President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday requiring agencies to establish what the administration is calling regulatory reform task forces. “Each Regulatory Reform Task Force will evaluate existing regulations and identify candidates for repeal or modification,” the administration said in a news release. “Each agency’s Task Force will focus on eliminating costly and unnecessary regulations. To hold the Task Forces accountable, agencies will measure and report progress in achieving the President’s directives.” He surrounded himself by executives Friday when signing the order and lambasted what he called job-killing regulations. “An impossible situation, we’re going to solve it very quickly,” Trump promised at the order’s signing. He said the litmus test should be whether regulations make life better or safer for people. “We have begun a historic program to reduce the regulations that are crushing our economy,” Trump said Friday during the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We’re going to put the regulation industry out of work and out of business.” He repeated his belief that 75 percent of the “repetitive” and “horrible” regulations aren't needed, despite pledging his commitment to strong regulations otherwise. The order requires each task force to provide progress updates to agency chiefs within 90 days. “Within 60 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency, except the heads of agencies receiving waivers under section 5 of this order, shall designate an agency official as its Regulatory Reform Officer,” said the order text. Agency chiefs may request waivers from compliance with the order.
A White House official confirmed Thursday the Trump administration is considering broadband as part of its infrastructure proposal. The Trump team previously listed telecom as one factor in such an infrastructure starting in November but hasn't offered details on what such a proposal would look like. The proposal could be as much as $1 trillion, based on earlier statements from the administration. Members of Congress have been raising the broadband issue directly with President Donald Trump this month, with some senators citing what seemed to be a "positive" reception (see 1702220054).
Recent government action on transgender issues is "troubling and goes against all that we believe in," said Yahoo in a Thursday statement. The Education and Justice departments under President Donald Trump's direction withdrew guidance issued last year that required public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms based on their gender identity. In the brief statement posted on Tumblr, Yahoo said it "has and always will recognize the inalienable right to equality for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression." In multiple news reports, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Uber also expressed similar dismay. Some of those same companies and their associations were also upset at Trump's immigration curtailment order (see 1701290001).
Journalists "have an obligation to monitor and question those in power," said entertainment industry union SAG-AFTRA in a statement Monday on “the Rights of a Free and Unencumbered Press.” SAG-AFTRA includes broadcast and online journalists as members, and “champions the rights of a free press, whose primary role is to provide citizens with the information they need to effectively govern a democracy,” the release said. “As working professionals, members of the news media have an obligation to verify the accuracy of what they report, with loyalty only to their readers, listeners and viewers and not to any political party, affiliation, or ideology.” SAG-AFTRA is the successor union to the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Members of President Donald Trump's administration have been critical of media.
Despite the "rocky start" between President Donald Trump and Silicon Valley on the immigration order, the new administration's focus on policy, regulatory and tax changes can be "especially good" for the technology industry, said American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow Bret Swanson in a Friday blog post. He said "long overdue tax reform" will allow big tech companies to "redeploy hundreds of billions of dollars of capital" held overseas into R&D and other investments in the U.S. He said "a return to sanity" at the FCC would spur network infrastructure investment into 5G technology and help boost broadband and support future innovation like self-driving cars and digital health. The tech industry can "enthusiastically" support most of these policy changes, but Swanson said the administration can also learn a lot. "If it listens to technology firms, it will likely gain a deeper appreciation for the contributions of immigrant technologists and entrepreneurs," he wrote. "It might also pick up on a cultural strength of many technology firms, where collaboration, instead of all-out confrontation, is rewarded with positive-sum growth." He said the two sides are "unlikely to succeed without each other." Swanson didn't outright criticize Trump's executive order on the travel ban, but said the administration has shown an ability to "correct mistakes." A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday unanimously upheld a district judge's suspension of that travel ban (see 1702100042).
Expect four big areas of change in telecom policy under the Trump administration and Republican-run Washington, said Brookings Institution fellow Blair Levin in a blog post. He said the administration and FCC "are likely to view the wireless market as very competitive and the wired market as sufficiently competitive," benefiting AT&T and Verizon against smaller wireless players, CLECs and over-the-top edge providers. He expects a rollback of net neutrality and broadband regulatory oversight through "multidimensional chess" involving the FCC, Congress and the courts. "Rules will be rewritten around the principles of 'no blocking and no throttling,' with some forms of paid prioritization" and/or zero rating allowed, and interconnection regulation unlikely, he wrote. "The result is likely to be increased leverage in business negotiations for those with broadband distribution assets." Levin also expects "the center of gravity" to shift more toward Congress. He highlighted a potential tax bill, but noted companies could use extra after-tax income for various purposes, including broadband investment, acquisitions and rewarding investors. Lawmakers will look at a potential infrastructure bill, largely through investment tax breaks, and telecom policy legislation that could constrain regulation. Levin expects "a wave of mergers" and doesn't expect President Donald Trump to follow through on campaign threats to break up Comcast/NBC Universal and pursue Amazon on antitrust grounds. He's skeptical Trump will seek to block AT&T/Time Warner despite his campaign opposition, though he could try to influence the review. The problem is interference at the DOJ is politically dangerous and the transaction may avoid FCC jurisdiction, Levin said. "Trump may think he is going to negotiate the deal, but the way things are going, he’ll more likely end up sitting at a poker table with no cards, no chips, and no cash."
A White House meeting Thursday among senators, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence addressed broadband access, said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., in a statement. “I raised the issue of the digital divide that exists in rural America and encouraged the president to include broadband in any infrastructure package,” she said. Capito is a member of the Commerce Committee and chief appropriator overseeing the FCC. She took the lead on the Senate Broadband Caucus last year. White House pool reports noted several senators at the White House, including Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Attendees "talked about the need for any infrastructure package to include improving access to high-speed internet in rural communities, as I’ve long pushed for," said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.
Intel chose the White House as the setting for announcing its $7 billion investment in a new Chandler, Arizona, semiconductor plant because it backs the Trump administration’s policies to “make U.S. manufacturing competitive worldwide through new regulatory standards and investment policies,” CEO Brian Krzanich told employees in a Wednesday email. When complete, the plant “will produce the most advanced computer chips in the world,” Krzanich said. It also will create about 3,000 full-time Intel jobs and more than 10,000 jobs in Arizona to run and support the factory, he said. “Government policies play a critical role in enabling and sustaining American-driven innovation,” he said. “When we disagree, we don’t walk away. We believe that we must be part of the conversation to voice our views on key issues such as immigration, H1B visas and other policies that are essential to innovation.” Intel was among dozens of prominent tech companies signing an amici brief Sunday backing Washington and Minnesota in their fight to keep President Donald Trump’s now-suspended immigration executive order from being reinstated (see 1702060016).
President Donald Trump's constant tweeting to his more than 24 million Twitter followers is not only helping drive users to the social media platform, but consumers' real-time reactions are "driving engagement higher," BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield wrote investors Wednesday. He said the social media site's user growth and engagement -- through device downloads and daily usage -- has been due, in part, to the presidential election. Greenfield likened Trump's tweeting to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats on the radio. Whereas listeners then could only write a letter or offer views one-to-one, "Twitter creates a relatively frictionless way for people to share their views and create an on-going dialogue with other consumers around the globe," he said. Trump is "giving people a reason to be actively engaged" rather than passively using the site as an RSS news reader, he added. "What makes Trump’s use of Twitter different is the 'importance' of the content he is putting on Twitter," wrote the analyst. "Trump is paving the way for other public figures to be more forthcoming on Twitter and much more importantly, as a place for consumers to look and react to those messages." This and the company's efforts to curb trolling and hate speech (see 1702070037) might make Twitter more appealing for a takeover over the next year, said Greenfield.
White House officials “encourage independent regulatory agencies to identify existing regulations that, if repealed or revised, would achieve cost savings that would fully offset the costs of new significant regulatory actions,” said an administration memorandum last week, noting that certain requirements of a recent executive order on limiting regulations apply “only to those agencies required to submit significant regulatory actions to OIRA [Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] for review under EO [Executive Order] 12866.” The memo, issued by OIRA Acting Administrator Dominic Mancini, offered interim guidance on the order President Donald Trump signed at the beginning of last week, which would require the nixing of two regulations for every one issued, and doesn't affect the FCC directly (see 1701300064). The memo provided answers about how agencies could bundle regulations designed for removal and adoption and different technical details of how the order would apply.