Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Or Pleased to be join honor set here in Milwaukee
Speaker 2: by Republican Senator from Tennessee, Bill Haggerty, a member of
Speaker 2: the Senate Banking Committee. Senator, welcome back to Bloomberg. It's
Speaker 2: always great to have you with you. I would like
Speaker 2: first to begin with the fact that one of your
Speaker 2: colleagues on the committee is now the vice presidential nominee
Speaker 2: in JD. Vance, the junior Senator from Ohio. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of conversation happening within the business community today now
Speaker 2: that he is the pick, a question as to whether
Speaker 2: or not a JD. Vance selection is actually an anti
Speaker 2: big business selection, given some of the stances he is
Speaker 2: taking on competition. For example, he has praised Lena Khan
Speaker 2: at the FTC. He has actually advocated for some regulation
Speaker 2: around big banks when it comes to executive compensation Clawbax.
Speaker 2: How should business be looking at, Senator Vance.
Speaker 3: I think the business community needs to look at the
Speaker 3: overall ticket and look at the potential of what's going
Speaker 3: to happen in November. The momentum in the grounds well,
Speaker 3: and I think JDB brings a tremendous amount to this
Speaker 3: he's going to help President Trump win in November, and
Speaker 3: the policies that President Trump will implement. If the business
Speaker 3: community just looks back to President Trump's prior administration, you
Speaker 3: think about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the impact
Speaker 3: on this sclerotic regulatory framework that's in place, this will
Speaker 3: give us a chance to go back in and make
Speaker 3: the United States a far more friendly business environment in general.
Speaker 3: With respect to Senator Vance's particular points of view and perspectives,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to comment on his behalf on those,
Speaker 3: and he'll consolidate all of that, I'm certain with the
Speaker 3: President's platform going forward. But I do think that broadly speaking,
Speaker 3: JD is going to help the president in terms of
Speaker 3: cementing support here in America.
Speaker 1: He's going to bring.
Speaker 3: People together that I think it's just an incredibly brilliant pick.
Speaker 3: You think about President Trump, who has actually been such
Speaker 3: a great defender of the forgotten men and women here
Speaker 3: in America, and JD's lived the life that they've experienced,
Speaker 3: and together, I think they're going to cut across demographic groups.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be a massively impactful pick
Speaker 3: that will help see a change in November that the
Speaker 3: business community should welcome to.
Speaker 1: Kayley's point, though JD.
Speaker 4: Advance's economic priorities include tariffs, a higher minimum wage, an
Speaker 4: anti trust, which doesn't sound like the economic policies of
Speaker 4: the Grand Old Party. Is this the new Republican economic platform?
Speaker 3: Well, the Republican Party certainly is moving in a way
Speaker 3: that is embracing the challenges that Americans feel today.
Speaker 4: If he's an embracing economic populism, well, I.
Speaker 3: Think that's one way to phrase it. But if you
Speaker 3: think about what Americans are experiencing, we've seen inflation that's
Speaker 3: really been through the roof, gasoline prices, food prices up
Speaker 3: forty percent, over twenty percent, real wages down four percent.
Speaker 3: And President Trump was in office before every demographic sector
Speaker 3: was moving up. They were improving blue collar better than
Speaker 3: why collar. So there's a real appetite and hunger to
Speaker 3: see that sort of success again. And I think that's
Speaker 3: exactly what you're going to see in terms of the
Speaker 3: policies that will emerge.
Speaker 1: From the eventual Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Do you think that policy, especially when it comes to
Speaker 2: things like trade and tariffs that JD. Vans also has
Speaker 2: advocated for in addition to Donald Trump, essentially cement that
Speaker 2: if they were to win in November, tariffs will be higher.
Speaker 3: I think tariffs are certainly going to be on the
Speaker 3: agenda because what we have is a situation right now
Speaker 3: on a global basis where we do not have reciprocal trade.
Speaker 3: The term free trade has been misused so many times,
Speaker 3: and what we have here in America is one of
Speaker 3: the most open markets in the world if you look
Speaker 3: at our tariff traid certainly compared to other nations that
Speaker 3: are our trading partners. We have countries like China that
Speaker 3: don't play by the rules at all, and one of
Speaker 3: the most potent tools to deal with this is tariff's
Speaker 3: and I fully expect that I saw it in the
Speaker 3: previous Trump administration. I work very closely with Bob Leithheuser
Speaker 3: and his team because the same team that put the
Speaker 3: Phase one tariffs in place on China worked closely with
Speaker 3: me on the free trade agreement that we negotiated and
Speaker 3: got executed with Japan. There are real issues there that
Speaker 3: need to be addressed, so I look forward to seeing
Speaker 3: it address myself.
Speaker 4: I have to note that the national debt is not
Speaker 4: mentioned in the New Party platform when we talk about tariffs.
Speaker 4: The potential inflationary impacts making the twenty seventeen Trump tax
Speaker 4: cuts permanent. You've seen all the economic reports, and we've
Speaker 4: even talked about them, yes, right here on Bloomberg with you, Senator,
Speaker 4: that this would add an enormous amounts to the federal debt.
Speaker 4: How do you square this? As someone we consider to
Speaker 4: be a traditional Republican.
Speaker 3: I have a very optimistic view about this, and I
Speaker 3: think that a lot of the CBO scoring doesn't take
Speaker 3: into account the fact that the policies, whether they be
Speaker 3: tax policies or regulatory policies that encourage capital investment, actually
Speaker 3: have the effect of growing the economy and in a
Speaker 3: dynamic way, have the effect of increasing the tax space.
Speaker 3: We saw this happen after the twenty seventeen tax cuts
Speaker 3: and jobsc was put in place. So I see real
Speaker 3: potential to grow the economy. And I also say this
Speaker 3: in President Trump and I have talked about this on
Speaker 3: numerous occasions.
Speaker 1: There are great opportunities to cut spending.
Speaker 3: What we have in Washington is a huge spending problem,
Speaker 3: and coming in and taking the very focused and deliberate
Speaker 3: view toward some of the waste and mismanagement that I
Speaker 3: see across the board. It's going to be a combination
Speaker 3: of factors that will be required to begin to get
Speaker 3: our debt moving in the right direction. But as that
Speaker 3: begins to happen, I think that we'll see even further
Speaker 3: economic growth as confidence comes into the system.
Speaker 2: I understand the argument that you and many of your
Speaker 2: colleagues make when it comes to the fact that you
Speaker 2: could see greater return from the growth that is spurred
Speaker 2: by tax cuts. Does that mean, though, that no pay
Speaker 2: force are necessary. If we could just get specific about
Speaker 2: what it is that you would cut in order to
Speaker 2: offset or where this will be paid for, other than
Speaker 2: just this general idea of growth.
Speaker 1: Oh, there are plenty of places I think we get cut.
Speaker 3: Look at some of the programs that were put in
Speaker 3: place for these multi trillion dollar, totally partisan bills that
Speaker 3: would pass back in twenty twenty one by the Democrats.
Speaker 3: You think about eighty billion dollars going to the irs
Speaker 3: to come and snoop on Americans. There are places we've
Speaker 3: already started to cut back on that. There are places
Speaker 3: like that that we can cut immediately, and I think
Speaker 3: we'll continue to dig in and find opportunities. President Trump
Speaker 3: will challenge each of his cabinet secretaries and agency heads
Speaker 3: to find those opportunities. I've lived this at a state level.
Speaker 3: I was Commerce secretary of my home state. We cut
Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of funding out, saved money, found waste
Speaker 3: and sclerosis, and took it out.
Speaker 4: The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget had a palpitation
Speaker 4: when they saw this plan and ran the numbers themselves.
Speaker 4: And the message from Mia McGuinness, who I know, you
Speaker 4: know there, was you can't get to this with a
Speaker 4: billion here, a billion there. This will require entitlement reform.
Speaker 4: You have to get to Medicare and Social Security.
Speaker 1: JD.
Speaker 4: Vance doesn't want to touch security and Donald Trump has
Speaker 4: said that he will not either.
Speaker 1: Do you.
Speaker 3: Well, here's what I think people miss. We're talking about
Speaker 3: mandatory versus discretionary spending, and most of my colleagues and
Speaker 3: I spend all of our time on discretionary spending. But
Speaker 3: there is a huge chunk of mandatory spending that has
Speaker 3: nothing to do with Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and
Speaker 3: even more was added to it through the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one Partisan Reconciliation bills. We need to go and take
Speaker 3: an extremely hard look at these mandatory spending obligations that
Speaker 3: we have that have nothing to do with people's retirement,
Speaker 3: their social security.
Speaker 1: They're Medicare and Medicaid, and begin to address that.
Speaker 3: We can make significant headway again on both the mandatory
Speaker 3: side as well as the discretionary side, and still abide
Speaker 3: by the pledge not to touch Medicare, Medicaid.
Speaker 1: Or social Security.
Speaker 2: I'd also like to ask you about cryptocurrencies, given your
Speaker 2: role on the Banking Committee, but also knowing that Senator
Speaker 2: jd Vance is from Ohio, a state in which the
Speaker 2: chairman of the Banking Committee, Shared Brown is in a
Speaker 2: tough re election fight against a pro crypto candidate, Bernie Marino,
Speaker 2: And I wonder if jd Vance entering the race puts
Speaker 2: crypto more into the actual four of this election cycle.
Speaker 2: How do you expect it to play in, not just
Speaker 2: in the race that could define the next chair ranking
Speaker 2: member of the Banking Committee, but more broadly, well, I certainly.
Speaker 1: Hope it puts it into play.
Speaker 3: I think crypto, actually, cryptotechnology is a defining point in
Speaker 3: this election. If you like centralized control over your financial transactions,
Speaker 3: that's exactly where Shared Brown and the Democrats, this White
Speaker 3: House administration have been. They have been incredibly hostile toward
Speaker 3: crypto technology. If you like a decentralized option that allows
Speaker 3: for more freedom and liberty and also supports some of
Speaker 3: the greatest technology innovations that I've seen since the development
Speaker 3: of the Internet. I think you're going to be supporting
Speaker 3: President Trump and JD Vance. JD has a great deal
Speaker 3: of experience in Silicon Valley. I think he possesses the
Speaker 3: great capacity to see this potential here. President Trump and
Speaker 3: I have spent a significant amount of time talking about
Speaker 3: the crypto technology industry and the potential that it holds
Speaker 3: for America. I can tell you both, gentlemen, want to
Speaker 3: see this industry here in America as it evolves. We
Speaker 3: want to see this innovation happening here because I think
Speaker 3: it has great potential, great potential. We don't want to
Speaker 3: see it go offshore. And what we need is a
Speaker 3: regulatory constructor that will allow that, not push it away.
Speaker 3: And right now, what you have is a choice that
Speaker 3: would crush the industry. That's what comes from the SEC
Speaker 3: right now, That's what comes from Frankly Democrat members of
Speaker 3: my own Senate Banking Committee.
Speaker 1: In this administration.
Speaker 3: We need to move toward the policies that I'm certain
Speaker 3: we're going to adopt in the Republican administration that will
Speaker 3: be very favorable toward this industry.
Speaker 4: Senator, we have to ask you, of course, about Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's well being after what happened last weekend. We were
Speaker 4: reporting that he was making a lot of phone calls
Speaker 4: the day after on Sunday, and you indicated earlier that
Speaker 4: you were on the other end of the line on
Speaker 4: those calls.
Speaker 1: What did you talk about.
Speaker 3: I talked to them Sunday evening for I don't know
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five minutes, and he was immediately talked about
Speaker 3: how divine intervention played a role in this, and if
Speaker 3: you think about how close he came to being assassinated,
Speaker 3: it's just I fully appreciate the hand of God that
Speaker 3: watched for him. But he immediately talked about the father
Speaker 3: of two, the firefighter that lost his life, that leaving
Speaker 3: a family without a dad, those that were injured on
Speaker 3: stage there that day.
Speaker 1: He has very real concern for that.
Speaker 3: I was with Kid Rock that night and we got
Speaker 3: on stage together and really fired up the crowd to
Speaker 3: go to the go fundme site to support those people
Speaker 3: their families and in a terrible time for them. President
Speaker 3: Trump was not surprising to me at all. He's always
Speaker 3: been that way in terms of his care and concern
Speaker 3: for others. That was the top of the conversation, and
Speaker 3: then we talked about how things are going to move forward.
Speaker 3: And I really think that the public is shocked by
Speaker 3: what happened. I think it shocked us all to our core.
Speaker 3: And we need resilience, we need strength. And when he
Speaker 3: came up with his fist raised in the air, I
Speaker 3: think that's a picture that's going to be one of
Speaker 3: the most iconic in the world. America needs a strong
Speaker 3: leader right now. The world needs a strong leader right now.
Speaker 3: I speak with world leaders very often. Given my role
Speaker 3: in the Foreign Relations Committee and the fact that I
Speaker 3: served in the previous administration as a diplomat. There is
Speaker 3: a great need for a strong America right now, and
Speaker 3: I think President Trump is moving right into that lane,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Senator Bill Haggerty, the Republican from Tennessee and a member
Speaker 2: of the Senate Banking Committee, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us, of course, also former ambassador to Japan under
Speaker 2: the first Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir, Thanks sir,