Veteran finance man Alan Ginsberg recalls having dinner with “a major European wind-power player” to explore whether his McAllister Towing & Transportation might gain a toehold in the emerging US wind market.
“I said, ‘What do you see as the biggest risk?’ He said, ‘Trump,’” Ginsberg recalled, and that essentially was the end of the conversation.
Here’s the kicker: the conversation happened a full two years ago, before Trump was even officially nominated as Republican presidential candidate.
“It’s already put a chill on that market,” Ginsberg told a Marine Money audience in New Orleans, where he sat on a credit panel on Thursday.
“It’s going to continue to put a chill on it. The Europeans are not going to put their capital in play with that risk.”
Ginsberg was just one industry figure offering a take on the divisive US president-elect at the forum, which has a heavy tilt toward US flag and offshore energy topics.
This was not predominantly an audience from Europe or the bi-coastal US, where antipathy toward Trump can veer toward the visceral.
It was a conference beside the Mississippi River in the deep US South, where the politics can run more to the red than the blue.
But views toward the once and future president were nothing if not mixed as market participants tried to parse what might be coming for their particular sector.
Ginsberg’s fellow panellist, Texas-based banker Andy Longhurst of CSG Investments, drew laughs from the audience when he asked, “Is the math changing with President Trump and co-President Musk coming in?”It was a reference to Trump backer and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The comment later was echoed on a shipyard panel by Bollinger Shipyards president Benjamin Bordelon, who said he worried just how supportive Trump — and even more so Musk — would be to the cabotage protections of the Jones Act, which requires US-built ships for domestic traes.
“We have a new president and new regime, and it presents both pros and cons,” Bordelon said.
“There’s great optimism in some areas, but it also creates questions about what’s going to happen. What happens in the wind market?
“Also we have some Jones Act non-supporters out there. My father said before he died, ‘Take care of your mom, take care of your family and protect the Jones Act.’ I’m going to do that. But there’s some work to do in educating the new administration.”
Overseas Shipholding Group chief executive Sam Norton also weighed in on the Trump effect during an on-stage interview later.
“Shutting down green initiatives will be easier said then done,” he argued.
“A lot of the money authorised already has beneficiaries in Republican-controlled states like Texas, Florida and Louisiana. That creates jobs and helps economies of those states. There’s an argument that we should probably backtrack in slamming those programmes.”
