Raphael Stevens

The CEOs of GM, Ford, Stellantis and Toyota North America are urging Congress to lift a sales cap on the federal government’s $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit.
The executives contend the credit is critical for affordability of the vehicles amid increases in production and commodity costs.
GM and Tesla are the only automakers to have exceeded the limit thus far.

The all-electric Chevrolet Silverado at the New York Auto Show, April 13, 2022.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

DETROIT – The CEOs of General Motors, Ford Motor, Chrysler parent Stellantis and Toyota Motor North America are urging Congress to lift the federal government’s cap on the number of vehicles that are eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500, a move they say will encourage consumer adoption of the cars and trucks.
In a joint letter Monday to congressional leaders, the executives say the credit, which begins phasing out once a company sells 200,000 plug-in electric vehicles, is essential to keep the vehicles affordable as production and commodity costs rise.

“Eliminating the cap will incentivize consumer adoption of future electrified options,” the letter states.
GM and Tesla, the industry leader in electric vehicles, are the only companies that have exceeded the limit so far. But other automakers are also expected to near the 200,000 mark as they release an array of new electric products.
The letter, which was first reported by Reuters, instead recommends a sunset date for the tax once the EV market is more mature.

“The coming years are critical to the growth of the electric vehicle market and as China and the EU continue to invest heavily in electrification, our domestic policies must work to solidify our global leadership in the automotive industry,” the letter states.
The letter also notes that the four companies have pledged to invest more than $170 billion through 2030 to bolster EV development, production and sales, including near-term investments of more than $20 billion in the U.S.

For years, GM CEO Mary Barra and other executives with the Detroit automaker have urged that the cap to be lifted to create a level playing field. They say the current policy penalizes early adopters of the technologies.
The letter was addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. It was signed by Barra, Ford CEO Jim Farley, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares and Toyota North America CEO Tetsuo “Ted” Ogawa.
Correction: Kevin McCarthy is House minority leader and Nancy Pelosi is speaker of the House. An earlier version misstated their titles.

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Piedmont and Envoy pilots will get 50% pay premiums through August 2024.
Pilot attrition is rampant at airlines and has crimped growth, executives have said.
The smaller carriers are a breeding ground for pilots who often end up flowing through to major carriers.

American Airlines Embraer ERJ-145 regional jet aircraft as seen on final approach landing at New York JFK international airport in NY, on February 13, 2020.
Nicolas Economou | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Two American Airlines-owned regional carriers will hike pilot pay by 50% through the end of August 2024, the latest sign airlines are willing to pay up in hopes of ending a pilot shortage that has left some travelers with fewer flight options.
The increases would make the pilots the highest paid of the U.S. regional airlines, ramping up pressure on other carriers to follow suit.

Including separate, permanent pay hikes, the temporary raises will bring hourly wages for first officers in their first year of flying at Piedmont Airlines to $90 an hour, up from $51 an hour, the company said. For first-year captains, pay will be $146 an hour, up from $78 an hour. The airline could extend the temporary hikes if needed, Piedmont’s CEO said Monday.
Airlines have been on pilot hiring sprees since last year when travel demand began to bounce back from Covid pandemic lows. But a persistent shortage of pilots is still hindering growth at a time of strong demand, prompting airlines to park jets that serve smaller cities. Part of the problem is that airlines encouraged pilots to take early retirement after demand cratered in 2020 and were left with too few when travel rebounded.

That has intensified the competition for pilots.
“Attrition of the regional pilots, particularly the captains, has really spiked to the point where we’re not able to put our fleet in the air,” Piedmont CEO Eric Morgan told CNBC.
The airline, based in Salisbury, Maryland, has been losing about 25 pilots a month to American’s mainline operation and has fallen short of its goal to hire around 40 pilots each month. It flies 50-seat Embraer ERJ-145s for American, usually between smaller cities, but hasn’t been able to operate 10 of its roughly 60 planes, Morgan said.

Piedmont approached the union with the pay increases that were outside of normal contract negotiations, said Morgan and Capt. Ryan Miller, chairman of the Piedmont chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association.
Envoy Air, based in Irving, Texas, said Saturday it reached a similar agreement with its pilots’ union to shell out a 50% premium to pilots’ hourly rates through the end of August 2024.
Envoy, which has about 2,000 pilots, had been losing roughly 80 pilots a year to other airlines and hiring about 60, including American, according to Capt. Ric Wilson, the carrier’s vice president of flight operations. He said the bulk of the attrition had been among Envoy captains.
Kit Darby, a pilot-pay consultant and a retired United captain, said raising regional pilots’ pay is a positive step but that the bar was low. He said airlines need to ask, “What is a living wage and what will it take to attract pilots to the career?”
The pay increases come as some of the largest pilot unions — those representing more than 35,000 aviators at Southwest, Delta, JetBlue and American — are in contract talks with their carriers.

American Airlines pilots picket outside the New York Stock Exchange on June 2, 2022.
Leslie Josephs | CNBC

American’s management recently offered its roughly 14,000 pilots a 4% raise at the date of signing and then a 3% increase in the next year. Allied Pilots Association spokesman Dennis Tajer called that “insulting.”
“Good on the pilots receiving these raises but when you have an airline that’s pushing across a more than 50% pay increase, it’s recognizing with dollars that they have a problem,” Tajer said. APA pilots picketed at the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month for an improved contract and better schedules.
American didn’t immediately comment on the union spokesman’s remarks.

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The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday concluded a long-awaited assessment of SpaceX’s Starship rocket program in Texas.
In a press release, the FAA noted SpaceX will be required to take more than 75 actions to mitigate environmental impacts before the company can receive a launch license.
SpaceX needs a license from the regulator to conduct further Starship flight tests and begin operational launches from its private facility.

A Starship prototype stands on the company’s launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas on March 16, 2022.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday said it will require Elon Musk’s SpaceX to make dozens of environmental adjustments in order to conduct further Starship flight tests and begin operational launches from its facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX will be required to take more than 75 actions to mitigate environmental impacts before the company can receive a launch license for the site, the FAA said in a press release. The mitigations include protections for water resources, limits to noise levels, and biohazard materials control.

Among the requirements, SpaceX will coordinate with a “qualified biologist” on lighting inspections to minimize the impact on sea turtles, operate an employee shuttle between the city of Brownsville and the facility, and perform quarterly cleanups of the local Boca Chica Beach.
The company will also contribute to local education and preservation efforts — including preparing a historical context report of the events of the Mexican War and the Civil War that took place in the area as well as replacing missing ornaments on a local historical marker. The company will also make annual contributions of $5,000 each to organizations that protect ocelots and endangered birds of prey, as well as a state recreational fishing program.
The FAA also issued new rules for closing the public highway that passes by SpaceX’s facility — such as requiring the road be open on 18 specified holidays and most weekends.
SpaceX has already made changes to its expansion of the Starbase facility, according to the FAA, with the company removing infrastructure plans for a desalination plant, natural gas pretreatment system, liquefier and a power plant.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment Monday, but in a tweet shared a link to the FAA’s website with a brief message: “One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship.”

The company is developing its nearly 400-foot-tall, reusable Starship rocket with the goal of carrying cargo and groups of people beyond Earth. The rocket and its Super Heavy booster are powered by SpaceX’s Raptor series of engines.
The FAA began a review of the program in November 2020 after the company began to build up its infrastructure and operations on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, near the city of Brownsville, Texas.
The agency delayed its final assessment five times over the past six months as it reviewed input on the program. Its ruling Monday of a Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact is still a partial win for SpaceX, saving the company from a more lengthy review of its operations, known as an Environmental Impact Statement.
The FAA released two key documents on Monday: A summary of the environmental assessment and a detailed rundown of the actions the company must take.
As part of the FAA’s review, a report earlier this year from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service obtained by CNBC found a correlation between SpaceX activity in the area and recent declines in the local population of the piping plover, an endangered bird species. However, the FWS suggested minimal spending or conservation commitments from SpaceX.
SpaceX has completed multiple high-altitude flight tests with Starship prototypes, but it has yet to reach space following development and regulatory delays. In February, CEO Musk gave a presentation on Starship at the Starbase facility in Texas, outlining the path forward and obstacles for the rocket’s testing.

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Empowered Investor

Even as cryptocurrency craters as it has the past few weeks, it remains an asset class that is accessible to anyone, says Cleve Mesidor, a blockchain educator.
She says that is why it’s drawing in Black and Latino communities.
“The working class and middle class are already adopting this,” Mesidor said.

Cleve Mesidor.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Even as cryptocurrency craters as it has the past few weeks, it remains an asset class that is accessible to anyone, says a blockchain educator. And Cleve Mesidor says that’s why it’s drawing in Black and Latino communities.
Bitcoin’s selloff, sparked by a reversal of the buying mania that drove it higher, has now become the third-deepest in the cryptocurrency’s 13-year history. On Monday, bitcoin fell to as low as $22,611, according to CoinDesk. That is down more than 20% from Friday, and down 67% from its November high of $68,991.

Despite the slide, Mesidor remains bullish.
She was working in the Obama administration in 2013 when she first heard about bitcoin.
From the beginning, the concept excited her. Within a few years, she’d leave politics and enter the cryptocurrency space with a mission to make the new financial world a better one for people of color and women than the traditional market of stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
Most recently, Mesidor has published a book, The Clevolution: My Quest for Justice in Politics & Crypto, a memoir about her journey from growing up in Haiti to falling down the blockchain rabbit hole.
She’s the founder of the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain and just became the executive director of The Blockchain Foundation, which seeks to educate different industries on the emerging technology.

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CNBC recently interviewed Mesidor about what people get wrong about cryptocurrency, its future and how to prevent the new space from looking like the old world of finance. Shortly after that conversation, bitcoin had a massive drop Monday, hitting $23,000 — its lowest level since December 2020.
The exchange has been edited and condensed for clarity.

‘Policy was not keeping up with adoption’

Annie Nova: You had a career in politics before moving over to cryptocurrency. How does that prior experience inform the work you’re doing now?
Cleve Mesidor: When I left Washington, I moved back to New York, and got immersed in the New York City crypto ecosystem. When bitcoin hit $20,000, everybody lost their minds, and the IRS was like, ‘Are these people paying their taxes?’ The regulatory conversation really heated up, and so I started leaning back on my Washington background. I found there was a void: Policy was not keeping up with adoption. Since 2018, I started publishing a weekly newsletter that goes to my public policy network.

Crypto is the first asset class ‘accessible to anyone’

AN: What do people get most wrong about cryptocurrency?
CM: We know that about 25% of the U.S. owns cryptocurrencies of some kind, and Black and Latino communities are actually leading the adoption. It’s not white males. The working class and middle class are already in.
AN: Why are Black and Latino communities leading crypto adoption?
CM: Your attraction to cryptocurrency depends on your relationship with money. If money in the traditional system has always worked for you, you’ll be like, ‘Why fix it?’ ‘Why actually take the risk of a new pathway?’ But if traditional finance never worked for you, then the alternatives look attractive. In America, Black and Latino communities, regardless of whether you’re unbanked or a professional like myself, you’re treated the same. Banks don’t care about you, wealth managers don’t care about you and Wall Street doesn’t care about you.
AN: But what’s different about cryptocurrency? I can see the same problems in traditional finance reemerging here.
CM: What’s different about cryptocurrency is decentralization. With every other traditional asset class, there are barriers to entry. This is the first asset class that is accessible to anyone. That is not the case for stocks or bonds or mutual funds. Also, Black and Latino communities do not see crypto as a risky investment; the riskiest place for us has been traditional finance. A few months ago, Ryan Coogler, the director of “Black Panther,” went into a bank to withdraw $10,000, and they called the police on him.

Numbers of women in crypto are ‘still abysmal’

AN: There’s still a huge gender imbalance in the cryptocurrency space, with much fewer women than men involved. What do you think the main reason for this is?
CM: Women are a fast-growing demographic in crypto, but the numbers are still abysmal. That’s largely because women are often the heads of households and responsible for the livelihoods of their children and their parents, which impacts their tolerance for risk.
AN: How do you get more women in?
CM: We need to empower women and give them more information about crypto. By talking to people about things like ‘fractionalization,’ meaning you don’t have to buy a whole bitcoin, we will get more women. And the value proposition can’t just be about becoming an investor. We must also emphasize opportunities for entrepreneurship, innovative career paths with remote work options, the ability to make a social impact and also highlight resources and education about how to reduce risk.
AN: What do you see as the future of cryptocurrency?
CM: If we cut through the noise of cryptocurrency and blockchain, and a lot of it is noise, it’s really about efficiency, optimizing processes and giving people more control — access to their own data. Blockchain and cryptocurrency will be powering our world, and we won’t even notice it. More

Shares of General Motors on Monday closed below the post-bankrupt automaker’s $33 initial public offering price for the first time since October 2020.
GM’s stock closed Monday at $32.28 a share, down by 7.8%. Shares of GM have declined about 45% this year.

Mary Barra, Chair and CEO of the General Motors Company (GM), speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on May 2, 2022.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

DETROIT – Shares of General Motors on Monday closed below the post-bankrupt automaker’s $33 initial public offering price for the first time since October 2020.
Amid a broad market sell-off that also pushed Ford Motor and Chrysler-parent Stellantis to new 52-week lows, GM’s stock closed at $32.28 a share, down by 7.8%. Shares of GM have declined about 45% this year, as fears of a recession grow and investors question whether the automaker’s most profitable days are behind it.

GM and other automakers have reported record profits during the coronavirus pandemic as resilient consumer demand outweighed new vehicle inventories due supply chain problems, including a shortage of semiconductor chips.
The situation caused new car prices to skyrocket with minimal incentives from the companies, leading to record profits despite lower sales.
GM’s stock closing below the $33 a share IPO price from November 2010 occurred hours after the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
In response to a shareholder question about reinstating GM’s dividend, CEO Mary Barra said the company’s “clear priority” is to “accelerate our EV plans.” GM is in the midst of investing $35 billion in EVs and autonomous vehicles by 2025, with plans to exclusively offer EVs by 2035.

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Shares of rocket-builder Astra fell sharply in trading on Monday after a weekend launch carrying NASA satellites failed to reach orbit.
Astra’s rocket LV0010 took off on Sunday from launch complex 46 at Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying two satellites on NASA’s TROPICS-1 mission.
The TROPICS-1 mission represents the company’s second mission failure in three launches this year.

The company’s LV0010 rocket stands on the launchpad at Florida’s Cape Canaveral ahead of the NASA TROPICS-1 mission.

Shares of rocket-builder Astra fell sharply in trading on Monday after a weekend launch carrying NASA satellites failed to reach orbit.
Astra’s rocket LV0010 took off on Sunday from launch complex 46 at Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying two satellites on NASA’s TROPICS-1 mission. The first part of the mission went as planned, but the engine on the upper portion of the rocket shut down early and the company was unable to deploy the satellites.

“We are reviewing flight data to determine the root cause of this anomaly and will provide additional information when it is available,” Astra wrote in a securities filing.
Astra stock fell 23.8% to close at $1.54 a share. The TROPICS-1 mission represents the company’s second mission failure in three launches this year.
In a tweet, Astra CEO Chris Kemp noted that NASA needs to have four of the planned six TROPICS satellites in orbit to be successful, so “the next two launches need to work.” TROPICS-1 was the first of three missions that NASA awarded to Astra.
“Our team understands what is at stake,” Kemp said.
The company’s vehicle stands 43 feet tall and is considered a small rocket in the launch market. Astra’s goal is to launch as many of its small rockets as it can — aiming to hit a rate of one rocket per day by 2025 — and further drop its $2.5 million price tag.
Astra went public last year after completing a SPAC merger, raising funds to build out production of its small rockets, expand its facilities in Alameda, California, and grow its spacecraft and spaceport business lines.

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