Trump orders easing of commercial spaceflight rules, in boon to Musk's SpaceX
Trump's order, among other things, directs the U.S. transportation secretary to eliminate or expedite environmental reviews for launch licenses administered by the Federal Aviation Administration, the White House said in a statement.
The declaration also calls on the secretary to do away with 'outdated, redundant or overly restrictive rules for launch and reentry vehicles.'
'Inefficient permitting processes discourage investment and innovation, limiting the ability of U.S. companies to lead in global space markets,' the executive order states.
While Musk and Trump had a high-profile falling out months ago, the billionaire entrepreneur's SpaceX rocket and satellite venture potentially stands to be the single biggest immediate beneficiary of Trump's order on Wednesday.
SpaceX, though not mentioned by name in Trump's order, easily leads all U.S. space industry entities, including NASA, in the sheer number of launches it routinely conducts for its own satellite network, the U.S. space agency, the Pentagon, and other enterprises.
Jeff Bezos' private rocket company Blue Origin and its space tourism business could also gain from a more relaxed regulatory regime.
Musk has repeatedly complained that environmental impact studies, post-flight mishap investigations and licensing reviews required by the FAA have needlessly slowed testing of SpaceX's Starship rocket, under development at the company's South Texas launch facility.
Starship is the centerpiece of Musk's long-term SpaceX business model, as well as a core component of NASA's ambitions for returning astronauts to the moon's surface, establishing a permanent human lunar presence and ultimately sending crewed missions to Mars.
Musk has viewed FAA oversight as a hindrance to his company's engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry's more established players. SpaceX's flight-test strategy is known for pushing spacecraft prototypes to the point of failure, then fine-tuning improvements through frequent repetition.
This has appeared to run afoul at times with the FAA's mission of safeguarding the public and the environment as it exercises its regulatory jurisdiction over commercial spaceflight.
Earlier this year, the FAA grounded Starship test flights for nearly two months after back-to-back post-launch explosions rained debris over Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to change course. The FAA ended up expanding the aircraft hazard zone along Starship's launch trajectories before licensing future flights - REUTERS
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
The US will regret throwing India under the bus
US president Donald Trump has thrown India under the bus. After months of affronts and barbs, Washington now treats New Delhi more as foe than friend, undermining a relationship that several American administrations – including Trump's first – tried to strengthen, not least to contain China in the Indo-Pacific. Instead, India will now distance itself from the United States and draw closer to Russia and even China. By diplomatic standards, the deterioration has been abrupt. Contrast the vibe between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on two occasions this year. In February, Modi visited Trump in the White House, and the pair looked like two populist peas in a pod. Gushing about his MAGA (Make America Great Again) host, Modi pledged to Make India Great Again and promised that 'MAGA plus MIGA becomes a mega partnership.' Fast forward to recent days, as Trump first slapped a draconian tariff of 25% on India, then doubled that to 50% (to take effect later this month) as punishment for India's ongoing imports of Russian oil. 'I don't care what India does with Russia,' Trump taunted. 'They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.' (India's economy is in fact booming.) Nothing about this sounds mega. Trump's ire against India is 'mystifying' and 'shortsighted,' Lisa Curtis at the Center for a New American Security said. She's worked for almost three decades to deepen the relationship between the US and India, most recently on the National Security Council in Trump's first term. Like his Democratic predecessor and successor, Trump at that time also wanted to enlist the world's most populous democracy as an ally to help resist the looming autocratic axis of China and Russia. During the Cold War, India remained proudly 'non-aligned' but bought its weapons mainly from Moscow, whereas its arch-rival, Pakistan, mostly used American arms. In recent decades, though, these relationships inverted, with India nowadays buying more military kit from the US and other Western countries than from Russia, and Pakistan getting more weapons from China than the US. Other bonds between the US and India have also been thriving – just think of the Desi diasporas in Silicon Valley or academia, or the vice president's in-laws. America and Curtis, had especially high hopes for a budding quasi-alliance among the US, India, Australia and Japan. Called the Quad, it seeks to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific to manage and protect maritime commerce, undersea cables, critical minerals and much else. It never prevented India from also maintaining ties with Russia and China – within the so-called BRICS format, notably. But Washington envisioned the Quad evolving into another of America's 'minilateral' alliances for mutual defence in Asia, with China in the role of bogey. Events are taking a different turn. In May, a terrorist attack in Kashmir sparked the latest clash between India and Pakistan. Worried about escalation between the two nuclear powers, the Trump administration urged both sides to stand down, which they eventually did. Then the narratives diverged. Trump repeatedly claimed full credit for being a peacemaker, even suggesting that he threatened India to make it climb down. Modi, and many Indians, were shocked. In previous crises, the US also calmed tempers behind the scenes, but India has always rejected official third-party mediation in its conflict with Pakistan. Now Modi felt humiliated. His government took the unusual step of publishing the minutes of a call between Trump and Modi, clarifying that 'at no point' was there any mediation by the US and that the ceasefire discussions 'took place directly between India and Pakistan.' Other Indian pundits were less diplomatic and almost poetic in their outrage over this 'typical Trump overreach.' Trump wasn't pleased. He was all the more delighted, though, when Pakistan praised his peacemaking prowess and hinted that it would nominate the president for the Nobel Peace Prize he openly covets. Trump then hosted Pakistan's top military official – whom India considers the mastermind of the recent terrorist attack – for lunch, and Pakistan promptly made the Nobel nomination official. Subsequently, Pakistan also bargained down the new American tariffs on its goods from 29% to 19% – relatively meek next to India's rate. None of this means that the US -Indian relationship is irredeemably broken. Trade negotiators are slated to meet again this month, and a deal remains conceivable. Still, Indians have taken note that Trump is cracking down hardest against India, a putative partner, for buying oil from Russia, and not on China, allegedly America's main adversary, which imports even more Russian oil. Nor are they thrilled about the surging deportations of Indians illegally in the US, the harassment of Indian (and all foreign) students on American campuses, and much else. The Quad, meanwhile, still exists. Its foreign ministers met just the other day, and India will host a summit of the four leaders this fall. But Trump's attendance is now in doubt. 'If the rhetoric remains acerbic, I have difficulty in seeing him going,' Curtis told me. His former rapport with the Indian leader is gone, she added: 'Prime Minister Modi is just not going to trust President Trump anymore.' That doesn't mean Modi will throw himself into the arms of Beijing – as my colleague Karishma Vaswani points out, India has other friends in Asia to help it keep an eye on China. But Modi is suddenly making plans to visit China for the first time in seven years, in what appears to be a diplomatic thaw. Meanwhile, the Russian president is arranging a trip to see Modi. America's strategy for more than a decade has been to pull India closer into the Western and democratic orbit as a counterweight to its main autocratic rivals and adversaries. Whether the result of design, neglect or whim, Washington's turn away from New Delhi cannot be seen as anything other than counterproductive. —Bloomberg Opinion/TNS
New Straits Times
12 hours ago
- New Straits Times
Manufacturers turn to AI to weather tariff storm
MANUFACTURERS like American lawnmower maker The Toro Company are not panicking at the prospect of United States President Donald Trump's global trade tariffs. Despite five years of dramatic supply disruptions, from the Covid pandemic to today's trade wars, Toro is resisting any temptation to stack its warehouses to the rafters. "We are at probably pre-pandemic inventory levels," said its chief supply-chain manager, Kevin Carpenter, looking relaxed in front of a whiteboard at his office in Minneapolis. "I think everybody will be at a 2019 level." Among US manufacturers, inventories have roller-coasted this year as they rushed to beat Trump's deadlines for tariff hikes, only to see them repeatedly delayed. But how can firms run lean inventories even as tariffs fluctuate, export bans come out of the blue, and conflict rages? One of the answers, they say, is artificial intelligence. Carpenter says he uses AI to digest the daily stream of news that could impact Toro's business, from Trump's social media posts to steel prices, into a custom-made podcast that he listens to each morning. His team also uses generative AI to sieve an ocean of data and to suggest when and how many components to buy from whom. It is a boom industry. Spending on software that includes generative AI for supply chains, capable of learning and even performing tasks on its own, could hit US$55 billion by 2029, up from US$2.7 billion now, according to US research firm Gartner, driven in part by global uncertainties. "The tool just puts up in front of you: 'I think you can take 100 tonnes of this product from this plant to transfer it to that plant.' "And you just hit accept if that makes sense (to you)," McKinsey supply chain consultant Matt Jochim said. The biggest providers of overall supply chain software by revenue are Germany's SAP, US firms Oracle, Coupa and Microsoft and Blue Yonder, a unit of Panasonic, according to Gartner. Generative AI is in its infancy, with most firms still piloting it spending modest amounts, industry experts say. Those investments can climb to tens of millions of dollars when deployed at scale, including the use of tools known as AI agents, which make their own decisions and often need costly upgrades to data management and other IT systems, they said. In commenting for this article, SAP, Oracle, Coupa, Microsoft and Blue Yonder described strong growth for generative AI solutions for supply chains without giving numbers. At US supply chain consultancy GEP, which sells AI tools like this, Trump's tariffs are helping to drive demand. "The tariff volatility has been big," said GEP consultant Mukund Acharya, an expert in retail industry supply chains. SAP said the uncertainty was driving technology take-up. "That's how it was during the financial crisis, Brexit and Covid. And it's what we're seeing now," Richard Howells, SAP vice president and supply chain specialist, said. An AI agent can sift real-time news feeds on changing tariff scenarios, assess contract renewal dates and other data points and come up with a plan of action. But supply chain experts warn of AI hype, saying a lot of money will be wasted on a vain hope that AI can work miracles. "AI is really a powerful enabler for supply chain resilience, but it's not a silver bullet," says Minna Aila, communications chief at Finnish crane-maker Konecranes and member of a business board that advises the OECD on issues including supply chain resilience. Aila said: "I'm still looking forward to the day when AI can predict terrorist attacks at sea, for instance." Konecranes' logistic partners are deploying AI on more mundane data, like weather forecasts. The company makes port cranes that are up to 106m high when assembled. When shipping them, AI marries weather forecasts with data like bridge heights to optimise the route. Toro supply chain chief Carpenter says that without AI, supply chain managers might need to run bigger teams as well. Is he worried that AI is coming for his job one day?
BusinessToday
15 hours ago
- BusinessToday
Is The Market Heading For A Melt-Up?
After a brief consolidation, global equities scaled a new all-time high. A confluence of factors is fuelling the next leg higher for risk assets. These include expectations of Fed rate cuts resuming from September, improving corporate earnings fuelled by AI investments and easing global trade tensions. A successful Trump-Putin meeting to end the Ukraine war and a dovish speech from Fed Chair Powell at the upcoming Jackson Hole annual retreat have the potential to drive equities higher, while disappointments here could lead to another consolidation. Standard Chartered remains constructive on risk assets over 6-12 months, the house prefers relatively inexpensive non-US markets, especially Asia ex-Japan equities, given stretched US equity valuations. SC also hedged against any tariff- or oil price-driven inflation risks through US inflation-protected bonds. Tariff impact starts to show in US inflation: The latest trigger for the risk asset rally was the US consumer inflation report for July which eased concerns about a rise in goods inflation due to tariffs. Core consumer inflation accelerated to 0.3% m/m due to some volatile services sector components. Core goods inflation, at 0.2% m/m, was unchanged from June. However, the subsequent producer inflation report showed companies are starting to pay higher prices for tariff-affected goods, which are likely to be passed on to consumers. SC expects the impact on consumer prices to be temporary as a slowing job market curbs wage growth, the biggest driver of structural inflation. Fed to start rate cuts in September: Against the backdrop of mixed US inflation reports, the focus is likely to turn to the decidedly weak US job market. There is one more round of inflation and jobs data due before the Fed meets on 16-17 September. Unless there is a spike in consumer inflation in August, the latest combination of weak jobs data and modestly high consumer inflation argues for the Fed to resume rate cuts in September. Besides the 25bps September rate cut, money markets are pricing one more 25bps rate cut by year end. Fed Chair Powell has a chance to confirm or push back against those expectations at his Jackson Hole speech on 22 August. Minutes from the Fed's last meeting, when two policymakers voted for rate cuts, would also be scrutinised closely. Solid AI-driven earnings: Besides Fed rate cut expectations, equities have been fuelled by yet another strong US earnings season, powered by accelerating AI investments. Guidance from the AI-related technology and communication services sectors remains strong, with the two sectors expected to deliver 19% and 13% earnings growth over the next 12 months. Watch US valuations: Strong earnings notwithstanding, the MSCI US equity index is trading at a 22x 12-month forward P/E multiple, close to its all-time high. A 12% earnings growth estimate for the next 12 months leaves little room for upward surprises, in our opinion. Investor positioning and sentiment indicators suggest there is still room for upside before they turn contrarian. In contrast, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan and China equity indices are trading at relatively attractive 13.8x and 12.3x P/E multiples, respectively. Given this, it would be prudent to reduce any US overexposure and rotate to Asia ex-Japan. Staying bullish on China equities, especially the tech sector: Besides attractive valuations, Asia ex-Japan equities are benefitting from easing trade tensions after major US allies, except for India, reached preliminary tariff agreements with Washington. Easing fiscal policies in China and Europe should help offset some of the negative impact of tariffs. The extension of the US-China trade truce for three months and the relaxation of US curbs on semiconductor exports to China are providing tailwinds to China stocks, especially in the technology sector. The house remains positive on the Hang Seng Technology index. Hedging inflation risks: The upcoming meeting between President Trump and President Putin to end the Ukraine conflict has the potential to ease a major headwind for European assets. An agreement would likely bring down oil prices, significantly easing inflation concerns. However, a deal is not guaranteed. We would hedge against upside risk to oil prices (if talks fail) through US inflation-protected government bonds.
