CNBC Transcript: United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Speaks with CNBC's Brian Sullivan on 'Halftime Report' Today

CNBC

15-07-2025

WHEN: Today, Tuesday, July 15, 2025
WHERE: CNBC's "Halftime Report"
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on CNBC's "Halftime Report" (M-F, 12PM-1PM ET) today, Tuesday, July 15. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/07/15/commerce-sec-howard-lutnick-on-indonesia-trade-deal-no-tariffs-there-they-pay-tariffs-here.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BRIAN SULLIVAN: Yes, we're here at the Senator David McCormick Innovation and Energy Summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. President Donald Trump is scheduled to be here later this afternoon to host a roundtable. You have got many companies here. You have got Amazon. You have got Alphabet. You have got BlackRock and many others. ExxonMobil is here as well, along with members of the Cabinet, including your next guest. That is the secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Secretary Lutnick, thank you for making some time with us here. I mean, what a hell of an event that has been put together in a very short amount of time. We did interview the secretary of energy, speaking to the secretary of the interior. What is commerce's role in the energy and A.I. infrastructure build-out? What do you -- where do you direct the money and the knowledge base in this scheme?
U.S. COMMERCE SECRETARY HOWARD LUTNICK: So, the NIST is part of commerce, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. So the key is, we set the standards for A.I. So we have got the A.I. Standards and Innovation Institute as part of the Department of Commerce. So we're the driver of A.I. standards and also cryptography standards and also cyber standards. So those are the key pieces inside of Commerce.
SULLIVAN: So, Commerce, and you will forgive my lack of knowledge about the inner workings—
LUTNICK: Well, but you're with me now. So it's OK.
SULLIVAN: I literally have no idea. I should -- our D.C. team probably understands this a lot better than I do. So you're setting the rules of the road that will also shape investment.
LUTNICK: Correct.
SULLIVAN: So, all the stuff they talk about on "Halftime Report" every day, all the companies in A.I., they're going to have to follow rules that you and your team are ultimately going to mold.
LUTNICK: Correct. So we try to set the guardrails to make sure that the American standards are the standards the world uses, right? That's what we want. We want everyone to use our technology stack, our way of thinking about A.I. and let the world be balanced on ours. Now, really, it's a competition between the American standards and the Chinese standards. So we're out there working hard to make sure that our standards, our foundation, if you will, is what the world uses for A.I.
SULLIVAN: Well, I'm watching CNBC, as well as being on CNBC, and I'm looking at Nvidia getting a deal to be allowed to sell certain chips and do more business into China. That's coming from this administration. Is that a change of heart?
LUTNICK: Well, it's funny, because the Biden administration allowed China to buy these chips last year. So, then we held it up, and then, in the magnets deal with the Chinese, we told them that we would start to resell them. So, remember, these are an older chip. Biden had had them available, and we rethought it. But now that Nvidia came out with their newest chip -- you realize the newest chip is called the Blackwell. Then they have the H200 and H100. This is like the fourth one down. So the fourth one down, we want to keep China using it. We want to keep having the Chinese use the American technology stack because they still rely upon it. And that's key. So we try to play that balance. We don't sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best. I think fourth best is where we have come out that we're cool.
SULLIVAN: Well, fourth best has given the stock a 4.5 percent pop today and an over—
LUTNICK: Well, they can sell a lot of those chips.
SULLIVAN: Well, you got an over $4 trillion market cap, right, which then, when Nvidia rises, it's kind of the tide that lifts a lot of different boats. You look at the Nasdaq. It's up today. But some would argue, why are we giving China any access to chips? How do we square that?
LUTNICK: So the idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own, right? So you want to keep one step ahead of what they can build so they keep buying our chips, because, remember, developers are the key to technology. You want the world's developers to use your tech. So Nvidia is driven to make sure all the developers of the world are still using their technology. So you want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack. And that's the thinking. Donald Trump is on it. He thinks about it. And we have designed the platform model with Nvidia. Remember, we talk to our companies.
SULLIVAN: Yes.
LUTNICK: The Biden administration sort of hated American companies, and the Trump administration loves them.
SULLIVAN: You can't say that.
LUTNICK: Oh, come on. They tried to break them up and all this sort of stuff. The Trump administration—
SULLIVAN: There was lawsuits on Amazon -- Alphabet, but—
LUTNICK: The Trump administration embraces technology companies and we want to work with them and understand them and help them succeed.
SULLIVAN: Let's talk about permitting. We're going to hear from the secretary of the interior in "Power Lunch." I know that's not your purview. That's his. Permitting is everything, because you can get $20 billion invested in the data center here in Pennsylvania, but unless you have a power line to go from the power plant to the data center, it's worthless. So, when we look at permitting, we think, OK, we want to build power lines. That's steel, aluminum and copper. There's some new fears of tariffs on those exact things. Does that hurt or slow down our ability to invest in A.I. infrastructure if there are tariffs on the stuff we need to build that stuff?
LUTNICK: So let's think steel for a minute. We have all seen a steel blast furnace.
SULLIVAN: We are in Pittsburgh. I think it's fairly—
LUTNICK: You know what a blast furnace looks like, right?
SULLIVAN: Yes.
LUTNICK: It looks like pouring molten lava, right? That's what -- right? You have to use so much power to melt that iron ore, right? And the Chinese and the Japanese and the Koreans give that power for free or virtually for free to their steel companies. And then they dump steel on us and put our domestic steel companies out of business. And that's what's happened for years and decades, to the point where if all you do is import steel and all you do is import aluminum and all you do is import copper, how are you going to fight a war? We need steel to be made domestically. And so Donald Trump is saying, I'm going to take that government subsidy off the table. I'm going to put tariffs in to make it equal, so Americans build steel here so that if we want to fight a war, we can make our own ships, our own missiles. And that's the key to Donald Trump's thinking, national security here on our shores.
SULLIVAN: But it's not -- I mean, these are raw materials, right, and minerals. Like it's not just building it. It's about being able to mine it out and take out the iron ore, take out the stuff, the copper from the ground.
LUTNICK: Oh, yes. We don't charge tariffs on the raw material. We charge a tariff on the finished good.
SULLIVAN: Yes.
LUTNICK: The whole idea is, you can bring in the dirt, if you will, but when you try to melt that dirt in a refinery and make a blast furnace, that is the output that we want to make sure we protect American—
SULLIVAN: So, let's just -- let's role-play using like a fake example, because I don't want to talk about any specific companies. So let's say Sullivan Copper comes to Howard Lutnick and says, well, Mr. Secretary, I'd like to spend a billion dollars, open some new copper mines, but I got 10 years in the permitting line.
LUTNICK: Oh, we have got to break that.
SULLIVAN: I will spend the money. I will spend the money, but it's worthless. I can't -- you and I talked about this in Phoenix, Arizona, at TSMC a few months ago.
LUTNICK: We have got to break it. We broke it.
SULLIVAN: There is that logjam where it doesn't matter. We have $90 billion in commitments being made here at this thing, but none of that money will go anywhere if that last mile is not fixed. And that's all I hear from companies is that last mile is the problem. How do we solve that?
LUTNICK: Well, President Trump is on it. That's why he talks about the EPA. That's why we talk about permitting and regulation. We're going to make sure that the states that embrace production now, now, during this Trump administration, they're the ones who are going to get the investment. And if you're playing an old school, slow-rolling everybody, then other states are going to be successful. So the key is -- you're right. We have got to get those permits out the door. But the key is onshore.
SULLIVAN: Yes.
LUTNICK: Get that investment here. And then those states are going to want it to work and they're going to clear the path.
SULLIVAN: Let's talk about something, but I don't want you to tell anybody. It's just between you and I.
LUTNICK: OK, just between you and me.
SULLIVAN: All right, just between you and I. In the next hour, we're going to be speaking with the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, probably a front-runner for the 2028 nomination. Who knows? He's a Democrat. Don't tell anybody. But he's a Democrat. Is he on board? Is he playing? Are we able to cross party lines? Because energy and A.I., that should all be bipartisan, should it not? Shouldn't everybody want to win at A.I. for the United States, regardless of party affiliation?
LUTNICK: Look, the Democrats tried to close ANWR. They closed ANWR, right, the big oil in Alaska that's ours. They closed -- they closed coal plants, right? They close them, whereas President Trump calls it what, clean, beautiful coal, right? We need -- we need power. We need investments. And we think everyone should be on board. And if a governor is not on board, he's going to hurt his state. He's going to hurt his employees.
SULLIVAN: Is Pennsylvania on board? We're here. We're here at Carnegie Mellon. And it's a beautiful day. We're in Pittsburgh. Is -- steel, right?
LUTNICK: They have got the tools. Pennsylvania's got the tools to win.
SULLIVAN: Water? Power?
LUTNICK: Does the governor drive that permitting to make people successful who want to invest here? The government -- a state government has got to make sure that they embrace Donald Trump's vision of onshoring, reshoring and building America. And if they don't, those companies are going to find a nice red state to invest in.
SULLIVAN: Well, we are going to ask him in the next hour. That will be live. So Governor Shapiro will join us as well.
LUTNICK: Pennsylvania's a red state. Don't forget. It went for Donald Trump. It went for Donald Trump.
SULLIVAN: But it's a mix. It's got a Democratic governor and maybe the most important county in America, Erie, just north -- kind of go a little bit northwest-ish of here. We're going to hit that. Stock market, Mr. Secretary, keeps going up. It feels like the market's not believing that the worst of the tariffs is going to happen, something, again, you and I talked about in Phoenix and you have talked about on CNBC with others before. Is the market getting it right? Because a lot of investors are watching the market go up, up, up.
LUTNICK: President Trump is smashing down the barriers that have held American business back for 80 years. Tariffs were on America. So when we tried to sell elsewhere, there were tariffs. And when they tried to sell here, no tariffs. So our industries went overseas. President Trump is reversing that trend, zero tariffs away. Those are the deals he's made. Vietnam, he announced Indonesia just this morning, no tariffs there. They pay tariffs here, switching the asymmetry our way. Let's bring industry back. And that's going to unleash our farmers, our ranchers, our fishermen, and our industries are going to blow out. And that is what the stock market understands. Donald Trump understands business in America.
SULLIVAN: You said in Phoenix that we had -- you had a deal in your hand. You wouldn't tell us who. You wouldn't tell -- I tried, but you wouldn't tell me who the deal was with. Turns out it was with the U.K. Are you confident we can get these big, the big ones, the big deals done?
LUTNICK: I have them done. The question is, President Trump drives the strongest bargain. He's the dealmaker. He makes the deals. This morning, he was on with the president of Indonesia, and he makes the deals. That's how this administration works. We let the greatest dealmaker who's ever been in that office, he makes the deals.
SULLIVAN: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. "I have the deals done." I have a feeling that could move the -- I think that's going to move the market.
LUTNICK: I'm good with that.
SULLIVAN: We shall see. I know you have got a panel. The president's going to be here in a couple of hours. Still got a long way to go. Really appreciate your time today, sir.
LUTNICK: Pleasure.