Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Today, the United States military continues to carry out large
Speaker 2: scale combat operations in Iran to eliminate the grave threats
Speaker 2: posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime. We have
Speaker 2: the strongest and most powerful by far military in the world,
Speaker 2: and we will easily prevail. It was my opinion that
Speaker 2: they were going to attack first. They were going to
Speaker 2: attack if we didn't do it. I said on Kippers,
Speaker 2: this is where they cry uncle, or where they can't
Speaker 2: fight any longer, longer.
Speaker 3: Than we won.
Speaker 2: You know, you never like to say too early, you want,
Speaker 2: we want, we want the best.
Speaker 4: In the first hour, it was.
Speaker 2: Over the situation where Iran is moving along very rapidly.
Speaker 4: It's doing very well.
Speaker 2: Our military is unsurpassed, has never been anything like it.
Speaker 3: This is a balance of power.
Speaker 5: On Bloomberg TV and Radio alongside Tyler Kendell, I'm Joe
Speaker 5: Matthew in Washington, will taste of President Trump there, commenting
Speaker 5: on the state of the US Iran conflict over the
Speaker 5: last two weeks. The arc of communication and the evolution
Speaker 5: of justification has been fascinating and joining us now ahead
Speaker 5: of our conversation with Secretary Doug Bergham as our political
Speaker 5: panel Lester Munson, Republican strategist principle of the International Practice
Speaker 5: at bg our Group, alongside democratic strategist Jamie Jackson.
Speaker 3: Founder of Vantage Global Media.
Speaker 5: Jamie served as political appointee in both the Obama and
Speaker 5: Biden white Houses, including Council for Pentagon Legislative Affairs and
Speaker 5: the House Armed Services Committee. We've got a great combination,
Speaker 5: and welcome to both of you here. You heard that
Speaker 5: last remark the President made in that string of remarks
Speaker 5: said we've won.
Speaker 3: We've already won.
Speaker 5: How dangerous is that commentary from the commander in chief
Speaker 5: if in fact we happened.
Speaker 6: I think it's very dangerous. I think it highlights a
Speaker 6: lot of the inconsistencies that are coming out of the
Speaker 6: White House. In the Pentagon a few days ago, the
Speaker 6: President said that he wanted total unconditional surrender. Haven't seen that.
Speaker 6: We've heard that the Pentagon. This morning, the Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 6: the Secretary of the Department of War gave remarks about
Speaker 6: how the campaign will go on.
Speaker 4: For more weeks.
Speaker 6: There's going to be an increase in escalation, and so
Speaker 6: I think it's very dangerous to have such inconsistent messaging
Speaker 6: coming out of the administration.
Speaker 7: Well, Lester, what do you make of that when we've
Speaker 7: heard the administration focus a lot on perhaps tactical successes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: We heard the Defense Secretary earlier today say fifteen thousand
Speaker 7: targets have been hit. But have they clearly communicated the
Speaker 7: objectives that have to be met in order for the
Speaker 7: timeline to be reached in us to see this conflict
Speaker 7: pull back.
Speaker 1: Well, I actually think the administration, when you kind of
Speaker 1: maybe average out all of the statements, has been fairly
Speaker 1: consistent in what they're saying, which is, we want to
Speaker 1: eliminate Iran's capability to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: threaten its neighbors with its ballistic missile technology, threaten the
Speaker 1: Strait of Horror moves with its navy, and then the
Speaker 1: production facilities for all of those things. And that's what
Speaker 1: I think the President is referring to when he says,
Speaker 1: you know, we won on day one because the initial
Speaker 1: strikes were so effective and did in fact eliminate the
Speaker 1: at least the very top leadership of the country.
Speaker 5: Glad we could get a swing from both of you
Speaker 5: on this, Lester Monthson and Jamie Jackson are going to
Speaker 5: stay with us as we now add the voice live
Speaker 5: from Tokyo of Doug Bergham, the US Secretary of the
Speaker 5: Interior Secretary.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Speaker 5: I know you're joining us from a world away at
Speaker 5: the Japan Energy Summit that's underway in Tokyo. We'd like
Speaker 5: to ask you about what you're hearing in Japan. I
Speaker 5: just want to start first though, on the matter of Iran.
Speaker 5: Is the energy issue going to bring out a quick
Speaker 5: resolution to this war?
Speaker 8: Well, I think what we're seeing here, of course, is
Speaker 8: the strength of President Trump, you know, setting clear objectives,
Speaker 8: are military executing nearly flawlessly. And of course what this
Speaker 8: exposes for the whole world is that we do have
Speaker 8: a terrorist regime that is threatening the world economy. This
Speaker 8: is a regime that forty seven years ago when they
Speaker 8: took over, literally took American hostages. Now they're holding the
Speaker 8: entire world economy hostage. President Trump and the Allies understand
Speaker 8: that on the backside of this, when this is resolved,
Speaker 8: that the world's going to be peace.
Speaker 4: There's going to be more peace in the world.
Speaker 8: There's going to be more prosperity, and there's going to
Speaker 8: be more stability and more freedman and movement of energy
Speaker 8: for all countries.
Speaker 7: Mister Secretary, I want to ask you about some of
Speaker 7: the actions being put into motion when it comes to
Speaker 7: responding to the energy markets, including that earlier this week
Speaker 7: you said that domestic oil producers have told the administration
Speaker 7: that they're increasing output in shale basins. Could you give
Speaker 7: us any more insight into who those producers are and
Speaker 7: what kind of increase we can expect from that response,
Speaker 7: and on what sort of timeline.
Speaker 8: Well as again and of course in America, as you know,
Speaker 8: these are private companies, some of them are public. I'll
Speaker 8: let them talk about their own production plans and their
Speaker 8: production increases, but certainly when there's a price indication that's
Speaker 8: happening right now, this is an opportunity. Shale producers have
Speaker 8: the ability to increase their production.
Speaker 4: Some of them have you know, drilled but uncompleted wells.
Speaker 4: They just have to turn those on. And of course
Speaker 4: we're seeing our partners.
Speaker 8: I just got back from Venezuela last week, where you've
Speaker 8: got companies like Chevron that are indicating that they can
Speaker 8: accelerate their development in places like that, and of course
Speaker 8: the administration taking steps in places like California where we've
Speaker 8: got you know, offshore in California that if it weren't
Speaker 8: being blocked by the State of California in terms of
Speaker 8: regulatory and red tape, you know that that could substantially
Speaker 8: increase the amount of oil being produced in California. So
Speaker 8: there's a lot we're looking. You know, every stone is
Speaker 8: being overturned. The team in d C and the team
Speaker 8: that's here across a whole set of cabinet members from
Speaker 8: from the Trump administration that's here. We have seven teen
Speaker 8: countries attending this Indo Pacific Energy Security Ministerial. All of
Speaker 8: these countries are understanding that it's important for them for
Speaker 8: their economies and for their countries and for their citizens
Speaker 8: to have energy security, and they're looking to buy energy
Speaker 8: from a trust to ally. And of course here we
Speaker 8: are in Japan, who's been buying LNG from Alaska for
Speaker 8: more than fifty years without a single interruption, because there
Speaker 8: are no choke points when you're buying energy from the
Speaker 8: United States, and that's very different than when you're buying
Speaker 8: from providers where you've got a terrorist regime and whether
Speaker 8: it's directly the Iranians or their proxy, the Huthis that
Speaker 8: can cut off flows of commerce to the world. Energy
Speaker 8: security matters to these buyers, and that's why we're seeing
Speaker 8: these senior leaders and some of the largest LERG companies
Speaker 8: in the world all here. There's going to be a
Speaker 8: lot of deals announced in the next couple days at
Speaker 8: this event in the meaning and the tens of billions
Speaker 8: of dollars because there's that kind of understanding of the
Speaker 8: importance of energy secure already.
Speaker 5: Well, we'd love to hear more about that when those
Speaker 5: deals are announced. Secretary, I hope you can come back
Speaker 5: to Bloomberg to tell us about it. I'm wondering what
Speaker 5: you're hearing from our allies, from our partners there in
Speaker 5: Tokyo about triple digit crude oil, how long they can
Speaker 5: last before this damages their economies, and how often you're
Speaker 5: hearing China come up. You know, Russia and China have
Speaker 5: been framed as the winners here.
Speaker 8: Well, I think that one of the things that we're
Speaker 8: seeing is that, you know, China having really benefited with
Speaker 8: the failed sanctions under the Biden administration, when we had
Speaker 8: failed sanctions on Venezuela, Iran and Russia, the three places
Speaker 8: where we've had conflicts in the world. You know, they've
Speaker 8: been buying for the last three or four years, they've
Speaker 8: been buying discounted refined product and discounted oil. I mean,
Speaker 8: I basically say the failed sanctions, the Biden administration just
Speaker 8: turned Russia ran in Venezuela into China's discount gas station.
Speaker 8: They took full advantage of that, building up.
Speaker 3: The on Russia.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: Of course, doesn't that make it cheaper for China.
Speaker 8: Well, it's going to make it more expensive because that's
Speaker 8: going to increase the price of that floating oil that's
Speaker 8: out there right now. But this this temporary waiver on
Speaker 8: the Russian floating oil, most of that oil had already
Speaker 8: left Russia, so Russia's not benefiting from that. If there's
Speaker 8: any price arbitrage, it was whoever owned the cargo after
Speaker 8: it left Russia. But you know that's going to help
Speaker 8: make sure that we can keep prices down for our
Speaker 8: allies like India and others. And so again, that was
Speaker 8: a smart move that the administration undertook on that temporary
Speaker 8: waiver on all that floating you know, the dark fleet
Speaker 8: oil that was out there and again to help relieve
Speaker 8: some of the.
Speaker 4: Short term pressure.
Speaker 8: But meanwhile, you know, our military making incredible progress on
Speaker 8: securing the objectives of this conflict.
Speaker 7: You said, mister Secretary, that there's a lot of tools
Speaker 7: that the administration can invoke. I'm wondering what's still on
Speaker 7: the table. Could we see a federal Gas to Act holiday,
Speaker 7: could we see the invoking of the Jones Act, or
Speaker 7: even a push to get higher ethanol content gasoline onto
Speaker 7: the market.
Speaker 8: Well, I think all of these ideas are under consideration,
Speaker 8: and we've got you know, teams like I said that
Speaker 8: are working around the clock doing analysis and effort on
Speaker 8: this in an effort to try to focus on affordability
Speaker 8: and keeping the prices down. But this has been our
Speaker 8: focus since the day that President Trump took office. When
Speaker 8: he took office and declared an energy emergency, it was
Speaker 8: because energy prices were out of control, whether it was
Speaker 8: for electricity or for liquid fuels or for heating your home.
Speaker 8: And of course those prices have dropped dramatically in last
Speaker 8: year because President Trump's policies of energy a dominance, which
Speaker 8: is about having enough energy for low prices at home
Speaker 8: and being able to help lower prices for our allies,
Speaker 8: I mean, lifting the ban on LNG export facilities, which
Speaker 8: also happened immediately in the Trump administration, has allowed us
Speaker 8: to become the number one Allen G expert. We've displaced
Speaker 8: two thirds of the Russian gas that was being sold
Speaker 8: into Western Europe this past winter. I mean, the estimates
Speaker 8: are that that's in the tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 8: that were saved by consumers in our allies because of
Speaker 8: US being able to literally come to the rescue with
Speaker 8: low energy prices and whether it's whether it's prescription drugs,
Speaker 8: whether it's housing, whether it's interest rates, whether it's food.
Speaker 8: President Trump has been on the march lowering those prices
Speaker 8: for Americans. And with this, you know, temporary, temporary interruption
Speaker 8: versus to have an opportunity for long term transformation. I
Speaker 8: think this is something that everybody in the world should
Speaker 8: be joining in. If everybody thinks it's okay, you know,
Speaker 8: to have a regime that killed forty thousand of their
Speaker 8: own people before this recent conflict even started, just because
Speaker 8: people were expressing free speech in the street, I think
Speaker 8: that's okay to have that group of people controlling the
Speaker 8: world's energy supplies in the world market.
Speaker 4: You know that I would be surprised.
Speaker 8: I mean, people need to come to a realization that
Speaker 8: this is this is a global problem. People should be
Speaker 8: aligned with President Trump and aligned with the United States
Speaker 8: to say, you know, we're not going to we shouldn't
Speaker 8: be we shouldn't be standing for having a group of
Speaker 8: terrorists control the global economy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Secretary Berghen, we heard from the head of the
Speaker 5: CME Group today, Terry Duffy.
Speaker 3: You probably know each other.
Speaker 5: He was speaking at a conference in Florida, said the
Speaker 5: Trump administration would risk a biblical disaster his words, if
Speaker 5: it attempts to lower oil prices by intervening in derivative markets, right,
Speaker 5: the oil paper market, we're talking futures and options.
Speaker 3: Is that something under consideration.
Speaker 8: Well, I'd say there's certainly been a discussion. We got
Speaker 8: a lot of smart people working in this administration. There's
Speaker 8: a lot of smart people that work in the energy
Speaker 8: trading market. The energy trading is one of the biggest
Speaker 8: markets in the world. An intervention there to try to,
Speaker 8: you know, manipulate lower prices would require enormous amounts of capital.
Speaker 4: That's all I'll say on that front. But I'd say
Speaker 4: that right now.
Speaker 8: You know, you know, the best way to get prices
Speaker 8: down is increased supply to match demand. And President Trump again,
Speaker 8: under the President Biden, we were lowering the amount of
Speaker 8: energy we were producing. We were regulating it out of business,
Speaker 8: strangling entire industries that were producing either electricity or liquid
Speaker 8: fuels out of business. And now it's gone the complete
Speaker 8: opposite direction. It's about more electricity, more energy. The energy abundance,
Speaker 8: energy dominance is the supply side. Let's increase the supply
Speaker 8: to lower prices. We do have a temporary disruption and transit,
Speaker 8: but the world is well supplied and that was reflected
Speaker 8: in the market just a month ago, which is you know,
Speaker 8: we've got you know, new sources coming on, whether Venezuela
Speaker 8: ramping up, whether it's other allies around the world. I mean,
Speaker 8: we're fortunate with new technology. The oil producers are producing
Speaker 8: more all the time. You know, just think twenty years ago,
Speaker 8: people thought the US was going to run out of
Speaker 8: oil and gas. I mean, let's just step back a
Speaker 8: second and understand how did we go from the sky
Speaker 8: is falling, we're running out of oil and gas, we're
Speaker 8: running out of energy, to becoming the world's number one
Speaker 8: oil producer and the number one natural gas produced, number
Speaker 8: one ll G export. That was because of innovation. American
Speaker 8: innovation drove these dramatic turnaround and that alone, that is
Speaker 8: like a trillion dollar tax break for Americans because of
Speaker 8: the energy innovation that's come from this private sector in
Speaker 8: the oil and gas and energy industries in our country.
Speaker 8: And now we have an opportunity to share that abundance
Speaker 8: with our friends and allies around the world. That's what
Speaker 8: we're doing here in Japan with these seventeen countries that
Speaker 8: are here to sign deals with the US for secure
Speaker 8: supply chains from places like Alaska where we've got enormous
Speaker 8: amounts of LERG, and we could be providing all of
Speaker 8: our partners more secure and lower cost energy across the Pacific,
Speaker 8: our traditional allies, whether it's Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan.
Speaker 8: You go down lists and our territories, I mean the
Speaker 8: territories that are part of the US Department of Interior, Guam,
Speaker 8: American Samoa, the Marianna. These are all places where we've
Speaker 8: got military bases and in many cases, including Hawaii, you know,
Speaker 8: we're buying foreign oil. We have an opportunity in America
Speaker 8: under President Jumps energy dominance to sell energy even to
Speaker 8: our own territories, into our own states in the Pacific.
Speaker 8: Alaska's can be a key part of that. And so again,
Speaker 8: even as we've got the conflict going on, this administration
Speaker 8: can do more than one thing at a time, and
Speaker 8: there's going to be incredible progress here on building a
Speaker 8: secure energy future for our allies and friends and our
Speaker 8: territories in our states in the Pacific.
Speaker 7: Just very quickly, mister Secretary for clarity. Has the administration
Speaker 7: intervened already when it comes to the oil futures market, not.
Speaker 8: That I'm aware of. Has there been any intervention in
Speaker 8: those markets?
Speaker 7: All right, Dug burgham us Secretary of the Interior. Thank
Speaker 7: you so much for joining us.