Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, the former president, defending his economic proposals, including
Speaker 2: more direct control of the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 3: I think it's the greatest job in government.
Speaker 1: You show up to the office once a month and
Speaker 1: you say, let's see Flip.
Speaker 3: A coo, and everybody talks about you like your god, Oh,
Speaker 3: what will he do?
Speaker 2: I think that if you're a very good president with
Speaker 2: good sense, you should be able to at least talk
Speaker 2: to him.
Speaker 3: I don't say make the decision.
Speaker 2: At all, Trump sidestepping whether he would replace Fetchair J.
Speaker 2: Powell before his term expires in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: We get lucky this morning.
Speaker 2: Joining us now is the Canifis Chard CEO Howard Lutnik,
Speaker 2: also serving as co chair of Trump's transition team. How
Speaker 2: it's going to see us, so welcome to see. This
Speaker 2: is a big job. And I don't think people outside
Speaker 2: the United States realize how big this job actually is.
Speaker 2: So let's start there, walk us through how big this
Speaker 2: position is for you and how busy you might be
Speaker 2: in the next few months.
Speaker 1: All right, So the President of the United States gets
Speaker 1: to put four thousand, nine hundred and fifty political appointees
Speaker 1: into the government, So thirty seven hundred can take the
Speaker 1: field on January twentieth, and twelve hundred go through the
Speaker 1: Senate confirmation process, which takes a long time.
Speaker 2: So you've got to start thinking about people like yesterday,
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that. The last time the president
Speaker 2: was in the White House, he attracted a lot of talent,
Speaker 2: and we can think of several names. Ambassador Lightheiser came
Speaker 2: up in a conversation with Blimberg yesterday. That's one, Gary
Speaker 2: Cones another. Some of the nominations to the Federal Reserve, too,
Speaker 2: including Governor Waller to go to the board, came with
Speaker 2: a lot of churn though at the time, in the
Speaker 2: first term, how do we get one attract the talent
Speaker 2: but avoid all the churn at the same time. How's
Speaker 2: the approach going to differ this time around?
Speaker 1: Well, remember last time he was a freshman. You know,
Speaker 1: it comes in the first time, it's not really sure
Speaker 1: exactly how it goes, and so he acts a certain way.
Speaker 3: Now, complete experience, complete.
Speaker 1: Knowledge, knows exactly what he wants, what he wants and
Speaker 1: how he wants to do it. So what will happen
Speaker 1: is you're going to see the greatest set of talent ever.
Speaker 3: Walk on the field on January twentieth. You've never seen
Speaker 3: anything like it. I talked to. So what I've done
Speaker 3: is I've talked to probably the.
Speaker 1: Top one hundred and fifty business people across the United
Speaker 1: States America and probably the top fifty political people. And
Speaker 1: they've analyzed everybody. And what they do is they do
Speaker 1: I call it genealogy. You go to these people, so
Speaker 1: that's two hundred people. They then recommend and vouch for everybody.
Speaker 1: You have to vouch for them and say I know them,
Speaker 1: I've worked with them, and.
Speaker 3: Then they vouch for it. And it goes down like that.
Speaker 1: And so we have five thousand people already that we
Speaker 1: know who have been vouched for by the greatest people.
Speaker 1: They got Ross Perrot and Energy and Chuck Schwab doing
Speaker 1: finance and everybody.
Speaker 3: Everybody.
Speaker 1: They are helping, they're building, and they're creating. For Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: the greatest group of people who will ever walk on
Speaker 1: the field for an administration. Got one term. I mean
Speaker 1: I spent Sunday two hours with Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: I mean that's pretty cool. I mean I put out
Speaker 3: a tweet talking about what we did right. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a social media star of course, right,
Speaker 3: you guys, no, forty three million views.
Speaker 1: Talking about how we're going to pay for everything that.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump talks about.
Speaker 1: Right, He's going to take a trillion dollars out of
Speaker 1: the budget deficit a year because we waste We have
Speaker 1: a six and a half trillion dollar budget deficit. We
Speaker 1: have six and a half trillion dollar budget, two trillion
Speaker 1: dollar budget deficit.
Speaker 3: Howard, Can we get back to the experts though? Do
Speaker 3: they have to agree with everything the former president says?
Speaker 1: I think it's like if you think of it like
Speaker 1: a CEO of the company. He's the CEO of the
Speaker 1: United States of America. Let's call it the United States Incorporated. Okay,
Speaker 1: he's the CEO. You can argue all you want and
Speaker 1: discuss it. But when the boss says this is what
Speaker 1: we're going to do, do you have a problem to
Speaker 1: what the boss says they're going to do. You always
Speaker 1: have two choices. You can quit or you can execute
Speaker 1: the plan. This concept of doing what you want to do.
Speaker 1: Because I don't think he's right, throw him banana pels.
Speaker 1: You get fired in America. You get fired at every company,
Speaker 1: and the fact that all these people who fired in
Speaker 1: the first term say, oh, I don't like him anymore.
Speaker 3: This is the famous disgruntled employee. Duh.
Speaker 1: Let's call all the disgruntled employees and what are you
Speaker 1: going to get from them?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't like that guy.
Speaker 5: Anymore because she said the Financial Times, We're going to
Speaker 5: give people the role based on their capacity.
Speaker 3: What you're saying here, and their fidelity and.
Speaker 5: Loyalty to the policy as well to the man.
Speaker 3: Is that how you run your company.
Speaker 4: People have to be loyal to you.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Imagine working at Cana Fitzgerald and saying, I'm.
Speaker 3: Disloyal to Howard love all of you.
Speaker 1: Let's get how about all of you look at the
Speaker 1: screen and say to heck with Mike Blumberg.
Speaker 3: Let's see how that goes. You'll be like Tata can
Speaker 3: they disagree with you?
Speaker 1: You must disagree. But that's called challenge and conversation. That's
Speaker 1: what the Oval Office is all about. You bring in
Speaker 1: five people, I mean Donald Trump loves conversation. He loves
Speaker 1: to get all sides of the idea. But then you
Speaker 1: make your choice and you go where the elected president
Speaker 1: of the United States of America goes. You go where
Speaker 1: Mike Bloomberg goes. If you're working Cannabitzgerald, you go, or
Speaker 1: Howard wants you to go. And anybody who says otherwise,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what they're talking about. This is
Speaker 1: like make believe politics. Right, you follow the man, and
Speaker 1: you follow after the conversation, but you have to have
Speaker 1: fidelity to him.
Speaker 2: None of this to your opportunity to talk about it.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about it just a little bit more.
Speaker 2: You told about how many people you've had discussions with
Speaker 2: to fill some of these spaces, how much of them
Speaker 2: will come from private industry.
Speaker 4: It's not going to be a big emphasis for you,
Speaker 4: and the same it is.
Speaker 3: And so my idea is that we talked about with
Speaker 3: the president.
Speaker 1: Obviously, everything I do, I'm just sort of the mission
Speaker 1: for the man, right is, let's go get the people
Speaker 1: who understand business, understand the math of six point five
Speaker 1: trillion dollars, couple them with have them partners with people
Speaker 1: who deeply understand government.
Speaker 3: Then get really really.
Speaker 1: Good deep insiders of government, and together create.
Speaker 3: A team right to go take the field together.
Speaker 1: So imagine you spend six point five trillion dollars and
Speaker 1: we have a trillion of waste. So elon Musk and
Speaker 1: I we discussed a trillion of waste and billions, tens
Speaker 1: of billions, and then hundreds of billions of money we
Speaker 1: could make. You heard Donald Trump talk about tariffs. Five
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars of revenue will.
Speaker 3: Come from tarif's.
Speaker 5: I want to just dig into what you just said.
Speaker 5: A trillion dollars of waste? What will be cut?
Speaker 3: What will be cut?
Speaker 1: You have monopoly providers for fifty years. We buy the
Speaker 1: same product from the same company for fifty years in
Speaker 1: a row.
Speaker 3: Just imagine NASA for a second, shall we right? Eight
Speaker 3: billion dollar human budget? Right? Just like paying people? You know?
Speaker 4: Do you know that space spa second?
Speaker 3: Space ten twelve billion dollars?
Speaker 4: Eight business follow up? I would We can keep doing this.
Speaker 4: I'll just keep going.
Speaker 3: So that's fun.
Speaker 2: The elviest follow up that I would have is the
Speaker 2: same one that i'd have for anyone who came from
Speaker 2: the Harris campaign at AUST than the following you had
Speaker 2: four years. Why didn't you do it then? Why is
Speaker 2: there that much more to cut?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Why didn't this happen in the first four years?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't think he understood the scale and scope of
Speaker 1: the rot he started calling it the swamp, Like we
Speaker 1: all call it the swamp, right now, Why why do we.
Speaker 3: Call it the swamp? Because he called it the swamp.
Speaker 3: The problem is it's not really that.
Speaker 1: It's just these employees of the government are part of
Speaker 1: the business of spending.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like, if I spend an I assistly, I mean
Speaker 1: the most you can make it. The government's one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty three thousand dollars, all right, So I'm making
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty three thousand dollars, and I participated.
Speaker 3: In giving this project of.
Speaker 1: Twenty billion ten billion to these three companies, right, and
Speaker 1: it worked here for five years.
Speaker 3: Where am I getting my job?
Speaker 5: Next?
Speaker 1: I go to one of those three companies and then
Speaker 1: I make a lot of money. So they all become lobbyists.
Speaker 1: The General's become lobbyists. All these Defense Department spends a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars and they don't.
Speaker 3: Make this stuff, they buy it.
Speaker 5: Some other people said that it's important to have a
Speaker 5: lot of people who are in business come into the administration.
Speaker 5: A lot of people in business think that the plans
Speaker 5: is laid out are going to increase the deficit.
Speaker 3: Dramatically.
Speaker 5: They don't see how this actually decreases expenses, especially with
Speaker 5: tariffsic could potentially slow international trade. But also with the
Speaker 5: prospect of a lot of tax cuts, what are they
Speaker 5: all getting wrong?
Speaker 1: So the tax cuts are already in the current world, right,
Speaker 1: He's just going to make permanent to twenty seventeen tax
Speaker 1: cuts and then so that's number one.
Speaker 3: Number two, he's going to encourage people to build here
Speaker 3: and pay taxes. Let's go over what Apple.
Speaker 1: Does right now, here's a simple example. They make the
Speaker 1: parts in China. Yeah, they put the parts together in Taiwan.
Speaker 1: Then they wave their magic wand and it floats over Ireland.
Speaker 3: Of course, it floats over.
Speaker 1: Ireland because that's where Apple does it's products. And then
Speaker 1: it comes to America and they make i don't know,
Speaker 1: something like three percent profit in America that they corporate
Speaker 1: tax on three percent profit in America, and Ireland announces
Speaker 1: a massive budget surplus for their five million people.
Speaker 3: Ha ha.
Speaker 1: It's just not true. So the concept is have them
Speaker 1: pay their taxes in America, and that is how you
Speaker 1: fix America.
Speaker 3: You make it fair, you make it right, and you build.
Speaker 4: This is no exceptions for Apple, No comps out for Apple.
Speaker 3: This shouldn't be carbacks for Apple.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Elon Musk and I said, if we
Speaker 1: do this correctly, Tesla's gonna have to pay more tax.
Speaker 3: You know what. He said.
Speaker 1: If everybody's the same, that sounds great. He goes, I
Speaker 1: can't do it differently at Tesla if other companies are
Speaker 1: doing it. But if we're all this and we're all
Speaker 1: paying the fair tax that I am all for it,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody's all for it as long as
Speaker 1: it's you got to get rid of the arbitrage. Why
Speaker 1: is Ireland announcing a surplus?
Speaker 3: Oh give me a break, it's all our business.
Speaker 5: Percent is the corporate tax rate if you build president,
Speaker 5: if you build here, if you build it.
Speaker 4: Here, one hundred any inputs from other countries, what is
Speaker 4: the nu.
Speaker 1: Once I spoke to a manufacturer, he says, he does
Speaker 1: fifty percent here, twenty.
Speaker 3: Five percent in China. How how do we do it?
Speaker 3: If you tariff me in China?
Speaker 1: The Chinese backed companies that will cover the tariff, So
Speaker 1: we'll get the money, but he'll be at a disadvantage.
Speaker 1: And we came up with this idea. If you build
Speaker 1: it here within two years. You can have a tax
Speaker 1: credit for any tariff you pay. As long as you
Speaker 1: move your plant within two years to America, you can
Speaker 1: have your money back.
Speaker 3: But build it here.
Speaker 1: See, American workers just haven't gotten a fair shake.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: American workers' life expectancy is seven years less if you
Speaker 1: don't have a college degree than if you have a
Speaker 1: college degree.
Speaker 3: How is that possible?
Speaker 1: Because if you've got their factories and you take their
Speaker 1: jobs away, right, you know what it is.
Speaker 3: It's despair. It's despair. It's not the air, it's not
Speaker 3: the food. It's despair.
Speaker 1: Finally, Donald Trump is saying I'm going to take care
Speaker 1: of the American worker. And anybody comes up with this
Speaker 1: nonsense of that it doesn't work is just not actually
Speaker 1: studying it.
Speaker 5: One thing that a lot of business leaders who I
Speaker 5: speak to are concerned about is they need stability. They
Speaker 5: need to have a sense of what the policy is.
Speaker 5: They need to have a sense of what the legal
Speaker 5: system is going to be for them to operate their business.
Speaker 5: One of their biggest fears right now with Donald Trump
Speaker 5: is that they're not going to have that certainty with
Speaker 5: things being used as potential carrots or sticks to try
Speaker 5: to induce certain policies and a lack of understanding of
Speaker 5: what the structure is.
Speaker 3: How do you counter that?
Speaker 1: I counter it with basically straightforward, let's protect the American workers.
Speaker 3: Okay, build in America. Let's make it fair.
Speaker 1: So the arbitrage where Apple doesn't run all their profits
Speaker 1: through Ireland, pay America their money. I think America could
Speaker 1: increase its revenues two hundred and fifty billion dollars a
Speaker 1: year by paying attention to the nonsense that corporate world
Speaker 1: does on global production. It's nonsense that Ireland makes money.
Speaker 1: It's nonsense that you build cars in Mexico. It's nonsense.
Speaker 1: How nonsense ends. You will be shocked by how great
Speaker 1: America is. You take a trillion of waste out.
Speaker 3: And then you focus on the country fairly.
Speaker 1: You're going to have the possibility of balancing the budget
Speaker 1: of the United States of America at the end of
Speaker 1: his term.
Speaker 3: No nonsense.
Speaker 1: I'm not making up all Bologne elon Musk And if
Speaker 1: you don't, if you don't respect the two of us,
Speaker 1: good luck to you. Okay, it can happen because he's
Speaker 1: focused on not wasting the vast waste.
Speaker 3: That is our budget and the way we run.
Speaker 2: That would be a big hole to fill in, quite
Speaker 2: an accomplishment given the tax cuts they're on the table
Speaker 2: in this campaign. So we could talk about this all morning,
Speaker 2: we're out of time. It's good to see you. A
Speaker 2: spirited conversation as always with Howard Lutnik of Canna Fitzgerald