April 2 2025

America’s Prosperity Peaks Amid Persistent Inequality

Republicans Secure Florida Seats as Democrat Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Amid Record Spending

Coal Plant Demolished to Make Way for Massive AI Data Center

China Races Ahead in Civilian Nuclear Power

Chinese Firms Seek Tariff Loophole by Relocating to Mexico

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FLASH…China held military exercises around Taiwan for a second day on Wednesday…the exercises focused on the Chinese military’s abilities to control and seal off seas and skies around Taiwan…

1. America’s Prosperity Peaks Amid Persistent Inequality

America is more prosperous than ever. U.S. household net worth reached a new peak at the end of 2024. The unemployment rate has levitated just above record lows for three years. The overall debt that households are carrying compared with the assets they own is also near a record low. But even a land of plenty has its shortcomings, influencing both perceptions and realities of how Americans are doing. The U.S. economy remains deeply unequal, with vast gaps in wealth and financial security persisting even as inflation has ebbed and incomes have risen. And data designed to capture the overall population may be obscuring challenges experienced by a broad range of Americans, especially those in the bottom half of the wealth or income spectrum. The share of wealth held by families in the top 10 percent has reached 69 percent, while the share held by families in the bottom 50 percent is only 3 percent, according to the latest reading from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. (When future income claims from Social Security benefits are included, the bottom 50 percent hold 6 percent of total wealth.) Although the bottom 50 percent holds only a 1 percent share of all financial market wealth, six in 10 adults report owning some amount of stock.

Source: NYT

2. Republicans Secure Florida Seats as Democrat Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Amid Record Spending

Republicans Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine won special elections Tuesday in two Florida congressional districts, bolstered by President Donald Trump's endorsement to fill vacant seats in reliably Republican strongholds. Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer, defeated Democrat Gay Valimont in the northwest Florida 1st District despite being outraised and outspent, while Fine prevailed against Democrat Josh Weil in north Florida's 6th District. The victories strengthen Republicans' narrow House majority of 220-213, though turnout was notably lower than November's general election, with Democrats narrowing margins in these traditionally conservative districts.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, liberal Judge Susan Crawford overcame an unprecedented $25 million in spending from Elon Musk to defeat conservative Judge Brad Schimel in a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race. With extraordinarily high turnout for an off-year spring election, Crawford secured a commanding 10-point victory (55%-45%) despite Schimel's alignment with President Trump and Musk's personal campaigning in the state. In a separate Wisconsin ballot measure, voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring photo ID for voting with 63% support, a measure that had passed the GOP-controlled legislature along strict party lines earlier this year.

Editors note: despite the high turnout in WI for a special election, te total vote was still more than 1 million votes shy of the total vote in the 2024 presidential race.) See my comments yesterday on the danger of inferring too much from these races.
Source: Citizen Journal

3. Coal Plant Demolished to Make Way for Massive AI Data Center

The owner of what was once Pennsylvania’s largest operating coal plant just imploded it to make way for a giant AI data-center campus that will be powered by natural gas instead. The site in Homer City, Pa., about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, is expected to house what would be the country’s largest gas-fired power plant, according to owner Homer City Redevelopment. At up to 4.5 gigawatts, the plant could nearly power Manhattan. Its output would more than double that of the original coal facility and be roughly equivalent to Georgia’s Vogtle plant, the country’s largest nuclear power site. The race to build advanced training models for artificial intelligence requires massive amounts of electricity and land, which is sending the tech industry into rural America. Big Tech is a major backer of clean-energy projects, but the amount of round-the-clock power the companies need as quickly as possible has them leaning on new natural-gas projects to fuel their AI ambitions. The power plant will rely on natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a major natural gas field that underlies parts of Pennsylvania and other states. New data centers are increasingly being built near some of the country’s largest oil and gas reserves for access to the city-sized amounts of power that they need to train large AI models.
Source: WSJ

4. China Races Ahead in Civilian Nuclear Power

China has announced a milestone in the development of its next-generation “artificial sun”, marking another step towards harnessing controlled nuclear fusion. For the first time, the Huanliu-3 (HL-3) tokamak reactor in Chengdu has achieved a plasma state with ion temperatures of 117 million degrees Celsius and electron temperatures of 160 million degrees, edging closer to the extreme conditions required to ignite fusion – the same process that powers the Sun, according to researchers. A tokamak is a doughnut-shaped device that uses powerful magnetic fields to confine superheated plasma, where hydrogen atoms – typically deuterium and tritium – fuse into helium and release vast amounts of energy. “Our experiment has achieved the ‘dual 100 million degrees’ milestone, along with a major leap in overall fusion performance. This means China’s fusion research is entering the burning plasma phase,” said Zhong Wulu, chief designer of HL-3, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Friday. “For the first time, we’ve successfully deployed a full suite of heating, control and diagnostic systems developed entirely in China. These systems now rank among the best in the world, and they’ve helped set multiple records in China’s fusion research,” said Zhong, who is from the Southwestern Institute of Physics under the China National Nuclear Corporation. HL-3 is part of the broader network of experimental machines that support the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world’s largest fusion experiment under construction in France, according to the ITER website.
Source: SCMP

5. Chinese Firms Seek Tariff Loophole by Relocating to Mexico

Chinese companies have kept many goods flowing to the U.S. by manufacturing in Mexico, where products ship to the U.S. tariff-free under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term. Chinese firms have invested billions of dollars in hundreds of Mexican factories that make auto parts, electronics, home appliances, furniture, medical equipment and other products for the American market. To Trump’s dismay, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico has grown to nearly $172 billion last year from about $78 billion in 2018. His administration now wants to stop what it views as a major loophole in the trade agreement he signed with America’s closest neighbors.

Source: WSJ

April 2, 1956: The soap opera "As the World Turns" makes its TV debut. It will run for the next 54 years and introduce such future stars as Julianne Moore and Marissa Tomei.

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Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/business/economy/wealth-cash-inequality.html
2. Citizen Journal, based on NYT and AP reports
3. https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/a-big-coal-plant-was-just-imploded-to-make-way-for-an-ai-data-center-cd4bbe32?mod=hp_lead_pos11
4. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3304878/way-harnessing-nuclear-fusion-chinese-hl-3-reactor-hits-dual-100-million-degrees?share=p%2F8QA4%2Fm1IgTgfuvfC7Dfar%2B%2BquhS%2FYuaV5z2Ky3Btsa2PBbgCngebjy%2BfX4Z41dYzaBJA%2FXlVoGwkeykLW3IC4GPMIlerrTMjUBzkKDemg%3D&utm_campaign=social_share
5. https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-mexico-factory-moves-trump-tariffs-f136250e?mod=hp_lead_pos7