Trump's Cabinet Picks Signal Industry Deregulation

United States President Donald Trump's cabinet appointees are widely expected to take a hands-off approach to industry regulation, including the radio frequency (RF), microwave, and wireless sectors. The appointees’ backgrounds and experience suggest that they will apply the Republican strategy of deregulation, which favors industry and limits the role of government.

For instance, Department of Commerce appointee Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor and Wall Street banker credited with reviving U.S. manufacturing businesses, could reverse the Obama administration's policy of offering spectrum as an incentive to invest in areas that wouldn’t quickly reward internet infrastructure investment, according to The Guardian.

Far-flung, rural communities without communications infrastructure were seen to benefit from this arrangement, but telecoms firms were reluctant to pour money into these projects because it could take years before they could recoup their investments. The Trump government could relax restrictions to grant what these companies have been lobbying for: greater control over the crowded broadband electromagnetic spectrum to meet rising demand for more profitable, higher-speed, higher-quality networks.   

As Commerce Secretary, Ross will be tackling a gamut of other pressing issues, such as international trade agreements, jobs outsourcing, and climate change, and could let the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deal with the spectrum crisis. The end result is likely to be the same same, though, as FCC is expected to lean toward deregulation with the recent appointment of Ajit Pai as chairman of the agency.

Pai has served as an FCC commissioner for nearly five years, and boasts a deep legal background in communications law. As commissioner, Pai notably wrote many dissents against FCC policies that regulated industry, as he considered FCC's actions in some cases to overstep its legal mandate under the leadership of former Chairman Thomas Wheeler.

"Chairman Pai has publicly criticized the legal positions the Commission has taken in court, often leading to doubt about the outcome. Whether the Commission loses in court, as it did in the VOIP symmetry order, or whether it prevails in court with the grace of lenient judges, Chairman Pai has consistently objected to aggressive legal interpretations by the Commission," writes Forbes contributor Harold Furchtgott-Roth. "It is easy to describe broad themes of a Chairman Pai: follow the law, less regulation, and a folksy approach to government."

Pai envisions a more industry-friendly FCC, where "he would steer the agency in a direction more favorable to big phone and cable companies," according to Phys.org.

Pai also opposed net neutrality regulations passed in 2015, as well as the agency’s more recent broadband privacy protections and the delayed cable box reforms, reports Wired. With Republicans now having a two-to-one majority in the FCC, and with him at the helm, Pai will likely roll back most reforms initiated by FCC in recent years, while pushing forward with the rollout of faster mobile broadband and next-generation wireless technologies.

“We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation,” Pai said at an event sponsored by the free market think tank Free State Foundation in Washington, DC, last month, according to Wired.