US government proposes easing some restrictions on drones traveling long distances
The federal government had already approved 657 waivers to allow companies such as Amazon and major utilities to do this in certain circumstances, but the waiver process made it difficult.
The industry has long pressed for the rule because being able to operate drones out of sight opens up a multitude of possibilities for their use. Being able to do this enables more use of drones for deliveries, inspecting infrastructure like bridges and power lines and other uses in agriculture over thousands of acres on large farms.
'This draft rule is a critical step toward enabling drone operations that will enhance safety, transform commercial services, and strengthen public safety with drones as a force multiplier," said Michael Robbins, president & CEO of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International trade group.
The rule spells out the circumstances drones can be used under while working to ensure they don't disrupt aviation and cause problems around airports, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Bryan Bedford said.
'We are making the future of our aviation a reality and unleashing American drone dominance. From drones delivering medicine to unmanned aircraft surveying crops, this technology will fundamentally change the way we interact with the world,' Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
President Donald Trump issued executive orders in June directing the Transportation Department to quickly get this rule out. The orders also included restrictions meant to help protect against terrorism, espionage and public safety threats.
Drones are already used in a variety of ways, including bolstering search and rescue operations, applying fertilizer, inspecting power lines and railroad bridges, and even delivering packages.
But the war in Ukraine has highlighted how drones could be used in a military or terrorist attack — a concern as the World Cup and Olympics approach in the U.S. There also have been espionage cases where drones have been used to surveil sensitive sites. And White House officials said drones are being used to smuggle drugs over the border, and there are concerns about the potential for a disastrous collision between a drone and an airliner around an airport.
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The Hill
15 minutes ago
- The Hill
What to know about past meetings between Putin and his American counterparts
Bilateral meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterparts were a regular occurrence early in his tenure. But as tensions mounted between Moscow and the West following the illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and allegations of meddling with the 2016 U.S. elections, those became increasingly less frequent, and their tone appeared less friendly. Here's what to know about past meetings between Russian and U.S. presidents: Putin and Joe Biden Putin and Joe Biden met only once while holding the presidency –- in Geneva in June 2021. Russia was amassing troops on the border with Ukraine, where large swaths of land in the east had long been occupied by Moscow-backed forces; Washington repeatedly accused Russia of cyberattacks. The Kremlin was intensifying its domestic crackdown on dissent, jailing opposition leader Alexei Navalny months earlier and harshly suppressing protests demanding his release. Putin and Biden talked for three hours, but no breakthroughs came out of the meeting. The two exchanged expressions of mutual respect, but firmly restated their starkly different views on all of the above. They spoke again via videoconference in December 2021 as tensions heightened over Ukraine. Biden threatened sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine, and Putin demanded guarantees that Kyiv wouldn't join NATO –- something Washington and its allies said was a nonstarter. Another phone call between the two came in February 2022, less than two weeks before the full-scale invasion. Then the high-level contacts stopped cold, with no publicly disclosed conversations between Putin and Biden since the invasion. Putin and Donald Trump Putin met Trump met six times during the American's first term -– at and on the sidelines of G20 and APEC gatherings — but most famously in Helsinki in July 2018. That's where Trump stood next to Putin and appeared to accept his insistence that Moscow had not interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and openly questioned the firm finding by his own intelligence agencies. His remarks were a stark illustration of Trump's willingness to upend decades of U.S. foreign policy and rattle Western allies in service of his political concerns. 'I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,' Trump said. 'He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be.' Putin and Barack Obama U.S. President Barack Obama met with Putin nine times, and there were 12 more meetings with Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president in 2008-12. Putin became prime minister in a move that allowed him to reset Russia's presidential term limits and run again in 2012. Obama traveled to Russia twice — once to meet Medvedev in 2009 and again for a G20 summit 2013. Medvedev and Putin also traveled to the U.S. Under Medvedev, Moscow and Washington talked of 'resetting' Russia-U.S. relations post-Cold War and worked on arms control treaties. U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton famously presented a big 'reset' button to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in 2009. One problem: instead of 'reset' in Russian, they used another word meaning 'overload.' After Putin returned to office in 2012, tensions rose between the two countries. The Kremlin accused the West of interfering with Russian domestic affairs, saying it fomented anti-government protests that rocked Moscow just as Putin sought reelection. The authorities cracked down on dissent and civil society, drawing international condemnation. Obama canceled his visit to Moscow in 2013 after Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower. In 2014, the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies responded with crippling sanctions. Relations plummeted to the lowest point since the Cold War. The Kremlin's 2015 military intervention in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad further complicated ties. Putin and Obama last met in China in September 2016, on the sidelines of a G20 summit, and held talks focused on Ukraine and Syria. Putin and George W. Bush Putin and George W. Bush met 28 times during Bush's two terms. They hosted each other for talks and informal meetings in Russia and the U.S., met regularly on the sidelines of international summits and forums, and boasted of improving ties between onetime rivals. After the first meeting with Putin in 2001, Bush said he 'looked the man in the eye' and 'found him very straightforward and trustworthy,' getting 'a sense of his soul.' In 2002, they signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty -– a nuclear arms pact that significantly reduced both countries' strategic nuclear warhead arsenal. Putin was the first world leader to call Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attack, offering his condolences and support, and welcomed the U.S. military deployment on the territory of Moscow's Central Asian allies for action in Afghanistan. He has called Bush 'a decent person and a good friend,' adding that good relations with him helped find a way out of 'the most acute and conflict situations.'
Atlantic
16 minutes ago
- Atlantic
So, About Those Big Trade Deals
If there's anything Donald Trump loves more than tariffs, it's a deal. So you can understand his excitement lately. Over the past few weeks, the president has announced tariff-related deals with three major trading partners—the European Union, Japan, and South Korea—that have been hailed as major victories for the United States. In each case, America's partners agreed to accept 15 percent tariffs on their exports to the U.S. while lowering trade barriers on American goods and promising to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. economy—in essence paying Trump to impose trade restrictions on them. 'Europe Caves to Trump on Tariffs' read a representative New York Times headline. In the days following the European Union deal announcement, the White House released a fact sheet quoting all the positive coverage. On Thursday, Jamieson Greer, Trump's top trade official, published a New York Times op-ed boasting that, with the completion of these deals, the administration had successfully 'remade the global order.' But upon closer inspection, Trump's trade deals aren't nearly as impressive as they sound. In fact, they aren't really trade deals in the traditional sense, and they might not benefit the U.S. at all. Trump did prove the doubters wrong in one important way. When the president originally announced his 'Liberation Day' tariffs, other countries threatened to respond in kind, leading many economists and journalists (myself included) to conclude that the tariffs would lead to a spiral of retaliation. With a few exceptions (notably China and Canada), that didn't happen. Instead, Trump has gotten key trading partners to back down. But simply avoiding retribution was never the goal of tariffs. The whole point of Trump's dealmaking strategy was supposedly to get foreign countries to lower their existing trade barriers—the classic purpose of a trade agreement. In his Liberation Day announcement, Trump complained at length about what he considered to be the excessive restrictions that other countries had imposed on American goods—including not only tariffs but also currency manipulation, value-added taxes, and subsidies to domestic firms—and vowed not to back down on tariffs until those countries lowered them. Scott Lincicome: What the U.K. deal reveals about Trump's trade strategy The announcements of the new deals purport to have delivered on this promise, giving Americans 'unprecedented levels of market access' to Europe, 'breaking open long-closed markets' in Japan, and making South Korea 'completely OPEN TO TRADE with the United States.' But the details of the deals, which remain sparse, tell a very different story. None include agreements by trading partners to meaningfully reform their tax or regulatory codes, strengthen their currencies, or reduce the barriers that have long been major sticking points in prior trade negotiations. Instead, the announcements are full of vague statements of intent—'The United States and the European Union intend to work together to address non-tariff barriers affecting trade in food and agricultural products' (my emphasis)—and references to things such as 'openings for a range of industrial and consumer goods.' The main concrete action that the EU agreed to was to eliminate its tariffs on American industrial products. This sounds impressive unless you're aware that the average EU tariff rate on nonagricultural goods prior to the deal was just 1 percent. The main difficulty in trade negotiations with the EU has long been its barriers on agricultural products, which appear to have been untouched by these deals. South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, agreed to allow more American-made cars into their markets—which also sounds great until you realize that the main reason American companies don't sell a lot of cars to those countries is the fact that almost nobody wants to drive a truck or SUV in Tokyo or Seoul. Lower trade barriers won't change that. What about the investments? According to the announcements, South Korea, Japan, and Europe have respectively pledged to invest $350 billion, $550 billion, and $600 billion in the United States (In an interview with CNBC, referring to the EU investment, Trump claimed that 'the details are $600 billion to invest in anything I want. Anything. I can do anything I want with it.') The EU has also agreed to purchase an additional $750 billion of American oil and gas. Those are big numbers, but they might not add up to much in the real world. The EU has no authority to require European companies to invest in the U.S. or buy its products. What the Trump administration touted as 'commitments' were mostly rough numbers based on what European companies were already planning to invest and buy. 'We can't force the company to do anything, nor will be able to pretend that we can, but we can talk to them, we can get their intentions, and we can transmit that as a faithful indication to our partners in the U.S.,' Olof Gill, a spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU's trade-negotiation body, said after the deal was announced. The 'investments' from Japan and South Korea, meanwhile, might not be investments at all. Shortly after the deal with Japan was announced, the country's top trade negotiator said that he anticipated only 1 or 2 percent of the $550 billion fund would come in the form of direct investment; the rest would mostly consist of loans that would need to be repaid with interest. South Korean officials have made similar statements. 'These numbers bear no relation to any conception of reality,' Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a trade adviser to the Biden administration, told me. 'Everyone has figured out that Trump really likes big numbers to sell his trade deals and doesn't need much substance to do so.' Recent history supports this view. As part of Trump's first-term trade deal with China, Beijing agreed to increase its annual purchasing of American goods by $200 billion. In the event, it didn't increase its purchasing at all. If America's trading partners didn't agree to meaningfully lower barriers to U.S. imports, and if their promises of investment are likely vaporous, then the only real concession that Trump's tariffs have won is … the right to impose tariffs. This means that the value of the deals comes down to the value of the tariffs. Tariffs can help domestic producers by making their foreign competitors' products more expensive. But tariffs can also hurt them, by raising the costs of the inputs they import to make their products. Several studies of the tariffs imposed during Trump's first term, which were much smaller and more targeted, found that manufacturing employment either stayed level or actually fell as a result. The ultimate result of the current wave of tariffs is yet to be determined, but so far, since Liberation Day, the manufacturing sector has shed tens of thousands of jobs and investment in new factories has fallen. A quarterly survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers in May found that optimism among manufacturing firms had fallen to its lowest point since the height of the coronavirus pandemic; trade uncertainty and raw-material costs were cited as top concerns. Rogé Karma: The mystery of the strong economy has finally been solved The new deals should at least give companies some much-needed certainty about tariff rates, which will help them make investment decisions. But in other ways, the deals actively undermine key American industries. Foreign cars, which represent the single largest American import from Japan and South Korea and the third largest from the EU, will face 15 percent tariffs. That is far lower than the rate American car companies have to pay to import car parts, which are tariffed at 25 percent, and crucial car-building materials like steel and aluminum, which are tariffed at 50 percent. As Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, said in a recent interview, foreign competitors such as Toyota now have a $5,000 to $10,000 cost advantage over American-made vehicles. Ford projects that it will lose $2 billion in profits this year alone because of higher tariffs; General Motors forecasts losses of $4 billion to $5 billion by the end of the year. The deals announced so far are only the beginning. The Trump administration is currently in the midst of negotiations with several trading partners, including China, Mexico, Switzerland, and Taiwan, and just yesterday implemented a new round of tariffs on about 90 countries, the ostensible goal being to bring those nations to the bargaining table too. If recent events are an indication, any future pacts will be framed as historic milestones in the quest to remake the global trade system in America's favor. The White House will issue pronouncements of eye-popping investments, drastically reduced foreign-trade barriers, and major concessions to American industry. When that happens, remember to look closely at the details.
CNBC
16 minutes ago
- CNBC
Family office deal-making slides with some bright spots in Europe
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC's Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Private investment firms of the ultra-rich once again dialed back their deal-making in July. Family offices made only 42 direct investments last month, down nearly 60% on an annual basis, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by private wealth platform Fintrx. While the drop in July was especially steep, uncertainty over President Donald Trump 's tariffs has weighed on deal flow for months. Family office investors made 32% fewer direct investments in the first half of 2025 , per Fintrx. For those family offices that are still making deals, tariff anxieties have prompted more, including American firms, to increasingly invest overseas, advisors told CNBC . Nearly one-third of last month's direct investments were made in companies based in Europe, according to Fintrx. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Hillspire invested in two AI startups based in Paris, document processor Retab and robotics firm Genesis AI, which also has an office in Palo Alto, California. Robin Lauber, CEO and co-founder of Swiss family office Infinitas Capital, told Inside Wealth that his family office has had a busier year so far in 2025 than the previous two years. Infinitas Capital, originally formed to manage the Lauber family's Swiss residential real estate assets, backed xAI and SpaceX in January and March, respectively, through its secondaries arm Opportuna. He told CNBC that he expects three portfolio companies to go public on Swedish or German exchanges by the end of the year. In July, Infinitas made its 12th direct startup investment of 2025, co-leading a $5 million pre-Series A round for Berlin-based lingerie and hosiery brand Saint Sass. The funds will be used to launch new categories like swimwear and expand further into the U.S. and U.K. Despite the market volatility, Lauber has a positive outlook, citing recent record IPOs and the likelihood of interest rate cuts in the U.S. He also anticipates that the Trump administration will moderate its economic policy before the midterm elections in 2026. "We are actually quite optimistic about the current environment and investing now," said the 32-year-old third-generation heir. "From an allocation point of view, I think it's actually a good time." Infinitas has also been able to make opportunistic investments thanks to the market turmoil. Infinitas-backed Kanaan Sellers Group, a conglomerate of ecommerce brands spanning kitchen appliances and outdoor furniture, has been able to "roll up assets really nicely," he said. "VCs or more institutional startup investors have been very reluctant to deploy into consumer businesses and asset-heavy businesses lately," he said. "These companies have had to adapt and look for more patient capital raising from family offices and high-net-worth individuals."
