TheChek News Flow

President calls on officials to ease permitting rules for rocket flights as more companies want to launch them

President Trump issued an executive order that aims to speed up rocket launching and opens the door to more spaceport developments.

Many space industry executives have been frustrated by the pace at which regulators have moved to permit launches and other space operations, and had anticipated that the Trump administration would try to address the issue. Those expectations were fed by the alliance between Trump and Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX who advised Trump before their high-profile split.

Musk has criticized regulators over the years, including last fall when he said they were slowing the company’s progress with Starship. Texas-based SpaceX is developing the experimental rocket for a range of future missions.

The Federal Aviation Administration oversees private rocket launches as part of its work managing U.S. airspace. Current and former FAA officials have said the agency is committed to working with space companies to coordinate launches and re-entries of private spacecraft back to Earth from orbit.

Currently, SpaceX launches more rockets more often than any other company, meaning the order to speed up the licensing of flights should help it. But other launchers, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, are also poised to begin flying their new rockets more often in the years ahead.

Trump’s order, signed on Wednesday, also seeks to make it easier to build new spaceports, where launches and other operations could take place, by streamlining environmental reviews.

Most rocket launches from the U.S. take place from the Cape Canaveral area on Florida’s east coast or from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California. Orchestrating launches is a growing challenge for rocket executives and officials, generating efforts by other spaceports to handle some of that traffic.

Many of those efforts are nascent, however, and creating new facilities would likely face pushback from neighbors to the sites and environmental advocates.

Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, a trade group, said the order would strengthen the industry by cutting red tape while maintaining a commitment to public safety.

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Crews work to restore operations after deaths of two employees

Nippon Steel 5401 -0.60%decrease; red down pointing triangle promised to spend $14 billion to keep U.S. Steel’s aging plants humming for decades. A deadly blast at a mill near Pittsburgh will test the Japanese steelmaker’s resolve through a costly crisis.

Crews are continuing to clean up and restore operations at the Clairton, Pa., plant where an explosion Monday killed two workers and injured 10 others. U.S. Steel officials said the blast reduced the company’s ability to produce coke—a key steelmaking input—at its Mon Valley Works complex.

Jim Borkowski, an employee with 21 years of service, was among those transporting injured workers from the wreckage. “It was chaos; we ran to help whoever and do whatever we could,” he said.

Mon Valley was a focal point of Nippon Steel’s negotiations with President Trump. Two months ago he approved the purchase of U.S. Steel after the Tokyo-based company significantly increased its investment commitments.

Nippon Steel pledged $2.2 billion for upgrades at Mon Valley by 2028, projects that would maintain steelmaking at the mill for years. The to-do list didn’t include major repairs to Clairton’s coke ovens. It will likely cost the company millions of dollars to return the site to normal operations.

The Clairton coking plant—the nation’s largest—has dealt with operational concerns in the past. An explosion at the plant in 2010 injured 20 workers. A catastrophic fire on Christmas Eve 2018 knocked out the plant’s emissions-control system for months afterward.

In February, two employees were sent to the hospital when gases ignited at a coke plant battery, which Allegheny County officials said caused an audible boom and surge in airborne pollutants.

Nippon Steel said work on the planned replacement of the rolling line to make sheet steel would continue, but added, “Our primary focus remains on our employees at our Clairton plant.”

U.S. Steel Chief Executive Dave Burritt said Tuesday that he spoke with Nippon Steel executives following the accident and said they are committed to cooperating with government investigators to determine a cause for the explosion.

“We will take every step necessary to keep our people safe,” Burritt said during a briefing with reporters. “We wouldn’t have done the deal with Nippon Steel if we weren’t absolutely sure that we would have an enduring future.”

U.S. Steel deferred some maintenance and upgrade projects for years in response to a long stretch of financial losses before 2020.

In the months before the deal closed, Nippon Steel Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori visited the Mon Valley complex several times to confirm the company’s interest in preserving American jobs and investing in the mill. The steelmaker later dispatched teams of engineers and other employees from Japan to begin work on the plant upgrades.

The cause of the explosion remains under investigation. Just before the blast, workers were preparing to do routine maintenance on the batteries of ovens that bake coal into coke.

Coke is essential for producing molten iron at U.S. Steel’s blast furnaces in Pennsylvania and Indiana. As part of the coking process, flammable compounds, such as methane, and other impurities are extracted from the coal under heat and pressure, leaving a carbon product behind.

The Clairton plant can produce 3.6 million tons of coke across its six batteries of ovens. The explosion knocked out two batteries, and two more near the blast area were temporarily taken down for repairs.

Emissions from coke plants have been a target for environmental groups for years, especially in Pittsburgh, which has been a hub of steel production for over a century.

U.S. Steel last year settled a lawsuit brought by environmental groups over emissions that stemmed from the 2018 Clairton plant fire. The settlement with the groups and the county included $19.5 million in coke-oven upgrades and $17.5 million in other plant improvements.

The company has said it regretted the incidents and believed the settlement would benefit communities near the mill.

Experts in the litigation provided descriptions of the Clairton plant’s condition.

In court filings, an engineering expert for environmental groups described plant inspections as “sporadic” and said that repairs were delayed by budget constraints. The expert cited an internal company email that mentioned examples of corrosion that included water-supply lines that were rotted “Coke-can thin.”

Do you think Nippon Steel will follow through with promised investments in U.S. Steel facilities? Join the conversation below.A county health department official described the plant in a 2020 deposition as “one of the most decrepit facilities I’ve ever seen in my nearly 30 years of work.”

Borkowski, 40, who works as a union-safety representative, said he thinks the company stays on top of maintenance “for the most part,” but acknowledged that the company needs promised investments from Nippon Steel.

“It’s an aging plant,” said Borkowski, a third-generation steelworker. “I just hope they stick to their word, and I hope they invest the money on the Mon Valley.”

Dozens of larger stores will become unprofitable as a result of the higher property charges

More than 100 large stores run by the UK’s top supermarket chains are at risk of closure because of government plans to raise business rates, which would drive up costs for a sector already bearing the brunt of increased employment taxes.

Roughly 50 of Sainsbury’s 600 supermarkets will become unprofitable as a result of the higher property charges, according to people in the industry. For Tesco, the UK’s largest private sector employer, the changes would tip tens of stores into the red, according to a senior figure at the company.

Ministers are planning to increase business rates on properties with a rateable value of more than £500,000 — the top 1 per cent of retail stores.

The intention is that this will fund the government’s plan to change a temporary discount for smaller retail and hospitality businesses, those trading from premises with a rateable value of less than £500,000, into a permanent one. 

Sainsbury’s and Tesco, which generated net profits of £420mn and £1.2bn respectively last year, may be better able to weather the impact than their more heavily indebted rivals, Asda and Morrisons.

The changes will threaten the viability of 30 Morrisons supermarkets, out of a total of almost 500, although one insider said this would not necessarily mean those outlets closed as a result. Meanwhile, almost 90 per cent of Asda’s roughly 600 supermarkets would be affected by the business rate increases, said a person familiar with the company.

Supermarket executives have also been irked that Labour’s plans to increase rates will not impact Aldi and Lidl, which typically operate smaller, less valuable stores. 

Property experts at Colliers estimate less than 10 per cent of Lidl’s stores will be impacted by the proposed changes.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons all declined to comment.

Last year Morrisons chief executive Rami Baitiéh urged the government to stagger the “avalanche” of costs bearing down on retailers.

The sector, which employs 2.8mn people, has been hit disproportionately by rises in employers’ national insurance and the minimum wage. The new business rates levy for larger stores, which employ one in three retail workers, will be announced at the autumn Budget.

Business rates have long been a bugbear for bricks-and-mortar retailers, who complain that the property-based tax unfairly penalises them vis-à-vis their online counterparts.

The government, which has pledged to fundamentally reform the business rates system, contends that its proposals will increase the business rates take from the majority of the distribution centres used by “online giants” such as Amazon.

Industry lobby groups argue the government’s focus on large stores will penalise supermarkets and department stores, which can both help drive footfall to the high street.

Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco, said last month that “the reforms as proposed do not meet the original intention to rebalance the burden of business rates to be fairer and support town centres”.

“We are creating a fairer business rates system to protect the high street, support investment and level the playing field,” the Treasury said.

“We intend to introduce permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality, and leisure properties from next year. Unlike the current relief for these properties, there will be no cash cap on the new lower tax rates.”

Initial tax data allays fears of non-dom exodus from UK

Officials had expected one in four with trusts to leave Britain after status was abolished

Fears of a massive non-dom exodus from the UK have been allayed by initial tax data, which suggests that total numbers leaving the country are in line with — or even below — official forecasts.

HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.

The findings will be a relief to the chancellor after a series of surveys — based mainly on anecdotal evidence — suggested her tax policies had prompted huge numbers of wealthy individuals to flee the country.

Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.

HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said — removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.

“With all the things going on in the world, Britain looks like a pretty safe and stable place,” said a government official. “We’ve got a lot to market ourselves on.”

However, advisers to the wealthiest non-domiciled individuals have nevertheless reported significant departures. Robert Brodrick, a partner at law firm Payne Hicks Beach, said “the majority” of his non-dom clients who were paying or had previously paid the £90,000 annual fee to use the tax-favourable “remittance basis” had left the country. 

Provisional HMRC figures show there were 60,700 non-doms — people resident in Britain but with their permanent home outside the country — in the 2023-24 tax year. This was down 30 per cent on 2014-15.

Up until April, when the status was scrapped, these non-doms paid UK taxes on any UK income and capital gains, but this was not levied on foreign income or gains, unless brought into the country.

The OBR estimated in January that about one in 10 non-doms without trusts would leave the UK because of the decision to abolish the status, and end the ability of non-doms to shield foreign assets held in an offshore trust from inheritance tax. Among those with trusts, the estimate was that one in four would leave. 

Some of those briefed on the early HMRC data said the figures suggested that fewer people were leaving than projected by the OBR, while others said the departures were in line with forecasts.

One Reeves ally said: “We’ve seen no evidence that there’s been a change in the non-dom profile beyond what the OBR forecast.” This will be a relief to the chancellor, who is under pressure to fill a fiscal hole that some economists say is at least £20bn.

HMRC was drawing on payroll data, which businesses send to the tax office every month, to determine the trend of non-dom departures.

Most non-doms receive UK employment or pension income, meaning they are captured in official Pay as You Earn data. Tax officials can therefore track whether they have left the UK because they would have fallen off the latest PAYE figures.

Tax experts also said the Treasury would have more confidence in using payroll data now because more than 120 days had passed since the start of the tax year. In most cases, anyone who did not want to be considered UK tax resident would have left before spending 120 days of the current tax year, which began on April 6.

However non-doms who do not work in the UK may not be featured in the PAYE data, and HMRC will not have a full understanding of exactly how many have fled the reforms until January 2027 when individuals submit tax returns for the 2025-26 year. 

Reeves has considered retreating on one element of her non-dom tax reforms relating to inheritance tax, according to government officials, but will wait for full data to arrive before deciding whether to do so.

The decision to expose worldwide assets to IHT at 40 per cent has been highly contentious, and had sparked warnings of an exodus of wealthy people from the UK.

A widely cited report published in association with Henley & Partners, a consultancy that markets passports and residency permit schemes, was criticised for claiming that 16,500 millionaires would quit the country. Critics said it relied heavily on data from LinkedIn, which is not reliable for finding someone’s tax residence.

Financial Times analysis of Companies House filings this month showed a rise in the number of company directors, which would include both former non-doms and UK-domiciled people, who had left the UK since the Budget.

Some 3,790 directors reported leaving the UK between November 2024 and July this year, from 2,712 in the same period a year earlier. Dubai, which has no individual income or capital gains tax, has been a main beneficiary.

The Treasury said it was right for people who made their home in Britain to pay taxes here, but added: “The UK remains a highly attractive place to live and invest. Our main capital gains tax rate is lower than any other G7 European country and our new residence-based regime is simpler and more attractive than the previous one.”

Developments such as futuristic Neom hit by budget overruns and lower oil prices

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has cut $8bn from the value of its holdings in the kingdom’s gigaprojects, including its flagship development Neom, as efforts to transform the domestic economy are hit by budget overruns and lower oil prices.

The Public Investment Fund, the main driver for Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation efforts, said its investments in Saudi gigaprojects were worth $56bn (SR211bn) at the end of 2024, 12.4 per cent lower than a year earlier. The writedown is equivalent to $8bn.

“There were impairments to certain projects primarily relating to global economic market conditions, changes to operational plans and increases in budgeted costs,” said a person familiar with the matter.

The PIF owns five so-called gigaprojects, including Neom, which is designed to include a linear city inspired by science fiction.

The projects are central to de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans to modernise the kingdom and diversify the economy to reduce its reliance on oil.

But Saudi officials have said the kingdom is taking stock of the ambitious projects, as lower oil prices weigh on state spending. Neom’s projects are under review, with many expected to be scaled back and phased out.

Elements of the $500bn Neom project have faced delays and challenges due to the scale and ambition of the development, which is being built from scratch in a remote area by the Red Sea.

While there has been robust growth in other sectors in recent years, the kingdom still relies on oil exports for more than 60 per cent of its revenue.

Ana Nacvalovaite, a research fellow at Oxford university who focuses on sovereign wealth funds, said that geopolitical turmoil and engineering challenges may have affected the PIF’s valuation of its gigaproject holdings. “I don’t think [PIF] are too worried about it, of course it’s a colossal sum of money . . . but there will be some losses before we hit 2030,” she said.

The fund disclosed the reduced valuations in its 2024 annual report, published on Wednesday. Gross assets under management rose to about $913bn, up 19 per cent from the end of 2023. The gigaprojects account for 6 per cent of the fund’s assets, down from 8 per cent in 2023.

The rise was driven partly by an increase in the PIF’s holdings of state oil company Aramco during 2024, when the Saudi government transferred an additional 8 per cent stake to the fund, bringing its shareholding up to 16 per cent.

More than a third of the PIF’s investments were in Saudi companies by the end of last year.

The holding in Aramco has been under severe pressure as low oil prices bite. Aramco’s shares have lost 14.3 per cent of their value since the start of the year and it has also cut dividends.

The PIF said that its average annual returns were 7.2 per cent in 2024, down from 8.7 per cent the previous year. Earlier this year, it reported that its net profits had dropped 60 per cent, with the fall driven by higher interest rates, inflation and impairments on projects.

Nacvalovaite pointed out that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund also reported losses last year, saying the PIF “does not stand alone”.

The kingdom’s economic modernisation programme, Vision 2030, transformed the PIF from a sleepy state holding company, used to investing in local companies, into a major player at home and abroad.

But the fund, once known for splashy bets on international golf tournaments and a Tesla rival, has scaled back the global portion of its overall holdings, preferring to focus its efforts domestically.

International investments accounted for 17 per cent of the PIF’s portfolio at the end of 2024, compared with 20 per cent a year earlier.

The IMF this month reported that the PIF and Aramco had both repatriated some of their foreign assets in 2024.