit and produce north to markets in the US and Canada. In addition, the company built a second bridge connecting Mexico and the Texas doubling its capacity to move trains. Also, many vehicles move back and forth between the US and Mexico, CPKC opened an automotive yard near Dallas for finished vehicles.

Mexican trade accounted for 22% of CPKC’s 2023 revenue or $3 billion. Of this total 55% is US exports, 23% is Mexican imports and 1% is Mexico to Canada.

President Trump has talked about imposing tariffs on the deal he negotiated or the USMCA. Other people in or near the administration have talked about tariffs as negotiating tools. No one really knows, but billions of dollars of investment based on the what is? have been made and will slow down or stop on the words of the President.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.