Daily Caller
‘A Tough Place To Do Business’: Chevron Exec Details Company’s Decision To Move HQ Out Of California

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
A top Chevron executive detailed his company’s decision to move its headquarters out of California in a Thursday roundtable with reporters.
Andy Walz, president of Chevron Americas products, said that California’s crusade against conventional energy producers played a role in the company’s decision to move its headquarters to Texas. Measures like California’s 2035 ban on internal combustion engine vehicles and its emissions cap-and-trade rules were specific headwinds that played a role in the company’s decision to move its headquarters to Houston, Walz said.
“It is a difficult place to do business. It’s a difficult place to be headquartered. And we finally said, ‘Hey, that’s enough. We’ve got critical mass, we’re gonna move.’ We’re also going to improve our performance by getting everybody in the same location,” Walz explained.
Walz made clear that part of the reason for Chevron’s headquarters relocation is that parts of its operations and senior leadership have already been stationed in Texas, and that the company believes its performance can improve if employees and executives are in the same place. The company is not walking away from its assets in California, andChevron plans to continue operating them into the future, Walz said.
“California is a tough place to do business. It’s a tough place to recruit people. It’s a tough place to move employees. A lot of our employees move up through the company, they gain experiences in different geographies, different locations, and we have a lot of people that will not move to California. That makes it difficult,” Walz said. “California is a tough place to have a big employee base. It’s tough, its cost of living is expensive, and we were not able to get employees that didn’t live there to move there. And that’s not sustainable for us, to be honest.”
California has the third-highest cost of living of all states, trailing only Hawaii and Massachusetts, Forbes Magazine assessed in July. Overall, California has seen net outflows of population in recent years, with more than 800,000 people moving out of the state in 2022 alone, according to Forbes.
Additionally, more than 350 companies moved their headquarters out of the state between 2018 and 2022, according to Forbes.
“California has said, ‘Hey, you cannot buy a new car that has an internal combustion engine in it after 2035.’ So, that’s a headwind against investing in a refinery. On the books, they have a windfall profits tax or penalty, they’re evaluating how to deal with that, they want to cap the amount of profits you can make in your refinery. That is a headwind for anybody that would want to put money into it to try to get a return on their investment,” Walz said. “And the third thing that maybe is even a bit more crippling is this: they have a program called cap and trade, where they tax your CO2 emissions in the state of California. And that tax continues to go up every year, and it gets more burdensome every single year. So those three regulations, those three policies, really make it hard for me to want to put more capital into the state of California. Therefore, I think the business case there is really challenging.”
“Our competitors are looking at the exact same equation I’m looking at, and our money is going other places, and California can’t get supplied from Houston,” Walz said. “It doesn’t work.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently-finalized tailpipe emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles — which have been characterized by critics as an “EV mandate” — are another policy that Walz believes will have “consequences” if implemented.
Walz’s comments on the business environment in California echo Chevron CEO Mike Wirth’s recent remarks to The Wall Street Journal, in which he said that “California has a number of policies that raise costs, that hurt consumers.”
As news of Chevron’s headquarters relocation broke earlier in August, the office of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the company’s decision was the “logical culmination of a long process that has repeatedly been foreshadowed by Chevron.”
Business
‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.
“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”
“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.
Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.
“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.
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With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.
“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.
“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.
The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.
“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”
2025 Federal Election
‘I’m Cautiously Optimistic’: Doug Ford Strongly Recommends Canada ‘Not To Retaliate’ Against Trump’s Tariffs

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Cohen
Ontario Premier Doug Ford urged Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to avoid retaliation against the tariffs President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday.
Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would impose “a minimum baseline tariff of 10%” on all goods entering the United States, with Canada not being included on the list of countries with higher rates. When asked about what Canada’s response would be on “Bloomberg: Balance of Power,” Ford said he was “cautiously optimistic” about Canada’s omission from the higher-tier tariffs and emphasized the importance of a cooperative relationship with the U.S.
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“Well, let’s see where these tariffs go. I’m cautiously optimistic that I never saw Canada or Mexico on that list. And it just goes to show you two great countries working together, collaborating together and building relationships,” Ford said. “So again, I’m cautiously optimistic. I think if that’s the case, it’s the right thing for both the U.S and Canada.”
Host Kailey Leinz noted that there are currently tariffs on Canada in place as well as an exemption for goods that are in compliance with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
“Does that mean, sir, at least in your mind, that it wouldn’t be appropriate for Canada to retaliate for this at this time?” Leinz asked.
“That is correct. If that’s the case, then I would highly recommend to the prime minister not to retaliate. And let’s carry on a strong relationship,” Ford answered. “Let’s build the American-Canadian fortress around both countries and be the wealthiest, most prosperous, safest two countries in the world.”
Trump declared a national emergency to levy a slew of reciprocal tariffs on what he has deemed “Liberation Day.”
“My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day, April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again,” Trump said.
The president also announced that he would proceed with implementing a 25% tariff on “all foreign-made automobiles” that will take effect at midnight.
Ford in March had imposed a 25% surcharge on electricity to New York, Michigan and Minnesota, but promptly rescinded the policy and apologized to Americans on WABC’s “Cats & Cosby” radio show the following day. The tariffs were a retaliatory measure against Trump’s flurry of tariffs against Canada since starting his second term.
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