Latest news with #deregulation
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump administration's new AI plan focuses on deregulation, beating China
The White House on Wednesday released its promised "AI Action Plan," a sweeping set of policy proposals aimed at boosting the United States' goal for dominance in artificial intelligence through sweeping deregulation. The plan was developed by the Trump administration's AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The 24-page plan outlines over 90 federal actions focused on three areas of focus: increasing private-sector innovation, expanding AI-related infrastructure and exporting American AI. It follows President Donald Trump's January executive order directing the creation of an "AI Action Plan" within 180 days. The proposals appear to break from the Biden administration's more safety-first AI framework, but White House officials cast the strategy as essential to "winning the AI race" against global competitors, especially China. The new plan comes as consumer advocates warn it gives tech companies outsized influence and effectively lets them write their own rules. Public Citizen called it "a corporate giveaway." MORE: AI risks 'broken' career ladder for college graduates, some experts say "The Trump administration's reckless AI agenda prioritizes corporate profits over public safety. The administration plans to give billions to Big Tech so they can burn even more dirty energy, release untested products, and rush into the AI era without accountability to the American public," the group said in a statement. Trump is expected to issue executive orders tied to the plan's priorities. The president on Wednesday will appear at the "Winning the AI Race" event, hosted by the Hill and Valley Forum and the All‑In podcast, which is co-hosted by Sacks. Key pillars of the White House's AI plan The plan aims to accelerate AI Innovation by cutting regulations, pushing for private-sector adoption of AI technologies and relying on the private sector to recommend regulatory barriers to cut. Building and expanding AI infrastructure in America is also among the priorities of the proposal. This means fast-tracking permits for the creation of data centers, removing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and climate requirements, as well as investing in AI-related workforce training. MORE: From story time to stress relief: How AI is reshaping modern parenting Additionally, the plan recommends, in the name of protecting "free speech" and "American values," to remove references to misinformation, DEI and climate change from federal AI safety guidelines. The plan, however, does not address the use of copyrighted data for AI training, which has emerged as a key issue for AI and the basis for lawsuits. When asked about this, a senior official told ABC News the issue is currently before the courts and beyond the scope of executive action, stating: "Fair use is the law of the land."
France 24
13 hours ago
- Business
- France 24
Trump admin unveils AI strategy to maintain US dominance
The 25-page "America's AI Action Plan" outlines three aims: accelerating innovation, building infrastructure, and leading internationally on AI. Overall, the administration frames AI advancement as critical to maintaining economic and military supremacy. Environmental consequences in the planning document are sidelined. "We believe we're in an AI we want the United States to win that race," said the White House's AI point person David Sacks in a call with reporters. Trump was expected to formally announce the plan at an event later Wednesday and sign a series of executive orders to give key components of the strategy additional legal weight. In its collection of more than 90 government proposals, the plan calls for sweeping deregulation, with the administration promising to "remove red tape and onerous regulation" that could hinder private sector AI development. Much of that work has already been carried out through a Trump executive order repealing the AI policies of the Biden administration. The plan also asked the Federal Communications Commission to find ways to legally stop US states from implementing their own AI regulations and threatened to rescind federal aid to states that did so. The American Civil Liberties Union warned this would thwart "initiatives to uphold civil rights and shield communities from biased AI systems in areas like employment, education, health care, and policing." The Trump action plan also calls for AI systems to be "free from ideological bias" and designed to pursue objective truth rather than what the administration calls "social engineering agendas." This criterion would apply to AI companies wanting to do business with the US government. A senior White House official said the main target was AI models that gave attention to diversity and inclusion concerns in programming their model output -- reflecting the Trump administration's anti-"woke" agenda. A major focus in the plan involves building AI infrastructure, including streamlined permitting for data centers and energy facilities that would overlook environmental concerns to build as swiftly as possible. AI "challenges America to build vastly greater energy generation than we have today," the plan said. The administration, which largely rejects international science showing a growing climate crisis, proposes creating new environmental review exemptions for data center construction and expanding access to federal lands for AI infrastructure development. Job replacement Addressing fears that AI will replace humans and create mass job losses across entire sectors, the administration's plan says instead that "AI will improve the lives of Americans by complementing their work -- not replacing it." The strategy calls for efforts to "counter Chinese influence in international governance bodies" and strengthen export controls on advanced AI computing technology. The plan also proposes evaluating Chinese AI models "for alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points and censorship." At the same time, the strategy calls on the government to champion US technology in conquering overseas markets. These plans will help "ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. Critics of the plan said the policies were a gift to US tech giants that were scaling back their goals for zero carbon emissions in order to meet the acute computing needs for AI.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Want to import toxic chemicals into Britain with scant scrutiny? Labour says: go right ahead
It's what the extreme right of the Tory party wanted from Brexit: to tear down crucial public protections, including those that defend us from the most brutal and dangerous forms of capital. The Conservatives lost office before they were able to do their worst. But never mind, because Labour has now picked up the baton. A month ago, so quietly that most of us missed it, the government published a consultation on deregulating chemicals. While most consultations last for 12 weeks, this one runs for eight, half of which cover the holiday period – it closes on 18 August. The intention is set out at the beginning: to reduce 'costs to business'. This, as repeated statements by Keir Starmer make clear, means tearing up the rules. If, the consultation proposes, a chemical has been approved by a 'trusted foreign jurisdiction', it should be approved for use in the UK. No list is given of what these trusted jurisdictions are. It will be up to ministers to decide: they can add such countries through statutory instruments, which means without full parliamentary scrutiny. In one paragraph the document provides what sounds like an assurance: these jurisdictions should have standards 'similar to and at least as high as those in Great Britain'. Three paragraphs later, the assurance is whisked away: the government would be able 'to use any evaluation available to it, which it considers reliable, from any foreign jurisdiction'. In this and other respects, the consultation document is opaque, contradictory, lacking clear safeguards and frankly chilling. Lobbyists will point out that a chemical product has been approved for sale in the US, or Thailand or Honduras, then ask the government to add that country as a trusted jurisdiction. If the government agrees, 'domestic evaluation' would be 'removed', meaning that no UK investigation of the product's health and environmental impacts will be required. In the US, to give one example, a wide range of dangerous chemical products are approved for uses that are banned here and in many other countries. The government has fired the gun on a race to the bottom. To make matters worse, once a country has been added to the list of trusted jurisdictions, all the biocidal products it authorises for use could, the consultation says, be 'automatically approved' for use here. The proposed new rules, in other words, look like a realisation of the fantasy entertained by the ultra-rightwing Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2016: 'We could say, if it's good enough in India, it's good enough for here … We could take it a very long way.' There is in fact a means of reducing costs while maintaining high standards: simply mirror EU rules. Though far from perfect, they set the world's highest standards for chemical regulation. Mirroring them as they evolve would avoid the pointless institutional replication and total regulatory meltdown our chemicals system has suffered since we left the EU. But we can't have that, as it would mean backtracking on Brexit, which would be BETRAYAL. Adopting the weaker standards of other states at the behest of foreign corporations, by contrast, is the height of patriotism. The divergence from European standards is likely to mean breaking the terms of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement, as well as landing Northern Ireland in an even greater quandary, as it remains in both the EU single market and the UK internal market. In many cases, deregulation delivers bureaucratic chaos. The consultation also suggests the removal of all expiry dates for the approval of active chemical substances. The default position would be that, as long as a foreign jurisdiction has approved a product, allowing it to be used in the UK, it stays on the books indefinitely. Those arguing that new evidence should lead to its deletion from the approved list would have a mountain to climb. Worse still, the consultation proposes removing any obligation on the Health and Safety Executive to maintain a publicly available database of the harmful properties of chemical substances on the UK market. No wonder they kept it quiet. Yes, these proposals might reduce costs for business. But the inevitable result is to transfer them to society. Already, we face a massive contamination crisis as a result of regulatory failure in this country, as compounds such as Pfas ('forever chemicals'), microplastics and biocides spread into our lives. If the decontamination of land and water is possible, it will cost hundreds of times more than any profits made by industry as a result of lax rules. In reality, we will carry these costs in our bodies and our ecosystems, indefinitely. The true price is incalculable. Many have paid with their lives, health, education or livelihoods for previous 'bonfires of red tape': through the Grenfell Tower disaster, filthy rivers, collapsing classrooms, consumer rip-offs and the 2008 financial crisis. But as long as these costs can be shifted off corporate and current government balance sheets, that is deemed a win for business and win for the Treasury. Earlier this month, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told financiers in her Mansion House speech that regulation 'acts as a boot on the neck of businesses'. In reality, business acts as a boot on the neck of democracy, a boot the government slathers with kisses. Before the general election last year, Reeves told an assembly of corporate CEOs: 'I hope when you read our manifesto, or see our priorities, that you see your fingerprints all over them.' The catastrophic planning reforms the government is now forcing through parliament were hatched, she told them, at a 'smoked salmon and scrambled eggs breakfast' with corporate lobbyists. This was just one instance of a massive pre-election grovelling offensive, involving hundreds of meetings behind closed doors with corporations, which shaped Labour's plans and explains so much of what has gone wrong since. The point and purpose of the Labour party was to resist economic warfare by the rich against the rest. Starmer and Reeves have turned their party into the opposite of what it once was. Capital demands three things at once: that the government strip away the rules defending the public interest from ruthless profit-making; that the government regulate itself with insanely restrictive pledges, such as Reeves's fiscal rules; and that the public is regulated with ever more draconian laws, such as those restricting protest. It gets what it asks for. Everything must give way to capital, but capital must give way to nothing. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Want to import toxic chemicals into Britain with scant scrutiny? Labour says: go right ahead
It's what the extreme right of the Tory party wanted from Brexit: to tear down crucial public protections, including those that defend us from the most brutal and dangerous forms of capital. The Conservatives lost office before they were able to do their worst. But never mind, because Labour has now picked up the baton. A month ago, so quietly that most of us missed it, the government published a consultation on deregulating chemicals. While most consultations last for 12 weeks, this one runs for eight, half of which cover the holiday period – it closes on 18 August. The intention is set out at the beginning: to reduce 'costs to business'. This, as repeated statements by Keir Starmer make clear, means tearing up the rules. If, the consultation proposes, a chemical has been approved by a 'trusted foreign jurisdiction', it should be approved for use in the UK. No list is given of what these trusted jurisdictions are. It will be up to ministers to decide: they can add such countries through statutory instruments, which means without full parliamentary scrutiny. In one paragraph the document provides what sounds like an assurance: these jurisdictions should have standards 'similar to and at least as high as those in Great Britain'. Three paragraphs later, the assurance is whisked away: the government would be able 'to use any evaluation available to it, which it considers reliable, from any foreign jurisdiction'. In this and other respects, the consultation document is opaque, contradictory, lacking clear safeguards and frankly chilling. Lobbyists will point out that a chemical product has been approved for sale in the US, or Thailand or Honduras, then ask the government to add that country as a trusted jurisdiction. If the government agrees, 'domestic evaluation' would be 'removed', meaning that no UK investigation of the product's health and environmental impacts will be required. In the US, to give one example, a wide range of dangerous chemical products are approved for uses that are banned here and in many other countries. The government has fired the gun on a race to the bottom. To make matters worse, once a country has been added to the list of trusted jurisdictions, all the biocidal products it authorises for use could, the consultation says, be 'automatically approved' for use here. The proposed new rules, in other words, look like a realisation of the fantasy entertained by the ultra-rightwing Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2016: 'We could say, if it's good enough in India, it's good enough for here … We could take it a very long way.' There is in fact a means of reducing costs while maintaining high standards: simply mirror EU rules. Though far from perfect, they set the world's highest standards for chemical regulation. Mirroring them as they evolve would avoid the pointless institutional replication and total regulatory meltdown our chemicals system has suffered since we left the EU. But we can't have that, as it would mean backtracking on Brexit, which would be BETRAYAL. Adopting the weaker standards of other states at the behest of foreign corporations, by contrast, is the height of patriotism. The divergence from European standards is likely to mean breaking the terms of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement, as well as landing Northern Ireland in an even greater quandary, as it remains in both the EU single market and the UK internal market. In many cases, deregulation delivers bureaucratic chaos. The consultation also suggests the removal of all expiry dates for the approval of active chemical substances. The default position would be that, as long as a foreign jurisdiction has approved a product, allowing it to be used in the UK, it stays on the books indefinitely. Those arguing that new evidence should lead to its deletion from the approved list would have a mountain to climb. Worse still, the consultation proposes removing any obligation on the Health and Safety Executive to maintain a publicly available database of the harmful properties of chemical substances on the UK market. No wonder they kept it quiet. Yes, these proposals might reduce costs for business. But the inevitable result is to transfer them to society. Already, we face a massive contamination crisis as a result of regulatory failure in this country, as compounds such as Pfas ('forever chemicals'), microplastics and biocides spread into our lives. If the decontamination of land and water is possible, it will cost hundreds of times more than any profits made by industry as a result of lax rules. In reality, we will carry these costs in our bodies and our ecosystems, indefinitely. The true price is incalculable. Many have paid with their lives, health, education or livelihoods for previous 'bonfires of red tape': through the Grenfell Tower disaster, filthy rivers, collapsing classrooms, consumer rip-offs and the 2008 financial crisis. But as long as these costs can be shifted off corporate and current government balance sheets, that is deemed a win for business and win for the Treasury. Earlier this month, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told financiers in her Mansion House speech that regulation 'acts as a boot on the neck of businesses'. In reality, business acts as a boot on the neck of democracy, a boot the government slathers with kisses. Before the general election last year, Reeves told an assembly of corporate CEOs: 'I hope when you read our manifesto, or see our priorities, that you see your fingerprints all over them.' The catastrophic planning reforms the government is now forcing through parliament were hatched, she told them, at a 'smoked salmon and scrambled eggs breakfast' with corporate lobbyists. This was just one instance of a massive pre-election grovelling offensive, involving hundreds of meetings behind closed doors with corporations, which shaped Labour's plans and explains so much of what has gone wrong since. The point and purpose of the Labour party was to resist economic warfare by the rich against the rest. Starmer and Reeves have turned their party into the opposite of what it once was. Capital demands three things at once: that the government strip away the rules defending the public interest from ruthless profit-making; that the government regulate itself with insanely restrictive pledges, such as Reeves's fiscal rules; and that the public is regulated with ever more draconian laws, such as those restricting protest. It gets what it asks for. Everything must give way to capital, but capital must give way to nothing. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump
If you're an American CEO, you might wake up one day to discover that President Trump has helped himself to a seat on your board of directors. Since first running for president in 2015, Trump has fashioned himself as a businessman-politician who knows what's best for American companies. Many CEOs appreciate his focus on deregulation and lowering taxes. But there's a catch: Trump has strong views on how managers should run their businesses and no compunctions about using the power of the presidency to bully bosses into doing it his way. Many CEOs are learning how to accommodate the micromanager in chief, some through lip service and others through actual business decisions. Some of Trump's interventions are remarkably mundane. He wants Coca-Cola to use real cane sugar in its soda instead of corn syrup. Coke says it will actually do what Trump wants, even though sugar is more expensive and Trumpa-Cola will probably cost more. Other demands are far more problematic. He wants the Washington Commanders football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to their former names, the racially insensitive Redskins and Indians, respectively. That's Trump using professional sports franchises to push his anti-woke agenda to the extreme, which may not hurt Trump, but it puts the two teams in a lose-lose position by reigniting controversies they thought they had finally put behind them. Trump's most meddlesome gambit is his trade policy, which is meant to literally force thousands of US companies to reorganize the way they do business by buying less abroad and more domestically. He directly threatened Apple with a 25% tax if it doesn't start making iPhones in the United States. After Mattel said it would have to raise prices because of Trump's tariffs, Trump threatened a 100% tax on products the toymaker imports and threatened that Mattel "won't sell one toy in the United States." Trump said he'd hit Harley-Davidson with a "big tax" if it went through with a plan to move some motorcycle production overseas. When Walmart said it would likely pass along the cost of Trump's tariffs to its own customers, Trump told Walmart it should "eat the tariffs" — pay the cost and accept lower profits — and warned, "I'll be watching." Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump's tariffs Trump's manhandling of corporate America is hitting the bottom line. General Motors (GM) said on July 22 that Trump's tariffs shaved $1.1 billion off its second quarter profits and will likely cost the company as much as $5 billion this year. The day before, Jeep maker Stellantis (STLA) said the Trump tariffs contributed to a $2.7 billion loss in the first half of 2025. The second quarter earnings season is just getting started, so that may just be a taste of the losses related to Trump's rewiring of global supply chains. There's another category of Trump strong-arming: revenge. Trump has punished a dozen or so prominent law firms for working with Democrats or contributing to lawsuits or prosecutions targeting Trump himself. Trump typically issues an order limiting those firms' ability to work with the federal government, and in some cases makes deals in which those firms agree to do pro bono work for Trump's pet causes. Trump becomes the de facto chair of the firm's pro bono there's Trump's anti-woke crusade targeting Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and dozens of other universities for policies Trump considers too liberal. Trump has canceled billions of dollars' worth of federal grants to those schools, in some cases securing his desired policy changes as part of a settlement. Many companies have tried to preempt a Trump anti-woke crusade by rolling back diversity policies, including Google, (GOOG), Deloitte, Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Paramount (PARA), UnitedHealth (UNH), and IBM (IBM). Trump, in these instances, runs the HR department for a stint. Trump's micromanaging is a stark departure from the free-market capitalism the Republican Party has espoused for decades. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers likens Trump's interventionism to Soviet-style central planning. "There is not a single institution this guy doesn't want to call to tell them how to do their jobs," Wolfers said recently. There are at least three lessons for CEOs. One is to hide for as long as Trump is president and hope he never notices your company or any of its products. Trump seems to have targeted Coke for his new beverage formula because he's a famous fan of its products. He hasn't said anything about Pepsi using a similar formula. Pepsi probably hopes he never does, though CEO Ramon Laguarta is clearly hedging his bets. Another lesson is that it's OK to blame Trump's intervention for losing money, but not for raising prices. Trump hasn't publicly criticized any company for saying his tariffs have cost them money, as GM and Stellantis have done and many more are sure to do. Eating the cost of his policies causes Trump no heartburn. But if you publicly blame him for any pain that afflicts voters, he blows his stack and sometimes seeks revenge. Lose money loudly, raise prices quietly. A third lesson is to pal up with Trump — and watch your back. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang has become Trump's new business BFF, accompanying him on a high-visibility Mideast trip in May and counseling him behind the scenes on technology and trade policy. Nvidia benefited earlier this month when Trump reversed a prior position and once again allowed the sale of advanced Nvidia chips to China. The company's stock popped more than 5% on the news. Other corporate titans have courted Trump — and then fallen out of favor. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, once considered Trump's "tech whisperer," seems to have offended Trump by declining to join his Mideast trip in May. That's when Trump threatened a 25% tax specifically on imported iPhones. Trump's most spectacular business breakup has been with Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who contributed millions to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and became head of the DOGE commission. But Musk grew disillusioned with some of Trump's policies, criticized them publicly, and broke ties with the Trump administration. Trump retaliated by threatening to deport Musk to his home country of South Africa and cancel contracts or subsidies involving Tesla and another Musk company, SpaceX. Crony capitalism only works if the cronyship lasts. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. 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