Must Support Ukraine: Farkas on Trump, Putin Peace Talk
Evelyn Farkas, Executive Director of Arizona State's McCain Institution & Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia & Ukraine, states the United States is giving Russia a stronger hand when discussing US & Russia negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Farkas also shares her thoughts on why the US needs to continue supporting Ukraine, and why it's dangerous to give President Putin what he wants. Evelyn Farkas speaks on Bloomberg's "Balance of Power" with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Trump Plan to Kill Dozens of NASA Missions Threatens US Space Supremacy
(Bloomberg) -- NASA's car-sized Perseverance rover has been roaming the surface of Mars for four years, drilling into the alien soil to collect dirt it places in tubes and leaves on the ground. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire Do World's Fairs Still Matter? Engineers designed Perseverance to be the first step in the agency's exploration of the Red Planet. In the future, more robotic spacecraft would arrive to sweep up the capsules and rocket them back to Earth, where scientists could look for signs that Mars once was, or is, a world with life. The wait for answers may be about to get longer. President Donald Trump's proposed 2026 budget for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration would cancel the planned follow-on mission, potentially abandoning the tubes for decades to Martian dust storms. The White House is calling for a roughly 50% cut to NASA's science spending to $3.9 billion, part of an overall pullback that would deliver the lowest funding level in the agency's history and kill more more than 40 NASA science missions and projects, according to detailed plans released last month. The Trump administration has also left the agency without a permanent leader and without a vision for how America's civilian space policy is going to work with US allies and compete with China and other rivals. The cuts would follow a shift in how the American public thinks about space. NASA has long enjoyed a unique place in US culture, with its exploits celebrated by movies, theme parks and merchandise — but companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX have begun to capture more attention. For decades, NASA's scientific undertakings have provided critical groundwork for researchers seeking to understand the structure of the universe, study how planets form and hunt for evidence that life might exist beyond Earth. Pictures from NASA craft like the Hubble Space Telescope and the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope have inspired and delighted millions. Now, the agency's position at the vanguard of discovery is facing foreclosure. Among the other programs set to lose funding are a craft already on its way to rendezvous with an asteroid that's expected to pass close to Earth in 2029, and multiple efforts to map and explore the acidic clouds of Venus. Researchers worry that abandoning missions would mean investments made by earlier generations might be lost or forgotten. 'Once you launch and you're operating, then all those costs are behind you, and it's relatively inexpensive to just keep the missions going,' said Amanda Hendrix, the chief executive officer of the Planetary Science Institute, a nonprofit research organization. 'So I'm very concerned about these operating missions that are still producing excellent and really important science data.' The Trump administration's narrower vision for NASA comes as it is seeking to reduce waste and jobs in the US government. Critics have faulted NASA over sluggish management of key programs, spiraling costs and delays. Still, the administration is eager to pour more money into putting people in space. It wants to use $7 billion of the $18.8 billion it would allocate to NASA overall to ramp up efforts to return people to the moon, and invest $1 billion more in sending people to Mars. 'This is a NASA that would be primarily human spaceflight focused,' Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society, a nonprofit that advocates for space science and exploration, said of the proposed changes. 'This is a NASA that would say, 'The universe is primarily the moon and Mars,' and basically step away from everything else.' There are signs that the administration's proposed cutbacks won't satisfy lawmakers who view space as vital to US interests. Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who leads a committee that oversees NASA, has proposed legislation that would would provide nearly $10 billion to the agency. 'American dominance in space is a national security imperative,' Cruz said in a statement to Bloomberg. 'The Commerce Committee's bill carefully invests in beating China to the Moon and Mars — while respecting every taxpayer dollar. It's rocket fuel for the commercial space companies and NASA that are working to keep America ahead of China in the Space Race.' As Trump's spending proposal moves through Congress, NASA has been left without a strong leader who can press its case after the president withdrew his nomination of billionaire commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman to run the agency. In a recent interview on the All-In Podcast, Isaacman appeared to suggest Trump pulled his nomination because of his close ties to Musk, who had a public falling out with the president. Trump threatened to cancel SpaceX's government contracts amid the row, but has since backed down. 'Stopping Jared from becoming confirmed is only going to hurt NASA's ability to push back on budget cuts,' Jim Muncy, a space consultant and lobbyist with PoliSpace, said before Isaacman's nomination was pulled. Spaceflight Shift For decades, NASA handled every step of launching rockets, probes and people into space, from developing, building and launching vehicles, to running missions. Only the government had the resources and the capacity to shoulder the risks without returning a profit. That all changed in recent years with the emergence of a vibrant US space industry dominated by wealthy entrepreneurs with a passion for spaceflight and the financial wherewithal to withstand repeated failure. Over time, NASA has ceded more design, development and production work to those companies. SpaceX is carrying cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station, and sending probes into deep space from a rented launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. After helping to spur the development of SpaceX hardware, NASA is now one of the company's biggest customers. 'This has kind of been the tension with the rise of commercial space,' said Mike French, a consultant for the Space Policy Group. 'NASA has gone from 'We're operating these things; we're building these things' to 'We've gotten really good at buying these things.'' During Trump's presidency, NASA's transformation into an incubator for private industry is likely to gain speed. Throughout its budget proposal, the White House calls for mimicking past programs that have leaned more on outsourcing to the private sector. 'With a leaner budget across all of government, we are all taking a closer look at how we work, where we invest, and how we adjust our methods to accomplish our mission,' NASA's acting administrator, Janet Petro, wrote in a message accompanying the plan. 'At NASA, that means placing a renewed emphasis on human spaceflight, increasing investments in a sustainable plan to return to the Moon for long-term human exploration and accelerating efforts to send American astronauts to Mars.' NASA declined to comment beyond Petro's statement. NASA contracts remain one of the most significant and steady sources of funding for the space industry, which has allowed the agency to set the direction for many businesses. But that balance of power is shifting, and cuts to NASA's funding could cause its leadership to fade. 'NASA would, in a sense, define access and define the culture of spaceflight and define the ambitions of spaceflight,' Dreier said. 'Now, they have competitors for that, and frankly, some of their competitors are laying out more ambitious programs.' Challenging Missions While NASA has evolved into a technical adviser and financial backer for space companies, pure science has remained part of its mission. NASA's transition to more commercial partnerships was started, in part, to free up money to spend on exotic, challenging missions with no obvious near-term commercial rewards. Pulling back is likely to have consequences. Trump's broader push to curtail funding for science — the administration has choked off money for medical, climate and other research — risks eroding an important source of American soft power. After the end of the Cold War-era space race, NASA became a vessel for international cooperation, proving countries with lofty goals can work together. Many of the NASA missions Trump has proposed canceling or pulling away from entailed collaboration with European allies. The prospect of reduced funding is also causing worry about agency talent. Already, NASA is competing with the private space industry for engineers. Shutting down missions could push agency scientists to seek other opportunities. 'Folks are very worried about what they're going to do now with their lives, and where they're going to go,' said Hendrix, the Planetary Science Institute's CEO. The long-term outlook for NASA is difficult to discern. In the coming years, it is expected to continue its Artemis moon program, and start a new program for human exploration of Mars, with commercial companies at the forefront. But the scientific ambitions that long helped define NASA appear likely to become more limited. 'If we elect to say we no longer want to understand our origins, or we no longer want to challenge ourselves to see if there's life out in the cosmos, that is the equivalent of turning our heads down and burying ourselves in our cell phones when we're standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon,' said The Planetary Society's Dreier. 'We miss something more profound and big and deep that we otherwise have no access to in our modern society.' New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. 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Bulgarians Are Getting the Euro, But Half of Them Don't Want It
(Bloomberg) -- Doroteya Kanavrova crosses her arms and shakes her head. 'I'm against it,' she says, before going back to arranging her tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini at her roadside stall. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire Do World's Fairs Still Matter? Bulgaria is ready to join the euro, the European Union said last week, something hailed by the government as another step toward deeper integration. But in the agricultural northeast, the 56-year-old small farmer represents the growing swathe of Bulgarians concerned about the cost. The country has a long history of hardship and its per-capita economic output is still two-thirds of the EU average after almost two decades of membership. Yet for millions of Bulgarians who lived through bank failures, economic crises and the painful transition of the 1990s, their currency — the lev — is more than just bills and coins, it's a symbol of stability. A currency board introduced in 1997 tightly pegged the lev to the deutsche mark and then to the euro. That helped Bulgaria put an end to the kind of reactive monetary policy seen in other post-communist countries like neighboring Romania and consign hyperinflation that saw prices rise three times a day to history. Polling from Eurobarometer showed that Bulgarians are split down the middle over the euro, membership of which is now scheduled for early 2026. Moreover, they're twice as skeptical as the EU average, according to the survey published in May, with far-right politicians organizing protests against membership. 'For 28 years, people got used to the currency board and are now worried what will happen without it,' said Svetoslav Gavriyski, the finance minister who prepared the country for the currency board in 1997. He dismissed the inflation fears as 'stupid rumors.' 'A country has to exit the currency board sooner or later to become a normal country.' Bulgaria would only be the second country to adopt the euro since Greece flirted with leaving the single currency a decade ago. Croatia joined in 2023, following other former communist nations like Slovakia and the Baltic states. The biggest economies in the region — Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary — have all put the euro on the back burner. At a Bloomberg event in Prague this week, Czech central bank Governor Ales Michl extolled the virtue of having a national currency to help fight inflation. In Bulgaria, the prospect of switching currencies is raising fears, particularly among low-income earners and pensioners with hard currency savings. While politicians point to benefits like increased investment and lower borrowing costs over time, many citizens worry that prices will climb in the short term. A recent spike in inflation helped delay euro adoption by a couple of years. One of the EU's most energy-intensive economies, Bulgaria was hit hard by Russia's war in Ukraine. Prices rose at the fastest pace since the 1990s. Kanavrova worries the switch to the euro, for example, will boost the price of fertilizer and make production from her one-hectare farm more costly. 'Big businesses are richer, they can afford it,' she said. 'We're doing bad with the lev; we'll be worse off with the euro.' As most of her customers are Romanian tourists on their way to Bulgarian seaside resorts, she prefers to take Romanian leu over euros when she needs to accept foreign currency. She can use the money on cross-border shopping trips in winter. That's not to say Bulgarians aren't pro-European. More than half of them say they trust the EU, twice the proportion of those who trust their own government. A recent government motion in support of the euro was backed by more than two thirds of Bulgarian parliamentarians. The problem for officials is that they're struggling to find a common language with those who, unlike big businesses, don't see the direct benefits of trading in a common currency. It's easier for populist parties: Protests backed by the far-right, pro-Russian Revival party gathered thousands of people across the country for a second weekend. The leaders of Revival, which has become the third-biggest party in the Bulgarian Parliament, vow to take the country out of NATO and renegotiate its EU membership. They say euro adoption is a further loss of sovereignty, though during a visit to the US last month its leaders suggested the lev should be pegged to the dollar. Protesters gathered again on Thursday, including lawmakers from Revival, to briefly block key boulevards in central Sofia in front of the headquarters of the governing Gerb party. People then moved to the headquarters of one of the big TV channels to protest its coverage of the demonstrations, the public Bulgarian National Television reported. President Rumen Radev, the most popular political figure in the country, meanwhile has questioned whether Bulgaria is ready. His call for a referendum on the date of accession was dismissed by parliament last month. He called the EU's decision last week to give the nod to Bulgaria's membership 'joy for those in power and an alarm for the people' worried about price increases. 'Policymakers ought to have done a better job at informing the public on the benefits of the common currency, even if entering monetary union is a technical subject,' Dennis Shen, lead global economist at Scope Ratings, said by email. 'Bulgarians are not the first people in a country preparing to adopt the euro who have proved skeptical about the benefits of the single currency,' he said. 'But support for the euro tends to rise after adoption as people's worst fears turn out to be unfounded.' The government has vowed in recent weeks to fight speculative price hikes and regulators promised to step up scrutiny on retailers. While signing a number of agreements with business lobbies, labor unions, banks and insurers, Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said on Monday the aim is to prevent any attempts to 'unjustifiably increase' prices. For Mihail Georgiev, 40, an entrepreneur whose businesses vary from importing sparkling wines to AI solutions, getting the euro will be another milestone in Bulgaria's development. The country joined the EU in 2007 and has remained its poorest member. On Jan. 1 this year it entered the Schengen customs-free area that covers most of the EU, along with Romania. Georgiev said switching to the common European currency is good for Bulgaria's image and boosts tourism. 'It's the second-biggest reserve currency, it's the currency of hundreds of millions of people,' said Georgiev. 'In the past, I've waited for visas for hours, every border crossing was painful because of the numerous controls. Now I really dream of a single world with a single currency.' --With assistance from Irina Vilcu and Andra Timu. (Updates with fresh protests in 15th paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the spelling of Shen in 17th.) 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Vietnam trade envoy meets Nike, Walmart in US tariff deal push
(Bloomberg) — Vietnam's trade minister met with executives from Nike Inc (NKE) and Walmart Inc (WMT) as part of a major charm offensive targeting US businesses, aiming to rally support ahead of high-stakes trade negotiations to avoid steep tariffs. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire Do World's Fairs Still Matter? Nguyen Hong Dien called on the companies to 'voice their strong support and promote the negotiation process to soon reach a fair, balanced and sustainable agreement,' according to a statement on the Vietnamese trade ministry's website. Vietnam has engaged in weeks of intense diplomacy with the US — the largest export market of the trade-reliant country — as it seeks to avert a threatened 46% tariff, which was later wound back to 10% for 90 days to allow time for talks. For Nike — which makes around half of its shoes and a quarter of its clothes in Vietnam — Dien warned that the proposed tariffs could impact its global supply chain and costs for US consumers. He also encouraged Walmart to consider establishing a purchasing center in Vietnam. In a separate meeting, Exxon Mobil (XOM) executives pledged their support for Vietnam in the ongoing trade negotiations, according to a ministry statement. The minister has been in the US seeking to secure backing from key industry players, including the American Apparel & Footwear Association, Gap Inc (GAP), Levi Strauss (LEVI) and others, ahead of another round of trade talks set to take place in the coming days. Vietnam cited progress after the second round of talks last month but said that outstanding issues remain. It's taken steps to address some US concerns: stepping up a crackdown on trade fraud and promising to buy more from the US, including the recent $3 billion worth of agricultural products. But the longstanding Trump administration desire to reduce Vietnam's Chinese imports remains. The US remained Vietnam's largest export market in the first five months of the year, with shipments totaling $57.2 billion, the statistics office said Friday. China is still the biggest source of imports, with an estimated value of $69.4 billion in the same period. New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. The Full Story Is Far More Troubling Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert Wants to Donate His Billions—and Walk Again ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Sign in to access your portfolio
