Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Jonathan Ferrow, along
Speaker 2: with Lisa Bromwitz and Amrie Hordern. Join us each day
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Speaker 2: US Energy Secretary, Chris Right, Secretary Right, Good days you, sir,
Speaker 2: Good to see you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having you.
Speaker 2: Get to skip the line when you come in, of
Speaker 2: course we do, missus Secretary, first time in Davos. What
Speaker 2: was your impression of the World Economic Forum.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's fantastic to see leaders, political leaders, business leaders
Speaker 4: from all around the world gathering here for very candid dialogues.
Speaker 3: I've enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 2: There's a worry, and I'd love your reaction to this.
Speaker 2: A worry to the President's style. Yes, it generates results,
Speaker 2: but it's also turning off the Europeans. Did you feel
Speaker 2: that in your conversations with European pounders that they were
Speaker 2: offended by the last week.
Speaker 4: I did engage in dialogues about that, and I think
Speaker 4: the rhetoric or the speculation was so over the top.
Speaker 4: It's going to be the end of NATO. The US
Speaker 4: military is going to invade Greenland. These were never on
Speaker 4: the table. The President since his arrival in office, has
Speaker 4: been how to strengthen NATO, how to get increased defense spending,
Speaker 4: how to get increased trade and cooperation between our countries.
Speaker 3: So he's here to strengthen.
Speaker 4: NATO, increase the security we have against the foes that
Speaker 4: are rising in the world. Yes, he has a different
Speaker 4: negotiating style and he gets different results. I just came
Speaker 4: from the peace in the Middle East event, like the
Speaker 4: conventional approaches don't deliver unconventional results. President Trump's about delivering results,
Speaker 4: and yeah, that's a different style.
Speaker 1: The speech has been about self resilience, and that's been
Speaker 1: very much the tone coming.
Speaker 5: Out of the White House, the idea that every.
Speaker 1: Nation needs to look at what it has and really
Speaker 1: build that up. And that's one reason why the focus
Speaker 1: has been on oil. I just wonder do you feel
Speaker 1: like prices where they're at are supporting the US shail
Speaker 1: industry that usually operates at a higher price point. Do
Speaker 1: you think that this push to produce more oil is
Speaker 1: actually harming the US shail industry.
Speaker 4: Well, First of all, though, president has one constituency, and
Speaker 4: that's the American consumer.
Speaker 3: You know, businesses have to compete to be the best
Speaker 3: supplier to consumers.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, the point of
Speaker 4: a free market isn't to help or protect businesses.
Speaker 3: It's to serve consumers better.
Speaker 4: And I remember ten years ago the shale company struggled
Speaker 4: because oil came down to eighty dollars and before it
Speaker 4: was one hundred dollars, and their profitability wasn't great. They've
Speaker 4: continued to innovate, continued to drive down breakdown prices.
Speaker 3: US oil production is.
Speaker 4: At a record high right now, as is natural gas production.
Speaker 3: Do they have to.
Speaker 4: Continue to innovate and drive down costs? Of course so,
Speaker 4: but that's what American business does.
Speaker 1: At what point, though, does some of the oil, say
Speaker 1: from Venezuela, start to cannibalize from what the US is
Speaker 1: producing at home. Something that some people are worried about,
Speaker 1: whether it takes up space at refiners, or whether it
Speaker 1: just lowers prices in general at a time where they're
Speaker 1: already struggling to innovate fast enough to keep up.
Speaker 5: With where prices are.
Speaker 4: It's a challenge, but I would I would never underestimate
Speaker 4: the American oil and gas business or Americans across the sectors,
Speaker 4: so I don't worry so much about that.
Speaker 3: And of course it's a.
Speaker 4: Different kind of crude that comes out of Venezuela, and
Speaker 4: a lot of our refineries were built to refine this heavier,
Speaker 4: more viscous crude. We produce that light suite crude in
Speaker 4: the United States. It's a good combination. But when you
Speaker 4: have lower energy prices, you also have faster economic growth,
Speaker 4: which means faster demand growth.
Speaker 3: There's always feedback effects.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 3: We're going to see.
Speaker 4: Faster not just US growth, but global growth because of
Speaker 4: lower global energy prices. One of my messages here in
Speaker 4: Davos talking to the European nations, the EU was a
Speaker 4: similar size economy to the United States.
Speaker 3: In twenty ten.
Speaker 4: They pivoted focused on climate change, for got what energy
Speaker 4: is used for, and they've had.
Speaker 3: Very little economic growth.
Speaker 4: We were both twenty five percent of global consumption just
Speaker 4: in twenty ten. Today the US is twenty eight percent
Speaker 4: and the EU nations are eighteen percent. That's the cost
Speaker 4: of expensive energy policies. And what we want to see
Speaker 4: is Europe reinvigorated. Europe to embrace lower energy prices, reindustrialize
Speaker 4: their economy and therefore be a stronger economic and military
Speaker 4: partner with the US.
Speaker 7: Well, they outsourced their energy to Russia potentially, that's why
Speaker 7: we are seeing these exports out of the United States.
Speaker 7: When it comes to Venezuela, though, do you have planned
Speaker 7: to go down there, maybe even lead a delegation of
Speaker 7: oil executives.
Speaker 3: I'll go down to venezuel and the relative in your future.
Speaker 4: I'll get down in the next few weeks, all go
Speaker 4: down to meet with government officials and look at the
Speaker 4: existing oil facilities down there. We will definitely see a
Speaker 4: number of American oil and gas companies going down as
Speaker 4: well and investigating opportunities on the ground.
Speaker 7: Who are going to be going down with I imagine you're
Speaker 7: on speed dial and have constant conversations with Mike Worth
Speaker 7: you over Chevron.
Speaker 5: But is it Darren.
Speaker 7: Woods potentially feeling a little bit better, He did call
Speaker 7: it uninvestible Venezuela when he met with the president recently.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a backward looking comment, right, because of course
Speaker 4: for ten fifteen years it.
Speaker 3: Has been uninvestable.
Speaker 4: So this is about looking forward about where we're going
Speaker 4: and who are the early movers going to be in
Speaker 4: an environment that's better today than it was a month ago.
Speaker 4: But is it fully rule of law, democratic, thriving society again,
Speaker 4: of course not. This is a process only three weeks
Speaker 4: into it, so that you're going to see increased production
Speaker 4: out of Venezuela, first from the incumbent players like Chevron,
Speaker 4: and then from the new smaller, scrappier American independence that'll go.
Speaker 5: Wildcatters are the ones that are reaching out to you.
Speaker 4: Yes, across the board, bigger companies too, but the faster
Speaker 4: movers will be.
Speaker 7: The wild and you plan on giving them these fresh
Speaker 7: licenses so if they do feel like they have the
Speaker 7: security concerns and it's good to go in Venezuela, that
Speaker 7: they could start.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, they will start.
Speaker 4: Yes, we will move o FAC approvals for anyone that
Speaker 4: wants to go down there. We're going to let the
Speaker 4: marketplace decide that I'm not going to choose or pick
Speaker 4: among companies but we're going to certainly open up that
Speaker 4: opportunities together with the interim.
Speaker 3: Authorities in Venezuela.
Speaker 4: Right now, we're going to open up the opportunities to
Speaker 4: grow oil.
Speaker 3: Production in Venezuela. Now for America, good for Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Not chosing them picking is an interesting one because we
Speaker 2: have seen the administration choose and pick certain companies to
Speaker 2: develop things.
Speaker 8: Why is this a different moment?
Speaker 4: Well, good look to do things short and quick, to
Speaker 4: immediately market the crude out of Venezuela and get money
Speaker 4: flowing as fast as possible.
Speaker 3: You've got to make choices.
Speaker 4: Then, so immediately, when you have an immediate objective, you've
Speaker 4: got to make decisions. But ultimately, we want capitalism in
Speaker 4: the marketplace to decide who the operators are, who the
Speaker 4: marketers of the crud are, and what the future of
Speaker 4: the industry is going to be in Venezuela.
Speaker 5: What's the ultimate goal?
Speaker 1: Is the ultimate goal to take share away from say
Speaker 1: the Middle Eastern Russia. Is the goal to lower prices
Speaker 1: below fifty dollars a barrel? What's the ultimate goal with
Speaker 1: the United States involvement in Venezuela's oil industry, Well.
Speaker 4: The ultimate goal was to stabilize our hemisphere, to reduce
Speaker 4: the running of drugs and guns and criminality. Venezuela's basically
Speaker 4: become a big drug, big drug criminal organization with Hez
Speaker 4: Bowl as Western Hemisphere headquarters there, Russia, Iron Cuba. So
Speaker 4: the goal of Venezuela was geostrategic to have it as safe, peaceful,
Speaker 4: prosperous ally of the United States as it was for decades.
Speaker 4: And as part of that, the tremendous resources Venezuela has
Speaker 4: in oil, for sure, that's going to be a large
Speaker 4: part of their economy growing and all that, and is
Speaker 4: more Western hemisphere oil production. Good for the United States
Speaker 4: and good for the Western hemisphere, sure, but it's good
Speaker 4: for the whole world.
Speaker 5: Saraharra, do you think you can work with Delsea Rodriguez?
Speaker 3: We are today, We absolutely are today.
Speaker 5: You'll meet her when you go there.
Speaker 3: I certainly will.
Speaker 7: Because she was their oil minister. And Jonathan asked me
Speaker 7: this when Nicholas Madora was captured.
Speaker 5: I used to cover opak. Does the United States basically
Speaker 5: have a seat at the table when it comes to
Speaker 5: the cartel?
Speaker 3: The cartel in Opak, Yeah, because.
Speaker 7: Basically you have this pragmatic approach to Delsea Rodriguez. You're
Speaker 7: bringing in the energy companies into Venezuela, and Venezuela is
Speaker 7: part of OPAK.
Speaker 4: I hadn't even thought about that, But of course we're
Speaker 4: not looking for a seat at the table at OPAK.
Speaker 4: Of course, the United States produces more oil today than
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two biggest other producers of oil.
Speaker 4: So I think we're quite comfortable with where we sit.
Speaker 4: We just want a stable, prosperous Venezuela to be good
Speaker 4: for the United States, good for the Western Hemisphere, and
Speaker 4: good for Venezuela.
Speaker 8: So that's tight.
Speaker 2: The answer that Amory gave me when I asked that
Speaker 2: question to her, i'm Rey turned around and said, they
Speaker 2: already have one as Saudi Arabia. Yeah, and they can
Speaker 2: lean on the Saudi's to get what they want.
Speaker 8: Is that fair? Do you have enough influence on accounts?
Speaker 3: Homy? We don't lean on them to get what we want.
Speaker 4: But unlike the Biden administration, of course, we've embraced the
Speaker 4: growing economies, the growing freedom in the Middle East. The
Speaker 4: goal is to have a peaceful, prosperous Middle East and
Speaker 4: not a conflict ridden you know, it's about bullets and
Speaker 4: shooting people and who hates each other.
Speaker 3: We want to make it free and prosperous.
Speaker 7: Well, do you remember the first term when they're or
Speaker 7: is that price war? Prices went to negative on WTI
Speaker 7: and the President picked up the phone, this was his
Speaker 7: first term at forty five, called President Putin and called
Speaker 7: the Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman. That's why I always
Speaker 7: say the US has a seat at the table. The
Speaker 7: President does seem to want to work in the energy space.
Speaker 4: He understands the criticality of energy and of course during
Speaker 4: COVID in emergency situations, you want a strong, resolute business
Speaker 4: focus leader.
Speaker 2: Can I finish on security guarantees in Venezuela? I think
Speaker 2: it's importen. Can we offer security guarantees of these companies
Speaker 2: that aren't going to develop those reserves now?
Speaker 3: We have no plans to do that.
Speaker 4: The US involvement right now and controlling the flow of
Speaker 4: funds in Venezuela gives us huge leverage to reduce the
Speaker 4: criminality in that country, re establish peace and better business
Speaker 4: conditions in the short term. In the long run, you've
Speaker 4: got to go all the way to a representative government,
Speaker 4: a rewriting of laws and the constitution.
Speaker 3: But that will take time.
Speaker 4: But no, the activity we're doing is moving the security
Speaker 4: situation in a positive direction. But we are not going
Speaker 4: to get involved in providing on the ground security for
Speaker 4: people in Venezuela. Oil and gas companies operate all around
Speaker 4: the world in all different settings.
Speaker 3: They're well versed in those challenges.
Speaker 2: You understand why some companies might have reservations about coming
Speaker 2: in because that wonder what comes off to President Trump
Speaker 2: and whether the next administration will have that same commitment
Speaker 2: that you have to that country.
Speaker 4: Of course, it's an evolving environment. This is not for everyone.
Speaker 4: There's always different risk and reward situations at time, which
Speaker 4: is why the wildcatters will move first. The bigger longer
Speaker 4: term you know, tens of billions in dollar investments. They're
Speaker 4: going to wait till there's more clarity in that environment.
Speaker 4: But fortunately with Chevron there, with Repsol there, with e
Speaker 4: and I there, with Shell right next door, we already
Speaker 4: have big incumbent players that are ready to grow their investments.
Speaker 2: Stay with US, multile IMPEG. Savandan's coming up off to this.
Speaker 2: It's the lightest this morning. The President of the United States,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump canceling European tariffs that were sent to begin
Speaker 2: February first. After reaching a framework deal over Greenland. The
Speaker 2: US COMMAS secretary Howard Latnik joined us. Now making some
Speaker 2: waves of the World Economic Forum over the.
Speaker 8: Last couple of days. Mister secretary is going.
Speaker 3: To see you.
Speaker 6: Great to see you.
Speaker 2: Let's cut through the drama. Let's get to the big
Speaker 2: point in the elephant of the room. What happened at
Speaker 2: dinner time the other night. I've heard all kinds of
Speaker 2: stories booming, the guards storming at the room.
Speaker 8: What happens?
Speaker 9: Oh, this is so silly. So at the end of
Speaker 9: the evening they called on me. I just published an
Speaker 9: op ed in the Financial Times, and so they called
Speaker 9: on me. I gave two three minutes of my ft,
Speaker 9: which basically said that globalization right and the outsourcing of
Speaker 9: your industry to the lowest cost in the world right,
Speaker 9: had really left, had really harmed American, had harmed Europe,
Speaker 9: and it had failed, it had failed us, and that
Speaker 9: we need to reasure, need to take care of our
Speaker 9: own citizens.
Speaker 6: So that's basically the model. And were I was.
Speaker 9: Done with that two or three minutes, one person of
Speaker 9: the two hundred odd people in the room booed, and
Speaker 9: I felt honored because it was Al Gore on alcore Bood,
Speaker 9: and I was like.
Speaker 2: Really, I wasn't throwing bread rolls at you from the bank.
Speaker 2: That wasn't happening.
Speaker 6: Put it, I put it in the ft. I mean,
Speaker 6: I wasn't like trying to be quiet about it.
Speaker 9: I mean I think that globalization, right, and the idea
Speaker 9: of global supply chains and finding the lowest cost, I mean,
Speaker 9: that is just not the way to take care of
Speaker 9: your auto workers, right who are in Ohio and Michigan.
Speaker 9: And so we're bringing that back. So think about this.
Speaker 9: When we were done with we started auto tariffs. We
Speaker 9: started working on it in March, and we finished in November,
Speaker 9: and we were done.
Speaker 6: The last day.
Speaker 9: When we finished, General Motives and Ford stocks each went
Speaker 9: up ten percent. General Motors ended the year of sixty percent.
Speaker 9: If I told you on January first that General Motives
Speaker 9: was going to be on sixty percent, you would all
Speaker 9: sit out stock And how about this? On that same day,
Speaker 9: Sean Fame, who runs the United Auto Workers, called me
Speaker 9: and said, I can't believe I'm calling a Republican Secretary
Speaker 9: of Commerce to say thank God for you and your administration.
Speaker 9: The first administration is actually taking care of the auto
Speaker 9: workers of America.
Speaker 6: So think about that.
Speaker 9: You can, if you really think it through, you can
Speaker 9: take care of the company and the worker. You don't
Speaker 9: have to pick sides because we want union labor growth
Speaker 9: in America.
Speaker 6: These are great jobs. Why wouldn't we want them in America.
Speaker 9: So that's why Donald Trump wins the union vote, because
Speaker 9: he's actually pro these workers.
Speaker 6: He literally is pro these workers.
Speaker 9: It's not a political thing, it's these are great jobs
Speaker 9: for Americans.
Speaker 6: Let's go get more of them.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of money set to come into the
Speaker 2: United States and big bets, a ton of FDM. We
Speaker 2: could get into that in just a moment. I just
Speaker 2: want to stay on G seven, allies. This week's been
Speaker 2: quite a week. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has said
Speaker 2: basically accusing the US of trying to subordinate the Europeans.
Speaker 2: The Prime Minister of Canada, I'm sure you heard his speech,
Speaker 2: Mark Candy other day, said this is not a transition,
Speaker 2: it's a rupture. How would you describe relations with those
Speaker 2: countries at the moment.
Speaker 9: I think our relations are perfectly fine, right. I described
Speaker 9: the relationship with respect to the whole when Greenland was
Speaker 9: going back and forth before we sort of settled it
Speaker 9: with a framework agreement, Right, I called it a kerf fluffle. Right.
Speaker 9: It's basically like if you have an argument with your
Speaker 9: spouse that's not real.
Speaker 6: You know, it's not a real one. It's like a
Speaker 6: small thing.
Speaker 2: My spouse doesn't go out there and deliver a speech
Speaker 2: after that argument.
Speaker 8: It's the end of the relationship.
Speaker 9: Fair enough, But you're right, and I think they overreacted.
Speaker 9: And it's proof that they overreacted because a day or
Speaker 9: two later, there's a framework that makes sense.
Speaker 6: Right. What did we say? We said we.
Speaker 9: Cared about it for national security. Right, we said we
Speaker 9: care about a national security. I mean, it's obvious we
Speaker 9: care about it for national security. Because if you're going
Speaker 9: to build a golden dome over the United States of America, right,
Speaker 9: wouldn't you prefer the golden dome cover Greenland? So when
Speaker 9: you're knocking out the missiles, you're not knocking them out
Speaker 9: right over your head like we've all seen Israel like
Speaker 9: knocking out the missiles right over their head with their
Speaker 9: iron dome.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't you prefer to knock.
Speaker 9: Out the missiles if you live on the East coast
Speaker 9: of the United States of America over Greenland, a couple
Speaker 9: of thousand miles away where there's no people, Right, Does
Speaker 9: that sound better? So this is sort of where we're
Speaker 9: thinking about it and how our national security team is
Speaker 9: thinking about its. Actually, the framework, well, the framework is
Speaker 9: a national security based framework that that's what the United
Speaker 9: States cares about. We care about our national security, we
Speaker 9: care about the shipping lanes. So let's talk about the
Speaker 9: national security and shipping lanes and let's see if we
Speaker 9: can't figure out a framework to do that together. And
Speaker 9: I think that's what the President truthed about. He said,
Speaker 9: we're going to try to figure that out together because
Speaker 9: those were the key points that the United States of
Speaker 9: America cared about. And I think the President's been clear
Speaker 9: about it and he just wants people at the table
Speaker 9: dealing with it swiftly. I mean to think about this,
Speaker 9: he sends out a truth and like within four days, right,
Speaker 9: we have a framework agreement Like that's by the way,
Speaker 9: it's a pretty effection.
Speaker 5: And we had we had tariffs on tariffs.
Speaker 6: Off they were as they were never on.
Speaker 7: The threat of them are coming on for February First,
Speaker 7: what does this do now for the agreement you were
Speaker 7: and your team struck with Brussels because the legal implementation
Speaker 7: has now been put on hold.
Speaker 9: Oh, I think it'll be put on unhold probably tomorrow.
Speaker 9: I mean, come on, That's why I said it's an overreaction.
Speaker 9: I mean, they know when the President says, this is
Speaker 9: what's going to happen.
Speaker 6: I mean what provoked the president.
Speaker 9: What provoked the President was that they sent military people
Speaker 9: to Greenland. I mean, they didn't send military people to Ukraine. Like,
Speaker 9: why are they sending military people to Greenland? You know,
Speaker 9: it was so it seemed like a provocation.
Speaker 2: We spoke to the Finish leader and he suggested that
Speaker 2: was a miscommunication and he cleared that up pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: There's something I want to get into with you that
Speaker 2: I think is quite important. This, of course, is the
Speaker 2: end of the deal. We talk about it on the
Speaker 2: program all the time. The President anchors the story to
Speaker 2: the extreme and then gets a faithful deal for the
Speaker 2: unat of time. So I think that's well understood. Something
Speaker 2: happened though, in the last twelve months that I think
Speaker 2: is really interesting. He tried the same thing with Canada
Speaker 2: and totally upended the election in Canada north of the border.
Speaker 8: Polyeff was going to sail away with that.
Speaker 2: The reason Mark Carney's here as Prime Minister is because
Speaker 2: the President took such an assertive stance on Canada. Now
Speaker 2: at the time, I was finding the humor in the conversation.
Speaker 2: Then the Canadians started lighting up the Bloomberg terminal sending messages.
Speaker 2: They were deeply offended, and we've seen that damage the
Speaker 2: economic relationship with Canada and the United States, and the
Speaker 2: risk camemists the Secretary, and I'd love your thoughts on
Speaker 2: it and your reaction, because I think this is really
Speaker 2: important regard to Europeans. The points you're making about Europe
Speaker 2: and have made over the last week are valid points
Speaker 2: and they're actually well received by a lot of Europeans.
Speaker 2: But the style in which is being delivered at the moment,
Speaker 2: some of them are finally offensive. Do you think there's
Speaker 2: a risk here that we damage the economic relationship with
Speaker 2: the Europeans in the same way we do with the Canadians,
Speaker 2: and for that matter, derail the conservative movement in Europe
Speaker 2: that's well underway.
Speaker 9: I don't. The fact is that you need to rethink.
Speaker 9: I think Europe is amazing and it's got extraordinary opportunity
Speaker 9: and a twenty trillion dollar economy. But think about this,
Speaker 9: if they had the right digital rules, meaning similar digital
Speaker 9: rules to the United States, we have six trillion dollars
Speaker 9: with of committed investment to build data centers in America
Speaker 9: and we have a thirty trillion dollar economy. So if
Speaker 9: they had a twenty trillion dollar economy, you'd say, okay,
Speaker 9: if they had the same rules, they could get four trillion,
Speaker 9: or how about two trillion. You realized two trillion for
Speaker 9: their economy, right, would be ten points of GDP s
Speaker 9: right over three or four years. I mean, that would
Speaker 9: produce amazing growth. And let me sort of explain how
Speaker 9: that works. So we did a deal with Micron. Right,
Speaker 9: they're going to build two hundred billion dollars in America.
Speaker 9: So on Friday last Friday, we did a ground breaking
Speaker 9: of their megafab, one hundred billion dollar fag fab. And
Speaker 9: where did they do it. They did it in upstate
Speaker 9: New York, Conserracuorves. Now, there hasn't been industrial building state
Speaker 9: New York in probably forty years, but if you think
Speaker 9: about it, it had a huge industrial base once upon
Speaker 9: a time, So what.
Speaker 6: Does it have. It has power because it has the
Speaker 6: power infrastructure for that.
Speaker 9: So what that does is it creates like this enormous uplift.
Speaker 6: And I think Europe can do the same thing.
Speaker 9: I think the UK can do the same thing, and
Speaker 9: Canada is just thinking in this arrogant kind of thought.
Speaker 1: Well, but just to build on what John is talking about,
Speaker 1: it's a style question. Can you get the same results
Speaker 1: without using words like calling leaders week or their economy
Speaker 1: is decaying?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Is it necessary to provoke the visceral feeling that we
Speaker 1: feel among a lot of leaders here and in conversations
Speaker 1: with international investors. I mean, is there any other way?
Speaker 1: Is that style more harmful than it is helpful?
Speaker 9: Well, I think it creates listening, Like people pay attention
Speaker 9: to it and listen to it.
Speaker 6: If you just sort of.
Speaker 9: Blend in, no one hears anything in Davos, right, everybody
Speaker 9: says the same blah blah blah blah blah. And if
Speaker 9: you need to break out and you need to say it.
Speaker 9: So my view is right that Canada has never expressed
Speaker 9: to the world that they have the best deal, the
Speaker 9: second best deal in the world, the best deal in
Speaker 9: the world is Mexico, because remember they have USMCA, which
Speaker 9: means eighty five percent of the Canadian economy comes into
Speaker 9: the United States for zero. And there he is complaining
Speaker 9: that he's going to go to China and improve it.
Speaker 9: What's he going to do? China's delighted to sell to him.
Speaker 9: But you think China's going to open their economy to
Speaker 9: accept exports from Canada.
Speaker 6: This is the silliest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 9: They have the second best deal because Mexico's got a
Speaker 9: little better deal. They have twenty five percent on the
Speaker 9: extra fifteen percent, whereas Canada's got thirty five percent on
Speaker 9: the extra fifteen percent. But give me a break. They
Speaker 9: have the second best deal in the world. And all
Speaker 9: I got to do is listen to this guy wind
Speaker 9: and complain.
Speaker 5: Mister Secretary.
Speaker 1: In fairness, you've seen from the airplanes, you've seen about
Speaker 1: a thirty percent decline in Canadian visitors to the United States,
Speaker 1: if not significantly more. You've seen a similar type of
Speaker 1: decline from China. European traveler inbound have come down. There
Speaker 1: is a sense that people do not want to come
Speaker 1: to the culture of the US, and there is this
Speaker 1: anchor about it. I just wonder if you think that
Speaker 1: that's just temporary, or you just sort of dismiss that,
Speaker 1: or you think it's irrelevant to the actual issues.
Speaker 9: I think what that is is political marketing. Right, the
Speaker 9: Canadians have the second best deal in the whole wide
Speaker 9: world if they continue this path, right, which is a
Speaker 9: political path of a certain thing.
Speaker 6: I'm going to go fly to China. I'm going to
Speaker 6: open up my markets to China.
Speaker 9: I'm going to take Chinese electric cars and do all
Speaker 9: sorts of this stuff. Then when USMCA gets renegotiated this year,
Speaker 9: this year sort of like towards the end of the summer,
Speaker 9: in the middle of the summer, do you think the
Speaker 9: President of United States is going to say you should
Speaker 9: keep having the second best deal in the world. I mean,
Speaker 9: you guys are such great friends. I mean they are
Speaker 9: playing with except of rules that they haven't really thought.
Speaker 2: I can hear it in your voice. You're excited about
Speaker 2: negotiating this this year.
Speaker 9: Well, they've sort of given a sort of a roadmap
Speaker 9: of saying, so, I guess we should change the whole deal.
Speaker 6: Right, you want to be like the rest of the world.
Speaker 9: You don't want to be this favored neighbor, because you've
Speaker 9: taken it so for granted that you're willing to come
Speaker 9: to Davos and say, the two higemic.
Speaker 10: Powers in the world, and we're going to decide which
Speaker 10: one we're going to work with. Really, you're going to
Speaker 10: either work with the United States of America, where seventy
Speaker 10: five percent of your economy is totally tied to it,
Speaker 10: or China.
Speaker 6: Why would you say that? It just I think it's political,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 9: I think if we take it correctly, we should look
Speaker 9: at it as just political noise coming out of a
Speaker 9: prime minister and maybe this is working for his election, right,
Speaker 9: because I don't think it can be real, because if
Speaker 9: you took out the math of Canada's economy and doing
Speaker 9: business with the United States of America's thirty trillion dollar economy,
Speaker 9: there's no such thing as changing what they have today.
Speaker 6: No one would vote for changing what they had today.
Speaker 9: Now, not thally they're marketing as well, but they're just
Speaker 9: for their politics, but they're surely not marketing it well
Speaker 9: for their fundamental economics.
Speaker 6: For long term, the United States, the.
Speaker 5: US is doing deals with China, and I'd love you
Speaker 5: to walk us through what's going on with the Age twenties.
Speaker 7: Is it accurate now that basically for China to get
Speaker 7: the age twenty chips, Taiwan needs to send them to
Speaker 7: America for US to put a tariff on them to
Speaker 7: make money off it, and then send to China. And
Speaker 7: is it your understanding that China might be suspectable now
Speaker 7: to these chips? Suspect because they're entering through the United States.
Speaker 9: So it's the Age two hundred, right, So that's the
Speaker 9: chip we're talking about.
Speaker 6: And Jensen Wang came to the Oval office and he argued.
Speaker 9: That this is a better chip than they can actually
Speaker 9: make in any scale, right, So if we sell them
Speaker 9: to China, right, and Chinese businesses, then they'll start using
Speaker 9: them and they'll develop on the American tech stack and
Speaker 9: that will take some money away from the Chinese tech stack.
Speaker 9: And that's an interesting argument. There are two sides. There
Speaker 9: are strong two sides. We shouldn't sell them any or
Speaker 9: we should sell them, which to us and I stayed
Speaker 9: right in the middle. It was a really really good discussion, okay.
Speaker 9: And the President decided that fine, we'll sell the h
Speaker 9: two hundreds to them, okay. And he made that decision
Speaker 9: and after he was done, he said, and you know what,
Speaker 9: I think if we do that, we should get twenty
Speaker 9: five percent for the American taxpayers, right, because we're creating.
Speaker 7: Something I think China wants to buy them knowing that
Speaker 7: they're going from Taiwan now back to the US.
Speaker 6: They're coming to the United States.
Speaker 9: Because in order to collect twenty five percent, right, the
Speaker 9: process matter to do it right is he imported, put
Speaker 9: a tariff on it, and then export it again. Okay,
Speaker 9: And so that's the model. It's the process model to
Speaker 9: execute a plan that the President United States of America made, right.
Speaker 9: So that's just the execution model of how to do it.
Speaker 9: It's not it's just process right. And it's the same
Speaker 9: age two hundred chip. And the question we'll find out
Speaker 9: is that businesses in China want to buy, that's for sure.
Speaker 9: The question is does China Central governm right want you
Speaker 9: know when they have that same argument too, I want
Speaker 9: to give my companies this chip that they're all clamoring for,
Speaker 9: or do I want to force them to take the
Speaker 9: pain of using lesser chips that are domestically made but
Speaker 9: helping our domestic companies grow.
Speaker 6: And that's a question we're going to see how it goes.
Speaker 9: But I think the President put that question out there,
Speaker 9: and I think it's a really interesting one. I didn't
Speaker 9: say there's not two sides of that coin, right, but
Speaker 9: the President thought having Chinese developers on the US tech stack, right,
Speaker 9: given sort of the middle, he falls that way. And
Speaker 9: it was really robust discussion. Both sides of the discussion
Speaker 9: were in the room. It was a deep and thoughtful discussion.
Speaker 9: And that's where he came out, and that's why he's
Speaker 9: the president.
Speaker 2: So, you know, just a final thought, just listening to
Speaker 2: this engaging conversation of the last fifteen minutes or so,
Speaker 2: do you fancy the FED seat over the Federal Reserve?
Speaker 2: I can see comma section the extra. You can see
Speaker 2: him in the equoes. Can you imagine the magic of
Speaker 2: that news conference? These news conference, the news confer I'd
Speaker 2: be going, you know what I call that?
Speaker 6: I called that an Amy winehouse. No, no, no, I
Speaker 6: call that box office.
Speaker 8: It's good to see you. Stay with us. More Bloomberg
Speaker 8: surveillance coming up after this. Let's stick with the economy.
Speaker 2: The positive outlook joining us now is the Bank of
Speaker 2: American chairman and see Brian Moynahan Brian, good to see you.
Speaker 11: Good to see you.
Speaker 12: Howard and I were on a panel yesterday and then yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 12: there made a day before yesterday and lunch to day
Speaker 12: and actually we're going to do another public venue where
Speaker 12: we're talking about how you raise the money to do
Speaker 12: all this investment he was talking about, so he's he's
Speaker 12: bullish on America. And he watched part of the interview.
Speaker 12: It sounds like you said that you guys are too. Yes,
Speaker 12: So let's start the GDP forecast.
Speaker 11: Our research.
Speaker 12: Our research turn is one of the best in the world,
Speaker 12: led by a woman named Cannons Browning Platt, and they
Speaker 12: all come out. They raised their GDP for US to
Speaker 12: two point eight percent growth for the twenty six right
Speaker 12: before we came to Davos, the world about three and
Speaker 12: a half they raised a point one And the important
Speaker 12: things I think to think about the US as you
Speaker 12: think about the travel last time from the last time
Speaker 12: you're here, last time you're here, we probably had two
Speaker 12: and a half percent four twenty six. Then Liberation Day
Speaker 12: it drops all the way to one and a half.
Speaker 12: And then as a settling in of there's the four
Speaker 12: primary policies of the Trump administration, trade and tariff, tax,
Speaker 12: immigration and deregulation, starts settling in. We've raised it back
Speaker 12: to two six and out two point eight and that's
Speaker 12: so that's polish. And then underneath it we see what
Speaker 12: the consumer really does. And if we can talk about that,
Speaker 12: you know, the consumer spending was strong than the fourth
Speaker 12: quarter when I've talked about that, it's four and a
Speaker 12: half trillion dollars our seventy million consumers which were blessed
Speaker 12: to have put into the economy a year, and that
Speaker 12: for the fourth quarter, that grew about five percent of
Speaker 12: twenty four's fourth quarter, and so far in January it's
Speaker 12: growing a little faster that you've got to be careful about.
Speaker 12: Two weeks don't make a quarter. But let's staying up.
Speaker 11: They're strong.
Speaker 2: Well, let's pair that GDP forecast with the bank and
Speaker 2: the business lines. Then what position are you going to
Speaker 2: take advantage of that better growth story in America?
Speaker 8: And what do you expected to show up?
Speaker 11: Well?
Speaker 12: Because who you are, and you know, we've been part
Speaker 12: owners of this company a long long time ago, and
Speaker 12: Mike has built a good thing around the market's business.
Speaker 12: That's whi you're always interested even though there's all this
Speaker 12: other stuff that makes a lot of money. But look
Speaker 12: if you look at Jim DeMar's now Copra as in
Speaker 12: the company, but his team and markets this year had
Speaker 12: their last quarter, had their fifteenh consecutive quarter of year
Speaker 12: over year growth. They just keep walking up ten percent
Speaker 12: up for the fourth quarter. If you look at investment banking,
Speaker 12: which is kind of interesting, Sir Matthew Coder and a team.
Speaker 12: You know, early in December, we thought we were about
Speaker 12: a billion and a half and I went out at
Speaker 12: a conference and told people that in Lo and Behore
Speaker 12: we ended a billion six five and that made twenty
Speaker 12: twenty Five's the second best year of investment banking fees
Speaker 12: in our company's history, in the one that was pandemic
Speaker 12: when everybody did a lot of financing. And next year
Speaker 12: we think we're bullish because of pipeline and then broadening
Speaker 12: out of the revenue stream into the IPO markets and
Speaker 12: other things which are got to start a little bit
Speaker 12: this year but have been pretty depressed for a while.
Speaker 12: So that's coming in. And deals either just the deal flow.
Speaker 12: People can get deals done. When I was here a
Speaker 12: couple of davas ago, you know, the regulatory burdens were
Speaker 12: getting so high that you couldn't honestly tell a client
Speaker 12: who's trying to do a five billion dollar deal to
Speaker 12: do it, because you said, if you can stabilize your
Speaker 12: company for six months a year trying to get this through,
Speaker 12: and you don't get it through, is.
Speaker 11: That worth it?
Speaker 12: And that's sort off the table, and even our industry,
Speaker 12: even though we can't do anything six months, approval of
Speaker 12: timelines are back to where they should be.
Speaker 1: It seems like there is an incredible amount of foolishness
Speaker 1: here at Davos about deals, about IPOs, about all sorts
Speaker 1: of transactions, and some of the issuances of debt and equity.
Speaker 11: At the same.
Speaker 1: Time, there's a real concern about affordability. There's a concern
Speaker 1: about how well the consumer is going to be able
Speaker 1: to face off with inflation. I'm just wondering if this
Speaker 1: is the year that we see the two come together,
Speaker 1: because last year they didn't come together. We saw the
Speaker 1: same kind of joblessness in terms of the growth, and
Speaker 1: we saw the same kind of lack of enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: sentiment surveys.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so if you look through the if you think
Speaker 12: about last year and think about how bullish people were
Speaker 12: last year because about the United States and the change
Speaker 12: of regatory regime and things like that. You know, in
Speaker 12: April things change and then by the end of the
Speaker 12: year it's changed back, and so I think that had
Speaker 12: a lot to do with it. If you look at
Speaker 12: the consumer and what we see, that spending level is
Speaker 12: not consistent with people who feel they're threatened in the future,
Speaker 12: and they're spending on all kinds of things. Now, if
Speaker 12: you look at the research team the Bank of America Institute,
Speaker 12: if you look at the work they've done, if you
Speaker 12: put three groups of customers lower income, third, middle and
Speaker 12: come third, upper and con third, they're all growing at
Speaker 12: the middle and upper growing a faster rate, and frankly
Speaker 12: that drives a lot of the growth. But if you
Speaker 12: look at what everybody's spending on, they're spending on going
Speaker 12: out thet they're spending on booking vacations, are spending on
Speaker 12: essential So what's the affordability. It's the inflation that people remember,
Speaker 12: and that is going to take a while for people
Speaker 12: to kind of put in the rearview mirror, because people
Speaker 12: can remember it's not too hard to remember pre COVID,
Speaker 12: where X was costure. You know, got email customers a
Speaker 12: gata gas cost you that your rent was this, And
Speaker 12: with that explosion of prices, wages also went up. But
Speaker 12: the consumer thinks more about the price side and then
Speaker 12: the question of we'll turn over and get back and
Speaker 12: sink And that's what's in those surveys. But if you
Speaker 12: watch your activity, and I'm a big believer, they'll tell
Speaker 12: you one thing. Watch what they do, and that's what
Speaker 12: they're doing as of last Friday in the consumer base
Speaker 12: across seventy million people, which are pretty good sample.
Speaker 3: Size, they're spending a lot.
Speaker 1: Maybe they would spend even more if there was a
Speaker 1: ten percent cap on credit card rates. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at this proposal, got a lot of attention about a
Speaker 1: week ago. It feels like three years ago, and people
Speaker 1: push back and said it wasn't realistic, it wasn't feasible.
Speaker 1: We had Jamie Diving come out and discuss about how
Speaker 1: try it and see what happens.
Speaker 5: What's your take on that?
Speaker 1: How realistic are you seeing those proposals as being?
Speaker 12: So if you step back, you know we're all for
Speaker 12: affordability and financial products. So you guys have thought over
Speaker 12: the year, is what we did on overdraft fees taking
Speaker 12: down by ninety percent over a course of fifteen years.
Speaker 12: What we did on having a five hundred dollar loan
Speaker 12: account of five dollars no interest rate, you could borrow
Speaker 12: emergency loan of five hundred dollars. Eight million customers have
Speaker 12: used that over the last several years to give you
Speaker 12: a cent So and then we have a no frills
Speaker 12: credit card, no rewards and other stuff that people might
Speaker 12: attribute that is low rate.
Speaker 11: It's not all way down at that rate. So I
Speaker 11: think the.
Speaker 12: Question is can we figure out a solution where you
Speaker 12: can avoid the equal and opposite reaction? As our friend
Speaker 12: Lafayette said in the Hamilton song, you know every action
Speaker 12: has econdoptics reaction, So the equal opposite reaction we all
Speaker 12: talked about last week. If you actually make this a policy,
Speaker 12: you can reallocate credit. That will slow down spending, It
Speaker 12: will slow down credit availability, and that might not be
Speaker 12: what you're trying to achieve. So can you do something
Speaker 12: on a go for a basis on the limited things,
Speaker 12: and even one year if you had to go reshuffle
Speaker 12: the whole deck, that would be pretty pretty interesting and
Speaker 12: to cause a lot.
Speaker 11: Of change in people's views. Of what they have available
Speaker 11: for credit. You want people to have available for credit
Speaker 11: because that gives them the courage to spend it.
Speaker 12: And so we're trying to figure out that.
Speaker 11: We're all working trying to figure out.
Speaker 12: Okay, given the affordability, given the thought process, is a
Speaker 12: way that we can do something that might help without
Speaker 12: having an equal and opposite reaction, because that would.
Speaker 11: Not be good.
Speaker 12: Our point is to get the credit losses down to
Speaker 12: the point you can afford that rate. You actually can
Speaker 12: never have a charge off, and you start to think about.
Speaker 11: Who can get credit. That's thing. So we're working hard.
Speaker 12: We're trying to cook with solutions like we are on
Speaker 12: some of the for the proposal around mortgage and form
Speaker 12: and K usage and trying to think of how you
Speaker 12: maybe can move the transfer wealth faster by giving people
Speaker 12: in my age bracket the ability to move a fourumn
Speaker 12: K bounce to pay help their kid buy a house
Speaker 12: or something like that.
Speaker 11: We threw that out to Howard yesterday.
Speaker 12: There's these ideas of letting people use their own form
Speaker 12: and K with less they can borrow from today. But
Speaker 12: there's a way you can actually just take with a
Speaker 12: draw so they don't have the added debt burden, and
Speaker 12: then you've got to work on the supply side of housing.
Speaker 12: And the President was interesting, Yes, he sense the issue.
Speaker 12: If you bring down house prices to make it affordable,
Speaker 12: is that the right answer for everybody? But on the
Speaker 12: other hand, when you have the kind of over demand
Speaker 12: in some of the cities, who work in thirty thousand
Speaker 12: UITs in Charlotte twenty thousand, Bostony forty thousand, one hundred thousand,
Speaker 12: whatever in New York, you could build a lot before
Speaker 12: I think you'd have.
Speaker 11: A major impact on the downward train of prices.
Speaker 7: Well, the DJT imposed deadline of January twenty has come
Speaker 7: and gone for the credit card caps. Have you spoken
Speaker 7: to the administration about this issue and talk to them
Speaker 7: about the potential counterintuitive problem with a ten percent cap?
Speaker 12: The team and I talked administration all the time about
Speaker 12: these policies and stuff, and they listen and they're trying
Speaker 12: to figure out the same issue from their side, how
Speaker 12: can they make America more affordable? And I think the
Speaker 12: number one thing we can do to make America more
Speaker 12: affordable is.
Speaker 11: Keep everybody employed.
Speaker 12: And Ernie's growth in our in our client base across
Speaker 12: seventy million people. We see a lot of paychecks come
Speaker 12: in and that's growing at three percent four percent, and
Speaker 12: that's a good number, and so know that wage growth
Speaker 12: continuity will ultimately make people feel different about it. It's
Speaker 12: completely understandable why they feel the sort of animus of
Speaker 12: how these things came into their household and then what
Speaker 12: they want to do about it, and then rent and affordability.
Speaker 12: We've given them the types of ideas I talked about.
Speaker 2: We need to see some bit of hiring as well.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about hiring the AI story. It's difficult
Speaker 2: to understand what's happened with hiring in this country in
Speaker 2: America over the last twelve months. What do you think
Speaker 2: has happened? What's your understanding of this drop off in hiring.
Speaker 2: Is it a supply side story? What do you think
Speaker 2: it is?
Speaker 12: I think I think there's a concern of availability at
Speaker 12: labor because of the population growth, immigration dynamics that I think, again,
Speaker 12: the administration is trying to get.
Speaker 11: Much more fine around exactly what they're.
Speaker 12: Doing and not threatening people who've been naturalized citizens and
Speaker 12: things like that, and that was never what they're intended
Speaker 12: to do, but people started reading it, so I think
Speaker 12: and now if you looked our small business surveys, labor
Speaker 12: availability became an issue again and hadn't been for a
Speaker 12: good while. And so so I think that that's something
Speaker 12: we've advised administration to be mindful of because you don't
Speaker 12: want that to become a constraint on people's views of growing. Now,
Speaker 12: the big hiring story here where Davos that make you
Speaker 12: saying this year is about AI. Last year's about AI
Speaker 12: that you formed was at AAA that your reformers out
Speaker 12: A nineteen. The premise was the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which
Speaker 12: is AI without just saying it.
Speaker 11: And so it's not a new theme.
Speaker 12: And so I give you since the first time you
Speaker 12: probably asked somebody who decided the pandemic say post pandemic
Speaker 12: about is AI going to cause you to change your
Speaker 12: hiring Let's call it four years, it's called three years.
Speaker 11: We hired sixty five.
Speaker 12: Thousand people Bank of America two thousand year kids out
Speaker 12: of school plus outing in school every year now and
Speaker 12: that's for the turn of rate eight percent we got
Speaker 12: to hire. In the month of January, we'll hire like
Speaker 12: thirteen hundred people and we'll have the same headcount we
Speaker 12: had the month of December. Are these people doing exactly
Speaker 12: what the people left? Sometimes sometimes those jobs got limited.
Speaker 12: But that's what management is challenged, just how do you
Speaker 12: think to make the changes. We've got to make the
Speaker 12: transformations to make the customer experience the best it can be,
Speaker 12: to grow the company and to manage expense. And that
Speaker 12: means you have to really pay attention to the headcount movement.
Speaker 11: And that's why we watch it carefully.
Speaker 2: That's where the tension is though. I think for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, you've got the societal problem on the
Speaker 2: one hand and on the other hand, and you've got
Speaker 2: the opportunity and the opportunity is to do even more
Speaker 2: with what you've already got. And that's the productivity story,
Speaker 2: and that's what you're selling to invest is that's the
Speaker 2: picture of the moment, isn't it.
Speaker 12: So we had twenty eighty five thousand people in twenty
Speaker 12: ten when I took when the team took over, we
Speaker 12: have two hundred twelve thousand people today, and you never
Speaker 12: heard anything about labor dislocation because we just kept planning ahead.
Speaker 11: But that's the application of technology.
Speaker 12: Just take the consumer business and I showed an investor
Speaker 12: date one hundred thousand people to fifty and make it simple.
Speaker 11: If you look at that, the business is three.
Speaker 12: Times as big in terms of transactions activity.
Speaker 11: But that's the power of all You've.
Speaker 12: Got eight devices sitting on the tables in front of
Speaker 12: you and the internet.
Speaker 11: Activity of what you'll do.
Speaker 12: Two, it's a combination of AI plus alerts and things
Speaker 12: like that.
Speaker 11: People to get.
Speaker 12: Focused on just you know, Erica growth in our case,
Speaker 12: you say no, there's literally a billion alerts that go out,
Speaker 12: which is basically ourtificial intelligence people set up in advance
Speaker 12: to tell them things go on. You don't need them
Speaker 12: to go into Ericuld ask this if check went through
Speaker 12: my account above twenty five hundred.
Speaker 1: Dollars, if you set the alerts, you said something that
Speaker 1: we reflect on a lot on our show. You said
Speaker 1: a lot of things, but one thing in particular, that
Speaker 1: the business would grow, but that your staff would stay
Speaker 1: about the same size.
Speaker 5: And you said that about a year ago, maybe two
Speaker 5: years ago. That's a near term phenomenon.
Speaker 1: In five to ten years, will it be the same
Speaker 1: or will it start to change in terms of actual shrinkage.
Speaker 12: Well, if Havard's writers view of growth will need a
Speaker 12: lot more human content to keep up with it, and
Speaker 12: I'll give you this. I'll give you the historical context.
Speaker 12: In twenty nineteen, I was in a room downstairs and
Speaker 12: the people were bringing their hands and as the way
Speaker 12: they do it. Davos said, Oh, this technology going to
Speaker 12: take away the jobs. And so in preparation, I said,
Speaker 12: I've got to give some hope here. So I went
Speaker 12: and did the research. In nineteen sixty nine, American employeed
Speaker 12: eighty million people. In twenty nineteen employed one hundred and
Speaker 12: sixty million people. I think there was a lot of
Speaker 12: technology and change. It came from nineteen sixty nine to
Speaker 12: twenty nineteen.
Speaker 11: None of that stuff in front of you. It was available.
Speaker 12: Have a computer at work, you wouldn't have an email accounts.
Speaker 12: You're still getting charged by the minute for phone calls.
Speaker 12: Think about that change, and think about we absorbed eighty
Speaker 12: million more people working. So I don't want to be
Speaker 12: Pollyanna about it, but I think you have to be
Speaker 12: optimistic that if we can grow the economy and grow
Speaker 12: the thing we will absorb. And by the way, the
Speaker 12: population to grow US is very modest without immigration, and
Speaker 12: there's a natural two plus percent of the people or
Speaker 12: whatever it is die every year. It's morbid, But that's
Speaker 12: what happens, and so and so you have burst that
Speaker 12: kind of replace it, and you know, and people retire.
Speaker 12: And so that's why I think management's core challenges and
Speaker 12: manage us through and get employees to take the spirit
Speaker 12: and help drive the growth in the company and be
Speaker 12: a part of the solution and help us make it happen.
Speaker 12: And my guess is, yeah, it might incrementally move head count,
Speaker 12: but if we manage it to attrition and retirements and stuff,
Speaker 12: we ought to be able to manage the outcome.
Speaker 2: How did we ever live without the flympog ton No,
Speaker 2: what was that? An 'ren just the final question you mentioned, Howard.
Speaker 2: We talked about it, we joked about it. How to
Speaker 2: the start of the conversation, the relationship with the White House?
Speaker 2: How would you characterize it in your own opinion?
Speaker 8: Right now?
Speaker 12: Oh, look, I got you always want to get an invitation.
Speaker 12: This is dabus invitations show we invite you guys someplace.
Speaker 12: You want that invitation. So the rationships good. We do
Speaker 12: continue to give lots of ideas.
Speaker 11: And it was ironic that what was fun.
Speaker 12: We had a client the last night and Howard came
Speaker 12: to talk to clients it was late as they finished
Speaker 12: up the news on Greenland, and he was able to
Speaker 12: come in and talk about what happened. And those were
Speaker 12: international clients who admittedly were confused for forty eight hours,
Speaker 12: you know. And what I've tried to do with the
Speaker 12: administration's policies and talk, especially people outside nine States, to say,
Speaker 12: listen to what they're saying. You can figure out what's
Speaker 12: going to happen, but don't confuse security or the trade policy.
Speaker 12: They wanted to get action, and they did, and that's
Speaker 12: a great thing. And you saw you leave, aside the
Speaker 12: market reaction which can go up and down on a day,
Speaker 12: what you saw is the clients say, Okay, I got it.
Speaker 12: Now let's go set the business plans that will help
Speaker 12: have that growth in the future.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Semendments podcast, bringing you the best
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