Dow

The global supply of these precursors is fiercely concentrated.

A handful of colossal chemical conglomerates like BASF, Dow, Covestro, and Huntsman synthesize the vast majority of the world's foam building blocks.

If you trace the family tree of your favorite pillow top mattress back far enough, you will invariably find a snaky network of steel pipes sitting right on the Gulf Coast of North America.

Oh my.

Within days of the freeze, the chemical giants were forced to trigger the nuclear option of international corporate contract law.

Force majeure.

BASF, Dow, Covestro, and Shell issued formal declarations informing industrial clients that due to an act of God, they could no longer fulfill their contractual obligations.

Over 80% of United States production capacity for MDI and TDI was completely offline.

And in the late '80s, I believe there had been this explosion in Bhopal, India.

Uh, it was Dow Chemical, but it killed thousands of people, and I was very worried that something like that could happen to, to DuPont.

And I-- of course, they took great precautions, and thank God nothing has happened, but they're transporting very dangerous, uh, chemicals all over the world, and y-you know, you never know.

So I was worried that there was no real, real growth left.

The legal side is catching up.

A lawsuit filed in June of twenty twenty-six by a former pest control worker names Dow Chemical, which developed chlorpyrifos along with Corteva and FMC.

It alleges Dow knew or should have known about the neurological dangers and failed to warn the people handling it.

Those allegations haven't been tested in court.

Residential uses were phased out in the early two thousands, but agricultural spraying continued, and the EPA still permits limited use.

We'll have our answer on October the 19th.

One thing I would say about investment decisions, because I've now walked the path on a number of them, whether it was Lufthansa Technik or whether it was CAE, whether it was getting the WestJet deal to the finish line, whether it was the de Havilland project, whether it was the net zero Dow Chemical $10 billion investment.

These things take time.

You start with a relationship, you build it over time, you build trust, you identify some of the issues that might be barriers, you resolve them, and then you get to final investment decisions.

Are the things that we should also be considering inclusive of the question, the more broad question, like how much foreign ownership of our big projects, of our assets, do we actually want, particularly when we're so focused on the issue of sovereignty?

I think those are important questions.

And I guess, you know, you don't want to be sort of Debbie Downer on the moment when everyone's saying, hey, look, all of the foreign capital has come.

But it's really important for people like you and me and others to say, okay, great.

radio.

We went after the Cancer Society and Dow Chemical and the big guys.

We were affecting the donations of Cancer Society.

in this area.

Anyway, you get the point.

All right, so on the same topic, okay, Saudi Arabia spent billions of dollars to bribe Trump and Jared Kushner to get everything that they wanted from the U.S., and the end result of that is their oil infrastructure is on fire, their mercenaries in Yemen have collapsed, more on that in a second, and now Dow Chemical is thinking of pulling out of a $20 billion joint partnership that they had with them.

So they are furious.

By the way, I told you when Saudi Arabia wrapped up Live Golf, like it didn't exist that long.

Mm-hmm

... a plant, like a Dow plant or, um, ExxonMobil or something.

It's like jobs, jobs, jobs.

Right.

Most states, pretty much all the other states, if you set up shop there, you have to pay taxes like any other corporation, right? Um, but in Louisiana, they have this, this, this group, I don't know what it is.

They're, they're not elected, and they basically decide how much of a tax break these different big corporations get when they set up shop here.

So I don't know exactly how much of a break they're getting, but imagine, like say Dow Chemical, if they weren't getting an, like a, whatever it is, 70 to 90% tax break, how much money that could go towards Louisiana schools and roads and all those things we're famous for being terrible at, you know? [laughs]

Right.