industry

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed executive orders Friday intended to quadruple domestic production of nuclear power within the next 25 years, a goal experts say the United States is highly unlikely to reach.

To speed up the development of nuclear power, the orders grant the U.S. Energy secretary authority to approve advanced reactor designs and projects, taking authority away from the independent safety agency that has regulated the U.S. nuclear industry for five decades.

The order comes as demand for electricity surges amid a boom in energy-hungry data centers and artificial intelligence. Tech companies, venture capitalists, states and others are competing for electricity and straining the nation’s electric grid.

“We’ve got enough electricity to win the AI arms race with China,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. “What we do in the next five years related to electricity is going to determine the next 50” years in the industry.

Still, it’s unlikely the U.S. could quadruple its nuclear production in the time frame the White House specified. The United States lacks any next-generation reactors operating commercially and only two large reactors have been built from scratch in nearly 50 years. Those two reactors, at a nuclear plant in Georgia, were completed years late and at least $17 billion over budget.

Trump is enthusiastic

At the Oval Office signing, Trump, surrounded by industry executives, called nuclear a “hot industry,” adding, “It’s time for nuclear, and we’re going to do it very big.”

Burgum and other speakers said the industry has stagnated and has been choked by overregulation.

“Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation of an industry,’’ said Burgum, who chairs Trump’s newly formed Energy Dominance Council.

The orders would reorganize the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure quicker reviews of nuclear projects, including an 18-month deadline for the NRC to act on industry applications. The measures also create a pilot program intended to place three new experimental reactors online by July 4, 2026 — 13 months from now — and invoke the Defense Production Act to allow emergency measures to ensure the U.S. has the reactor fuel needed for a modernized nuclear energy sector.

The NRC is assessing the executive orders and will comply with White House directives, spokesperson Scott Burnell said Friday.

Jacob DeWitte, chief executive of the nuclear energy company Oklo, brought a golf ball to the Oval Office. He told Trump that’s the amount of uranium that can power someone’s needs for their entire life.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” he said, holding up the ball.

“Very exciting indeed,” Trump said.

Trump has signed a spate of executive orders promoting oil, gas and coal that warm the planet when burned to produce electricity. Nuclear reactors generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases. Trump said reactors are safe and clean but did not mention climate benefits. Safety advocates warn that nuclear technology still comes with significant risks that other low-carbon energy sources don’t, including the danger of accidents or targeted attacks, and the unresolved question of how to store tens of thousands of tons of hazardous nuclear waste.

The order to reorganize the NRC will include significant staff reductions but is not intended to fire NRC commissioners who lead the agency. David Wright, a former South Carolina elected official and utility commissioner, chairs the five-member panel. His term ends June 30, and it is unclear whether he will be reappointed.

Critics have trepidations

Critics say the White House moves could compromise safety and violate legal frameworks such as the Atomic Energy Act. Compromising the independence of the NRC or encouraging it to be circumvented entirely could weaken the agency and make regulation less effective, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority,” he said.

Gregory Jaczko, who led the NRC under President Obama, said Trump’s executive orders look like someone asked an AI chatbot, “How do we make the nuclear industry worse in this country?”

He called the orders a “guillotine to the nation’s nuclear safety system” that will make the country less safe, the industry less reliable and the climate crisis more severe.

A number of countries are speeding up efforts to license and build a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors to meet a surging demand for electricity and supply it carbon-free. Last year, Congress passed legislation that President Biden signed to modernize the licensing of new reactor technologies so they can be built faster.

This month, the power company in Ontario, Canada, began building the first of four small nuclear reactors.

Valar Atomics is a nuclear reactor developer in California. Founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor said nuclear development and innovation in the United States has been slowed by too much red tape, while Russia and China are speeding ahead. He said he’s most excited about the mandate for the Energy Department to speed up the pace of innovation.

The NRC is currently reviewing applications from companies and a utility that want to build small nuclear reactors to begin providing power in the early 2030s. Currently, the NRC expects its reviews to take three years or less.

Tori Shivanandan, chief operating officer of Radiant Nuclear, a California-based startup, said the executive orders mark a “watershed moment” for nuclear power in the U.S., adding that Trump’s support for the advanced nuclear industry will help ensure its success.

Daly and McDermott write for the Associated Press.

America’s debt-addicted government just lost its triple-A credit rating from Moody’s, as it previously had from fellow rating agencies S&P and Fitch. Many in Washington shrugged the move off as minor or as unfair treatment of the Trump administration. The truth is more sobering: a flashing red signal that the United States is no longer seen as a “perfect” credit risk and that politicians should stop pretending economic growth alone can bail us out.

Yes, the mess is real, and it’s because habitual deficit financing — the very disease fiscally minded founding father Alexander Hamilton warned against — has become business as usual.

The reckoning comes as House Republicans push to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts with a “big, beautiful bill.” If handled correctly, it’s a good idea. But while the legislation aims to avoid tax hikes, it pairs modestly pro-growth provisions with a smorgasbord of costly special-interest giveaways. Worse, it assumes we can afford yet another $3 trillion to $5 trillion in debt without serious consequences. That’s the kind of magical thinking that spurred the credit downgrade.

Starting with Hamilton, American politicians long understood the importance of fiscal policy guided by the ethos of balanced budgets, low taxes and steady debt reduction. Their vision, combined with a deep respect for contractual repayment and financial responsibility, made America a creditor nation.

Washington abandoned that honorable legacy in recent decades. U.S. national debt held by the public is racing toward $30 trillion, and the cost of servicing it is ballooning. Interest payments are now one of the fastest-growing parts of the budget — $1 trillion in 2026 — crowding out core priorities and leaving us vulnerable to economic shocks. The Congressional Budget Office warns that even modest interest-rate increases could lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in added annual costs. It’s not a theoretical problem; it’s a real, compounding threat.

Which brings us back to the downgrade. Historically, downgrades like those from S&P in 2011 or Fitch in 2023 haven’t caused immediate crises, but they do raise borrowing costs and gradually erode investor confidence. The downgrades are not the problem, but symptoms of a deeper illness: lack of credible fiscal discipline. Market participants aren’t worried because Moody’s wrote a negative report; they’re worried because what Moody’s wrote is true.

If our political class continues to ignore warnings, the market will do what rating agencies only hint at: impose real discipline through higher borrowing costs, weaker currency demand and tighter credit conditions. Already, China and other countries have reduced holdings of U.S. Treasuries from 42% in 2019 to 30% today.

Meanwhile, the tax plan so far embodies Washington’s worst habits. It makes only temporary the most important pro-growth provisions of the 2017 tax cuts — like full expensing for equipment and research and development — while rendering permanent a raft of unrelated policies catering to favored industries and constituencies. That’s not tax reform; it’s pork-barrel politics dressed up as populist economics.

Worse still, the bill’s Republican supporters in the House justify it with the fantastical claim that it’s fiscally responsible based on the notion that it will raise trillions in growth-generated revenue. Even the most optimistic models show the current bill barely moving the growth needle. The administration claims growth will be enormous once it deregulates and sells off assets, but these distinct policies take a long time to bear fruit.

What a missed opportunity. According to Tax Foundation experts, making just four cost-recovery provisions permanent — bonus depreciation, R&D expensing, full expensing for factories and reforming the business-interest limitation — would more than double the tax bill’s long-run growth benefits.

That’s where legislators should be focused. Not on tax breaks for hand-picked industries or energy credits for hand-picked technologies — on structural reforms that maximize American investment, innovation and capital formation. Even such pro-growth tax policy must be paired with real spending restraint, something we haven’t seen in earnest since the 1990s. Otherwise, any gains from better tax policy will have red ink spilled all over them.

The lesson from Moody’s, and from history, is that America cannot borrow its way to prosperity. That was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s view in the 1920s, and it remains true today. Mellon quietly prepared for debt defaults by building budget surpluses, knowing that while international repayments might fail, American citizens still had to be paid. That was back when Treasury secretaries respected taxpayers.

Now, as then, we stand at a crossroads. Will we restore Hamiltonian principles of fiscal prudence or continue down a path where downgrades become defaults and our creditors decide the terms of American fiscal policy? The next move belongs to Congress. Legislators can’t say they weren’t warned. If they fail the fiscal prudence test again, we’ll all pay the price.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

By Tina Teng

Published on
22/05/2025 – 7:35 GMT+2

Bitcoin surged to a fresh record high on Thursday, fuelled by optimism that the US Congress will soon pass a bill ill for stablecoin- the GENIUS Act, which is set to be the first regulatory framework under the Trump Administration.

During Thursday’s Asian session, the world’s largest cryptocurrency soared past $111,000 (€98,000) at 5:23 am CEST, surpassing its previous all-time high of over $109,000 (€96,000) set during President Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.

The rally was supported not only by legislative developments but also by increasing institutional interest. Michael Saylor’s firm, Strategy, disclosed a further aggressive Bitcoin purchase worth $765 million (€675 million) on Monday, bringing its total holdings to over $63 billion (€56 billion). Major financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock, have also expanded crypto offerings to clients.

“Perhaps the most crucial shift is who’s buying. This is the first real bull market where institutional participation is front and centre,” said Josh Gilbert, market analyst at eToro Australia.

Stablecoin legislation wins key Senate vote

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to reference assets such as the US dollar, the euro or commodities like gold.

On Monday, a group of Senate Democrats dropped their opposition to the legislation, allowing it to clear a key procedural vote and raising hopes that the Senate will pass it as early as this week. The bill is expected to include provisions aimed at protecting stablecoin holders and regulating potential abuse for criminal or terrorist financing.

Previously, the bill had stalled over concerns about potential conflicts of interest, stemming from President Trump’s and his family’s involvement in the cryptocurrency. Trump launched his own meme coin in January, while the Trump family business supported the launch of a new stablecoin, USD1, in March. USD1 is pegged to US dollar deposits and backed by short-term US Treasuries.

David Sacks, the White House’s crypto tsar and a senior AI adviser to Trump, said in an interview with CNBC that the bill’s passage would boost demand for US government debt. “If we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this, I think we could create trillions of dollars of demand for our Treasuries practically overnight,” he said.

Bitcoin outperforms traditional risk assets

Bitcoin has emerged as one of the top-performing risk assets this year, having risen nearly 20% year-to-date. In contrast, the S&P 500 has slipped 0.48%, while the Nasdaq has gained 2.7%. Meanwhile, gold, a traditional safe-haven asset, has climbed about 21% over the same period.

Wednesday’s US 20-year US government bond auction revealed tepid demand, pushing Treasury yields sharply higher. Bond yields move inversely to prices. The auction result underscored mounting investor concerns about Washington’s ballooning debt burden, amid upcoming Trump’s proposed tax bill. The market reaction also followed Moody’s decision to downgrade the US credit outlook last Friday. Surging bond yields triggered renewed selling pressure across US assets, with stocks, the dollar and Treasuries all falling on Wednesday.

Despite its impressive rally, Bitcoin remains a highly volatile financial asset with limited fundamental support, unlike stocks which are underpinned by corporate earnings.

South Sudan relies on oil for more than 90 percent of its government revenues, and the country depends entirely on Sudan to export the precious resource.

But this month, Sudan’s army-backed government said it was preparing to shut down the facilities that its southern neighbour uses to export its oil, according to an official government letter seen by Al Jazeera.

That decision could collapse South Sudan’s economy and drag it directly into Sudan’s intractable civil war between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts warned.

The announcement was made on May 9 after the RSF launched suicide drones for six consecutive days at Port Sudan, the army’s wartime capital on the strategic Red Sea coast.

The strikes destroyed a fuel depot and damaged electricity grids, shattering the sense of security in the city, which lies far from the country’s front lines.

Sudan’s army claims the damage now hampers it from exporting South Sudan’s oil.

“The announcement read like a desperate plea [to South Sudan] for help to stop these [RSF] attacks,” said Alan Boswell, an expert on the Horn of Africa with the International Crisis Group.

“But I think doing so overestimates the leverage that South Sudan has … over the RSF,” he added.

Predatory economics

Since South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, the former has relied on the latter to export its oil via Port Sudan.

In return, Sudan has collected fees from Juba as part of their 2005 peace agreement, which ended the 22-year north-south civil war and ultimately led to the secession of South Sudan from Sudan.

When Sudan erupted into another civil war between the army and RSF in 2023, the former continued collecting the fees from Juba.

“[Sudan and South Sudan] are tied at the hip financially due to the oil export infrastructure,” Boswell told Al Jazeera.

Local media have recently reported that high-level officials from South Sudan and Sudan are engaged in talks to avert a shutdown of oil exports.

Al Jazeera sent written questions to Port Sudan’s energy and petroleum minister, Mohieddein Naiem Mohamed, asking if the army is negotiating higher rent fees from South Sudan before resuming oil exports, which some experts suspected to be a likely scenario.

Naiem Mohamed did not respond before publication.

According to the International Crisis Group, Juba also pays off the RSF to not damage oil pipelines that run through territory under its control.

In addition, South Sudan has allowed the RSF to operate in villages along the Sudan-South Sudan border.

The RSF has increased its presence along the sprawling, porous border after forming a strategic alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N) in February.

The SPLM-N fought alongside secessionist forces against Sudan’s army. It controls swaths of territory in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions and has historically close ties with Juba.

South Sudan’s relationship with the SPLM-N and RSF has increasingly frustrated Sudan’s army, said Edmund Yakani, a South Sudanese civil society leader and commentator.

“[Sudan’s army] is suspicious that Juba is helping RSF in its military capability and political space to manoeuvre its struggle against Sudan’s army,” Yakani told Al Jazeera.

House of cards

According to a report by the International Crisis Group from 2021, about 60 percent of South Sudan’s oil profits go to the multinational companies producing the oil.

The report explained that most of the remaining 40 percent goes to paying off outstanding loans and to South Sudan’s ruling elites in the bloated security sector and bureaucracy.

South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, will likely not be able to keep his patronage network together without a quick resumption in oil revenue.

His fragile government – a coalition of longtime loyalists and coopted opponents – could collapse like a house of cards, experts warned.

Al Jazeera emailed written questions to South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to ask if the country has any contingency plan in case oil exports stop indefinitely. The ministry did not respond before publication.

Experts warned that South Sudan has no alternative to oil.

Security personnel and civil servants are already owed months of back pay, and they may turn against Kiir – and each other – if they have no incentive to uphold the fragile peace agreement that ended South Sudan’s own five-year civil war in 2018.

“Kiir is on extremely fragile footing, and there is no backup plan for when the oil runs out,” said Matthew Benson, a scholar on Sudan and South Sudan at the London School of Economics.

A halt in oil revenue would also drive up inflation, exacerbating the daily struggles of millions of civilians.

The World Food Programme estimated that about 60 percent of the population is experiencing acute food shortages while the World Bank found that nearly 80 percent live below the poverty line.

The hardship and pervasive corruption have given way to a predatory economy in which armed groups erect checkpoints to shake down civilians for bribes and taxes.

Civilians will likely be unable to cough up any more money if the oil revenue dries up.

“I’m not sure people can be squeezed more than they already are,” Benson said.

Proxy war?

Some commentators and activists also fear that Sudan’s army is deliberately turning off the oil to force South Sudan to cut off all contact with the RSF and SPLM-N.

This speculation is fuelling some resentment among civilians in South Sudan, according to Yakani.

Meanwhile, some supporters of Sudan’s army argued that South Sudan should not benefit from oil as long as it provides any degree of support to the RSF, which they view as a militia waging a rebellion against the state.

Both the RSF and army have recruited South Sudanese mercenaries to fight on their behalf, Al Jazeera previously reported.

“What Port Sudan [the army] wants is for Juba to absolutely distance itself from aiding the RSF in any way, and that is the complication that the government of [Kiir] is in now,” Yakani told Al Jazeera.

“The majority of citizens of South Sudan – including myself – believe that South Sudan is becoming a land of proxy wars for Sudan’s warring parties and their [regional] allies,” he added.

Sudan’s army also believes that South Sudan’s government is relying increasingly on the RSF’s regional backers to buttress its own security.

Sudan’s army leaders were particularly spooked when Uganda, which it views as supporting the RSF, deployed troops to prop up Kiir in March, according to Boswell.

In addition, Sudan’s army has repeatedly accused the United Arab Emirates of arming the RSF.

The UAE has repeatedly denied these allegations, which United Nations experts and Amnesty International have also made.

“The UAE has already made absolutely clear that it is not providing any support or supplies to either of two belligerent warring parties in Sudan,” the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs previously told Al Jazeera in an email.

Despite tensions between Sudan’s army and the UAE, analysts said Juba may request a large loan from the UAE to keep its patronage intact if Sudan’s army does not promptly resume oil exports.

“[Sudan’s army] has been worrying and watching closely over whether the UAE might loan South Sudan a significant amount of money,” Boswell said.

“I think a massive UAE loan to South Sudan would be … a red line for Sudan’s army”, he added.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve a sweeping package of minimum wage increases for workers in the tourism industry, despite objections from business leaders who warned that the region is already facing a slowdown in international travel.

The proposal, billed by labor leaders as the highest minimum wage in the country, would require hotels with more than 60 rooms, as well as companies doing business at Los Angeles International Airport, to pay their workers $30 per hour by 2028.

That translates to a 48% hike in the minimum wage for hotel employees over three years. Airport workers would see a 56% increase.

On top of that, hotels and airport businesses would be required to provide $8.35 per hour for their workers’ health care by July 2026.

The package of increases was approved on a 12-3 vote, with Councilmembers John Lee, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez opposed. Because the tally was not unanimous, a second vote will be required next week.

Rodriguez, who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley, told her colleagues that the proposal would cause hotels and airport businesses to cut back on staffing, resulting in job losses. The same thing is happening at City Hall, with elected officials considering staff cuts to cover the cost of employee raises, she said.

“We are right now facing 1,600 imminent layoffs because the revenue is just not matching our expenditures,” Rodriguez said. “The same will happen in the private sector.”

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, standing before a crowded of unionized workers after the vote, celebrated their victory.

“It’s been way too long, but finally, today, this building is working for the people, not the corporations,” said Soto-Martínez, a former organizer with the hotel and restaurant union Unite Here Local 11.

Hotel owners, business groups and airport concession companies predicted the wage increases will deal a fresh blow to an industry that never fully recovered from the COVID pandemic. They pointed to the recent drop-off in tourism from Canada and elsewhere that followed President Trump’s trade war and tightening of the U.S. border.

Adam Burke, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, said Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom — nations that send a large number of visitors to Los Angeles — have issued formal advisories about visiting the U.S.

“The 2025 outlook is not encouraging,” Burke said.

Several hotel owners have warned that the higher wage will spur them to scale back their restaurant operations. A few flatly stated that hotel companies would steer clear of future investments in the city, which has long served as a global tourism destination.

Jackie Filla, president and chief executive of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles, said she believes that hotels will close restaurants or other small businesses on their premises — and in some cases, shut down entirely.

In the short term, she said, some will tear up their “room block” agreements, which set aside rooms for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“I don’t think anybody wants to do this,” Filla said. “Hotels are excited to host guests. They’re excited to be participating in the Olympics. But they can’t go into it losing money.”

Jessica Durrum, a policy director with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a pro-union advocacy group, said business leaders also issued dire warnings about the economy when previous wage increases were approved — only to be proven wrong. Durrum, who is in charge of her group’s Tourism Workers Rising campaign, told the council that a higher wage would only benefit the region.

“People with more money in their pockets — they spend it,” she said.

Wednesday’s vote delivered a huge victory to Unite Here Local 11, a potent political force at City Hall. The union is known for knocking on doors for favored candidates, spending six figures in some cases to get them elected.

Unite Here Local 11 had billed the proposal as an “Olympic wage,” one that would ensure that its members have enough money to keep up with inflation. The union, working with airport workers represented by Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West, also said that corporations should not be the only ones to benefit from the Olympic Games in 2028.

Workers from both of those unions testified about their struggles to pay for rising household costs, including rent, food and fuel. Some pleaded for better health care, while others spoke about having to work multiple jobs to support their families.

“We need these wages. Please do what’s right,” said Jovan Houston, a customer service agent at LAX. “Do this for workers. Do this for single families. Do this for parents like myself.”

Sonia Ceron, 38, a dishwasher at airline catering company Flying Food Group, said she has a second job cleaning houses in Beverly Hills for about 32 hours a week. Ceron lives in a small studio apartment in Inglewood, which has been difficult for her 12-year-old daughter.

“My daughter, like every kid, wants to have her own room, to be able to call her friends and have her privacy. Right now, that’s impossible,” Ceron said.

L.A.’s political leaders have enacted a number of wage laws over the last few decades. The hotel minimum wage, approved by the council in 2014, currently stands at $20.32 per hour. The minimum wage for private-sector employees at LAX is $25.23 per hour, once the required $5.95 hourly healthcare payment is included.

For nearly everyone else in L.A., the hourly minimum wage is $17.28, 78 cents higher than the state’s.

Whoopi Goldberg attends the “Night with Whoopi” event in Venice Beach, Calif., on July 20. She will promote her Whoop-Tea cannabis drink at the Cannabis Means Business event in New York City on June 4. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

May 14 (UPI) — Award-winning actress, comedian, television host and entrepreneur Whoopi Goldberg will headline the Cannabis Means Business event next month in New York City.

The Cannabis Means Business trade event is scheduled June 4-5 at the Javits Center, where Goldberg plans to launch her “Whoop-Tea” hemp-derived beverage.

Goldberg will join CNBC’s Tim Seymour at the CMB event’s opening day to hold an “exclusive conversation” in the special events area at the cannabis trade show.

The pair will discuss the rapidly growing cannabis beverage market and her Whoop-Tea product, which is being produced with the help of the Pure Genesis cannabis beverage brand.

“I wanted to create something that’s fun, relaxing and brings people together without the hangover,” Goldberg said in a news release.

“Whoop-Tea is exactly that,” she said. “It’s tea. It’s lemonade. It’s THC, and it’s all about unwinding and enjoying the moment.”

Goldberg said she is “excited” to “be a part of this incredible shift in wellness culture” and unveil her beverage during the cannabis industry event.

CMB organizers said the global cannabis beverage market was valued at $1.16 billion and is projected to top $3 billion in 2025.

Pure Genesis and Goldberg have partnered to produce Whoop-Tea, which is a non-alcoholic beverage that has THC and blends lemonade and iced tea.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Whoopi, a cultural icon who shares our passion for quality, community and breaking stigma,” Pure Genesis co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Faye Coleman said.

Pure Genesis co-founder Priscilla Wynn called the beverage a “testament to what’s possible when visionary women lead.”

Event attendees will have the opportunity to enjoy free samples.