WSJ What’s News - Big, Beautiful Bill Nears Tense House Vote

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

A.M. Edition for May 20. Republican leaders plan to meet with President Trump Tuesday morning in order to shore up support for their tax bill, ahead of a potential House vote on Wednesday. Plus, an administration u-turn means construction of a massive wind farm in New York is back on. And WSJ reporter Te-Ping Chen explains how some companies in the trades sector are targeting high-school students to fill staff shortages. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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President Trump heads to Congress today to push through his big beautiful tax bill. Plus an administration U-turn means construction of a massive wind farm in New York is back on. And we look at how the trade sector is winning over high school students. What we've seen from a lot of employers in recent years is this feeling of, look, we can't find the talent we need out on the market. So we kind of have to grow our own. It's Tuesday, May the 20th. I'm Azar Sukri for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

House Republicans are on course to vote midweek, whether to pass President Trump's agenda of tax cuts and spending reductions. The party remains deeply divided over key issues such as state and local taxes and Medicaid. To give his so-called Big Beautiful bill a push, people familiar with the matter say Trump is planning to speak to the broader House Republicans Conference on Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill. Congressional reporter Olivia Beavers says the bill is a key priority for Trump, with GOP members even calling it legacy defining. This bill is extremely important for Republicans to get past. It includes President Trump's top

priorities from the border, from his promises about energy, to even taxes, no tax on tips, extending his tax cuts from his first administration. And so this is all wrapped up in one big beautiful bill. They tried to put it all into one bill with the hopes that it would be more successful in terms of pulling a very kind of disparate wing party together to get this through. The newly accelerated timeline for the bill means the House Rules Committee is planning to meet shortly after midnight tonight to try to send the package to the House floor for a vote on Wednesday.

Last night, House Speaker Mike Johnson sounded optimistic about reaching an agreement. I've seen lots of conjecture out there, but I wouldn't put much stock in that. I told all the members on a conference call this morning that this is a consensus building operation. It's been a bottom-up process. According to our reporting, there are still four GOP holdouts. Mike Johnson can only afford to lose three votes in order for the bill to pass. Construction on the massive Empire Wind Energy Project off the coast of New York is back on after an abrupt about-face by the Trump administration. The project, run by Norwegian energy group Equinor, was halted a month ago, sending a

chill through the renewable energy industry. Here's our climate change reporter, Ed Ballard. So it was always expected that the flow of new offshore wind projects would pretty much dry up with Trump in charge. But the sector was really rocked by the suspension of the Empire Wind Project because it was already so far advanced.

Approvals were granted last year and Equinor had invested $2.5 billion as of March. So folks were really worried that other already approved projects might be cancelled as well. However, Ed says that worst-case scenario now seems less likely. Clearly, this is a major relief for the offshore wind sector in the US. Just looking at this one project, the fact that Empire Wind is back on again will secure jobs for an estimated 1,500 people and provide enough power for half a million homes in New York just in its first phase.

This will probably give other kinds of investors more confidence to invest in energy projects because the idea that the government could cancel projects that are already well into construction is a deterrent against committing capital. Equinor credited lobbying by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other politicians and labour groups for the reversal. The company plans to start operations at Empire Wind in 2027. Turning to markets now, and Australia's central bank has cut interest rates for the second time this year. The economy is generally in a good place thanks to easing inflation, but

the central bank did warn of the potential impact of Trump's trade policies. As we've reported on this show before, those tariffs are already taking a toll on the Chinese economy, where policymakers today cut its benchmark lending rate by a further ten basis points in a bid to stimulate domestic demand. Shares of Chinese EV battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL, have soared on their Hong Kong market debut. The company raised $4.6bn in the secondary listing, making it the world's largest equity offering so far this year. Its shares are already listed in Shenzhen. And biotech firm Regeneron has agreed to buy 23andMe out of bankruptcy.

Regeneron is paying $256m for the DNA testing company, a steep fall from the $6bn valuation at 23andMe's peak in 2021. The acquisition raises privacy concerns as Regeneron will take control of millions of people's genetic information. Regeneron said it would ensure compliance with 23andMe's privacy policy, which will be reviewed by a court-appointed ombudsman. Coming up with a shortage of skilled trades workers, we'll hear why companies are offering big money at high schools to find future hires. That story and more after the break. The shortage of skilled workers like plumbers, roofers and welders has been a global headache

for developed countries for some time. But now journal reporter Tipping Chan says some US employers may have found a solution, pitching high school students on their workplaces. Our Kate Bulevant spoke to Tipping, who started by setting the stage on how bad the shortage of workers in skilled trades is right now. It is substantial. It's going to vary, of course, depending on where in the economy you're looking. But certainly you talk to any number of employers ranging from auto dealerships to manufacturers, and they're really struggling to hire folk and to find qualified folk. It's of course become even more of an issue as we have seen so many more baby boomers retiring and we see the average age in a lot of these industries

really having crept up a lot and some serious questions over how many young workers are going in to replace them. And in some cases it might look like, say in a manufacturing sense, not being able to run a line because somebody's out sick, or maybe someone's on vacation for a week and you stop production for a week. So the consequences can be really substantial and the challenges to hiring are very real. And so they are targeting a really young workforce to replace them.

What we've seen from a lot of employers in recent years is this feeling of, look, we can't find the talent we need out on the market. So we kind of have to grow our own. And what that looks like might be going into high schools to start recruiting, to try and create partnerships with local schools to see if they can get kids working part time, gain some exposure, all kinds of different strategies. But yes, absolutely, we are seeing more businesses try and turn in that direction as a hiring strategy. And what is it about a younger workforce that they're seeing as beneficial? One thing that you'll hear a lot of employers emphasize is that today's trades jobs are not the same ones that they were 10 or 20 years ago. They are much more tech-infused.

They require a lot more fluency with computers, with programming. And so not only is there an imperative to recruit often from high schools or other kinds of labor polls that maybe they might not traditionally have hit, given the overall worker shortage, but also it can be really advantageous to do so because they are ultimately looking for workers that have a high degree of comfort using tech. And that kind of facility is not always something you're going to get with older workers. And so for them, there is sort of a double appeal. And so what are some of these companies offering these prospective employees?

It will range a lot depending on, of course, where in the United States you are, what kind of role we're talking about. Everything is local. But in some cases, the offers that are being made are really substantial. Here in Philadelphia, I spoke with one high school, a Catholic private high school that launched a welding program. And in recent years, their graduates have just seen incredible demand, job offers that at a minimum would pay $50,000 a year. And in some cases, quite a bit higher, I spoke to one student who is 17 years old, a junior, so not even a senior at this point, but he has already gotten an offer for after he graduates that would pay him $70,000 a year.

Many of these companies are offering paid vacation, retirement. One of the benefits for people going into the trades, especially if you're looking at a union job, is there's just a degree of predictability, right? And especially in a time when there's a lot of uncertainty about AI and the job market more broadly, that's something that students have said is really appealing, the sense that they know what they're going to make. It's written down. It's very clearly contracted in many cases. And Teping, what do the students that you spoke to make of all this? Is it working? For the students that have been pursuing these paths, among some of them just a feeling of

incredulity, like this is incredible that we are being courted in this fashion, that we have these jobs that pay so well and in many cases, among some of the students that I was speaking to, more than what their parents maybe would have made. When they talk to their college-bound peers, there's likewise the sense of, wow, that's pretty extraordinary. And in some cases, even a sense of, I wish I'd known. A real change in sentiment, it seems. Teping, thank you so much for bringing us this story. Thank you. Now after broadening the Republican coalition in last year's election, President Trump

is now at risk of shrinking it. Trump came close to winning young voters and made gains among Black, Hispanic and other minority groups who have previously resisted the GOP. He also improved his showing among seniors. But now that he's back in the White House, these groups and even his most ardent supporters have grown increasingly unhappy with his job performance. His job approval number has sunk significantly. People disapprove of what they're seeing rather than approve by about 11 points. Now, many of the people who give him low job approval ratings might still not be ready to vote for a Democrat, but still, there's really only two groups among which he has positive job approval ratings, and that is white working class voters, those without a college degree.

That's his core support and always has been. The second group is evangelical Christians who strongly support him, but among just about every other group, he is sinking. That's Washington reporter Aaron Zittner, who leads the journal's polling coverage. He says that while Trump's approval ratings are sinking, there are opportunities to change voters' minds before next year's midterms or even the next presidential election. A lot of people are kind of sour on Trump because they expect that his tariffs will lead to high inflation. If that materialises, his approval rating could sink further.

But if inflation doesn't materialise, maybe they'll turn around and go into the next election with a more favourable opinion of the president and his party. So there's still plenty of time for things to change. But right now, Donald Trump has a bit of a hole to dig out from among some of the groups that swung toward him and were open to his message in 2024. And that's it for What's News for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevant and Daniel Barke. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Azhar

Sukri for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.