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3 days ago
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CNBC Transcript: NVIDIA Founder, President & CEO Jensen Huang Speaks with CNBC's Jim Cramer on 'Mad Money' Today
WHEN: Today, Wednesday, May 28, 2025 WHERE: CNBC's "Mad Money" Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with NVIDIA Founder, President & CEO Jensen Huang on CNBC's "Mad Money" (M-F, 6PM-7PM ET) today, Wednesday, May 28. Following is a link to video on All references must be sourced to CNBC. JIM CRAMER: Tonight, we got the single most important quarter of this entire earnings season when NVIDIA reported. There was a lot of hand-wringing about this one as usual, but NVIDIA delivered a huge set of numbers, including a sizable top and bottom line beat, healthy revenue guidance for the current quarter, even after taking an $8 billion sales hit on those export controls that prevent him from doing lots of business in China. So, how did they pull it off? Let's go straight to the source with the man I call the modern-day Leonardo da Vinci, Jensen Huang, the co-founder, president and CEO of NVIDIA. Well, Jensen, welcome back to "Mad Money." JENSEN HUANG: Hey, Jim. It's great to be here. CRAMER: Alright, so let's go to -- it's a remarkable quarter in every single way, but you do say, I'm going to go right there, that China is positioned to lead globally and you do not think that, unless you can sell to China, you can necessarily lead with them. And I look at this market and I'm saying there's $50 billion up for grab. I actually think it could literally be all yours if there weren't export controls. Am I wrong? And how much of that money would flow back to the United States if you could do the sales? HUANG: NVIDIA's market share in China was about 95 percent four years ago. It's about 50 percent today because of the limitations on the products that we sell. $50 billion a year market today, it's growing, just like AI is growing everywhere. Over the course of the next, this four years, the president's administration, we're probably talking about a few hundred billion dollars worth of revenues to NVIDIA, probably tens of billions of dollars of taxes, revenues to the country, thousands of jobs, incredible, incredible opportunity. But more, strategically, more importantly, this is very important. CRAMER: Okay. HUANG: First of all, the China market is, of course, very large, but it's also the home of 50 percent of the world's AI researchers. The platform that succeeds is the platform with the most developers. Just like iPhone is successful because of lots of developers, Windows is successful because of lots of developers, all these platforms succeed because there are a lot of developers. China is home to 50 percent of the AI researchers in the world. And so we want the world to build on American technology stack. We want every developer in the world to prefer the American technology stacks. Once that happens, the developers develop on American technology stacks, American technology stacks will run AI the best all over the world. And so this is, that's probably the most important strategic reason to be in China, because there are so many developers there and because the world is going to adopt technology from one country or another. And we prefer it to be the American technology stack. CRAMER: Well, you know the president has a plan. You say that. He has a vision, and you trust him. You say that. I have to believe that you think that he has to see, either see the light, or he has, and that things that look so dire right now in China may not be as dire, and there could be even as soon as next quarter more business being done than we thought after tonight. HUANG: It's hard to tell. But the most important thing is this, Jim. Our president wants America to win. And he also recognizes that this is an important market. It's a very large market. And the revenues that it could generate for the United States is significant. It's just incredible, $50 billion this year. Look, we're talking about the size of a Boeing, not a Boeing plane, Boeing the company. This is an enormous market. And so I think the opportunity left behind is quite substantial. This is also an excellent way to improve our trade deficit. CRAMER: It would also seem to me that there must be some people who think that they can militarize our, your chips. I can't imagine a scenario where they would decide, you know what, we're going to use NVIDIA chips in our aircraft carriers. We would put them in our submarines. Wouldn't that be foolhardy? We would never use Huawei chips in our missiles. HUANG: That's exactly right. They have plenty of chips themselves. Obviously, we're losing market share to chips that are built locally. China is an extraordinary manufacturing capability. And they are doubling the number of chips that they're building every single year. The technology that's being offered by Huawei is extraordinary. This is an extraordinary technology company. And so we have plenty of competition there. Chinese government has plenty of choices with indigenous technology, which is their preference. So I think that the idea that any -- anyhow, go ahead. CRAMER: But isn't it true that the president has helped you immeasurably, the huge business that you're doing in the Gulf states? When you see him, he obviously is, in many ways, NVIDIA's number one salesperson. Is it asking too much to be able to say, and not only that, Mr. President, I also want you to open China? HUANG: Well, we're going to keep our dialogue going with the administration. And I believe that what we're explaining is ground truth. And we understand the technology best, and we understand how computing works. We understand how AI works, and we have been in China for 30 years. And so this is an area that we have a lot of expertise, and we're going to continue to share that. But let me tell you this, Jim. Listen, the president laid out a bold vision for the United States, for America to reindustrialize, to onshore manufacturing, so that we can have a more resilient supply chain, so that we can create jobs locally, very importantly, so that we become great at manufacturing again, at a time when manufacturing isn't about labor, but it's about, labor only, but it's about technology. And so that vision is incredible. This is going to be, this initiative by the president is likely going to set the United States up for a century, for this century to come. CRAMER: Okay. HUANG: This is going to be a very big deal. CRAMER: Well, let's— HUANG: I also think that he, when he rescinded the AI diffusion rule, it was a visionary move, it was a bold move, and he recognizes that there's an AI race, and we're not alone. And he wants America to win. And so it's not about AI diffusion limitation. It's about AI diffusion maximizing American technology. CRAMER: Okay, so let's— HUANG: And so he sees that. Yes. CRAMER: Okay. so let's talk about the Blackwell ramp, which was amazing, and, of course, we're going to have Ultra, which is incredible, and the demand. Is the demand as, when I saw you the last few times, it sounds like you're running out of superlatives, but demand seems even stronger than GTC. It's even stronger than COMPUTEX. HUANG: The demand keeps growing because there's just more companies. Number one, inference has taken off. That is number one. Inference has taken off. This reasoning AI capability is genuinely a breakthrough. It is now so popular, solving so many problems. And the amount of computation necessary for reasoning, for thinking is 100 times, 1,000 times more than a couple of years ago, when ChatGPT was a one-shot answer AI. And so now these reasoning AIs requires a lot of thinking, a lot of compute. The demand is just incredible. CRAMER: Now, you're telling me even since GTC? HUANG: In the meanwhile, of course, we're getting more customers. Oh, yes, much— CRAMER: But even since GTC, you just increased it. It was 100 times at GTC. Now it's possibly even 1,000? HUANG: Yes. CRAMER: How is this possible, Jensen? And what, why are there still people who are holding back and not seeing what you're doing? We will all have robots. We will all have free, we will have hands-free driving. All of this is going to come about much faster than people realize because of what you're working on. HUANG: It's completely true. It's completely, robotics is definitely within the next three to four, five years. The technology works today. It's starting to work very well today. Now, within -- once a technology becomes realized, becomes possible, it's only a couple of two, three ticks for an engineer to crank it and turn it into something that could be really scaled out in volume. And so self-driving cars are here. That, we know. Robotics is going to be right around the corner, robotics factories being built around the world. Yes, this is the next great growth opportunity. CRAMER: Alright, so let's talk software. I don't think enough is talked about software. I don't think -- we're not talking about Omniverse enough. And we're not talking about the idea that we're not -- you're just not selling these devices. You're selling a full platform that's not duplicatable, which is why you're so far ahead of everybody else. It's not just about the hardware. HUANG: We used to be a chip company, and then we became a systems company. And, Jim, now, we're an entire infrastructure company. If you take a look at what we build, it's an entire factory. And you can't just load up a factory with chips. You have got computing systems. You have got networking systems and switches. But what you have mostly is a mountain of software to get it all to run. When you have got a $50 billion infrastructure, the software necessary to keep it humming and to make it, make the utilization and the efficiency and its throughput as high as possible, that piece of software is invaluable. If the utilization was 10 percent off, that's worth $5 billion. And so this is a very big deal now. Software is just a giant part of our business. CRAMER: Okay, how about what, we have to talk about society. And when I hear what you can do, when I hear what the robots can do, when I know what Boston Dynamics, 1X, when I see what these companies can do, I wonder, is the CEO of Anthropic going to be right when he talks about a bloodbath of white-collar workers, unemployment spiking 10 to 20 percent, mass elimination of jobs? Or isn't your vision that productivity, like whether it be the loom, whether it be the canal, whether it be the steam engine, these were all generators of jobs, not retractors of jobs? HUANG: It's a generator of jobs. There are surely different views. Let me give you this view. CRAMER: Okay. HUANG: The, there's a labor shortage between now and the end of the decade that's measured in some 30, 40, 50 million short. If you just translate 50 million people short in labor force and translate that to GDP growth, it's extraordinary. It's approximately about the size of the United States. And so the ability for us to expand what is today a limited and short labor shortage, we around the world should be able to expand our GDP. And that's our future, to be able to turn these agents, which are essentially work force robots, information robots, and human robots, physical robots, to expand the world's GDP. CRAMER: Alright, one last question from me. I want to be sure that we have a smooth transition to the next iteration, to Ultra, and then even to Rubin. How are we feeling? Because I know that there was a glitch. I got a little too aggressive in thinking everything would be smooth. I got ahead. I don't want to get ahead of myself this time. We looking good? HUANG: Well, first of all, Jim, remember, we made last quarter. We made the quarter before that. So it was not easy. It was not easy. And let me tell you why it wasn't easy. In the case of Grace Blackwell, because of this thinking machine we wanted to create, this reasoning AI factory we wanted to create, we changed the architecture of these AI supercomputers. CRAMER: Right. HUANG: The architecture is completely different. And it's extraordinarily complex. And so, anyways, now the entire supply chain, not only that. We enabled a very, very large supply chain to be able to build these things, every ODM, every OEM, CSPs, they have now got it up and running. CRAMER: Okay. HUANG: Now, here's the really great thing. Ultra is exactly the same architecture, exactly the same chassis. And so we will just slip it right in and keep running. CRAMER: Alright, we're going to leave it there. I wish you the best of luck. Congratulations on an amazing quarter. And let's see if the president's plan includes opening China back for you. Thank you so much, Jensen Huang. HUANG: Thank you, Jim. CRAMER: Absolutely, president, founder, CEO of— HUANG: Off to the races. CRAMER: Alright, NVIDIA. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it. HUANG: Thank you, Jim. Good to see you.
CNBC
20-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Excerpts: IAC & Expedia Chairman & Senior Executive and 'Who Knew' Author Barry Diller Speaks with CNBC's 'Squawk Box' Today
WHEN: Today, Tuesday, May 20, 2025 WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box" Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with IAC & Expedia Chairman & Senior Executive and "Who Knew" Author Barry Diller on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Tuesday, May 20. Following are links to video on and All references must be sourced to CNBC. DILLER ON LAUNCHING FOX TV ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Welcome back to "Squawk Box." Barry Diller's memoir, "Who Knew" is available today. And I sat down with Diller in a wide-ranging interview last week in downtown Manhattan, and talked about so many things. He's going to be with us in just a little bit live. But we started by talking about his experience launching the fourth TV network in this country, Fox and he did it with Rupert Murdoch back in 1986. BARRY DILLER: When Rupert, who I was described as, kind of the Sun God, when the Sun God smiles on you, ain't nothing like it. And the way he did me a great good favor, when I went to him and said, I want to be a partner in this enterprise I've helped build. And he said, there's really only one principle, and this is a family company, and you're not in my family and I left. SORKIN: So I want to ask you about that moment because you're right. He says, "This is a family company and you are not a member." DILLER: Yeah. SORKIN: And you wrote that your delusions at that moment about maybe having an opportunity to sit at that table, maybe it was as a almost member of the family crumbles. What did you think— DILLER: I thought, I thought I'd been told, what did I think prior to? SORKIN: Prior to him saying that, did you think that he— DILLER: No, I think any employee, any good employee, thinks the company is theirs or should and is proprietary towards it, and any good employee acts like it is theirs and it is a delusion because it isn't. DILLER ON MALONE FEUD SORKIN: We talked about a lot of delusions. One of the things that we also discussed was one of the most challenging times in Diller's career, which was a court battle with someone that he considered a friend and a mentor, John Malone, whose company Liberty Media ended up suing IAC when Diller proposed to split up his company into five companies. And he reflected on that battle and what happened. DILLER: I was really devastated by it because, you know, first of all, to say the least control is a big part of my life and I did utterly, I had a lifetime proxy on these shares, which meant I totally controlled the entity and we were in Delaware court, to quote, take it away. So it went like right to my heart. SORKIN: So tell me, when you got the apology, what you felt like. DILLER: I felt a good, decent man reclaimed himself. I mean, he wrote me a lovely note. When it was over and it was not only an exhale to say the least, which I felt good about, but what I felt very good about is this person I revered, who I'd been associated with then for 20 years or so, did the right thing in the end because, by the way, what I didn't say is when John Malone testified, our lawyer said it's over, John Malone would not cove to the lies that his executives made. He told the truth. DILLER ON GEORGE LUCAS & "RAIDERS" SORKIN: And then we got into this story, which is really quite fascinating. Among the many hits that Dillard negotiated his career, and there are so many of them, one was "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Now, if you get in to read this book, you'll find out that it didn't go exactly as he wanted to specifically with another famed man, George Lucas. DILLER: When we made the "Raiders" deal, which was at that time, probably the priciest deal ever made, I said one thing, okay, we're going to do this, but I'm never going to be in the situation of Fox, which made "Star Wars" and had a one license picture, one license deal for the picture, and had no rights after that. So I said, all I care about, other than the absurd deal we agreed to, is that the sequel rights are nailed so tight and so clear, they will never, ever be discussed again. It was my it was it was the one thing I did and that's what we did. SORKIN: And then— DILLER: Well, and then we made "Raiders." It was this smash, huge hit. And a year or two later, up comes the sequel, and George Lucas says, I want to do the sequel. And we said, fantastic. And then it was but we want to change the deal. I said, you want to change the sacrosanct deal. Yeah, it's just not good enough for us. The end, we caved. We had no choice, and we made a new deal. SORKIN: What did you learn about that? Because there are a couple of instances in this book where there's clearly deals you think you have, or things that you're expecting one way to happen, and then it's a fascinating story, all of a sudden things happen, and you realize that maybe leverage you thought you had in the beginning you don't necessarily have later. DILLER: You're always going to have changed circumstances. But when you have an honorable agreement, breaking it, that's not leverage. That's thievery to me. DILLER ON HIS MEMOIR SORKIN: Barry Diller's memoir is out today. It is called "Who Knew." It tells the life story of a familiar face to our viewers here on "Squawk Box" from Diller's formative years growing up in Hollywood to the start of his business career, launching movie of the week on TV for ABC at the age of 27, leading Paramount Pictures, getting Fox TV off the ground with Rupert Murdoch and so many stories in between. Last week, I spoke with Barry Diller in downtown Manhattan, and we talked about what led him to write a memoir about his life and his career and some of the surprises and twists about his personal life that came up across the way. DILLER: Well, I thought only one thing, which is, it's a good story, and it's a good cracking story, if I could tell it. SORKIN: Barry Diller has shaped the media world for more than half a century, redefining television, launching networks and backing bold ideas long before they were safe bets. The memoir of his life, titled "Who Knew," is already generating lots of attention. DILLER: All this closet stuff. I mean, if I've been in a closet, it has been the bright, most brightly lit closet with a glass door that you've ever seen. You know, I understand kind of the catnip of media and but all this stuff about my sexuality at my freaking age is just seems to me, well, it's kind of it's obvious and over the top. SORKIN: Diller opens up about his sexuality and his relationship with his wife, Diane von Furstenberg, the great love of his life. DILLER: She said to me, six months ago or a year ago, when I knew I was gonna publish she said, Just get ready. I said, get ready? What are you talking about? You just get ready. SORKIN: In the book, you talk about having a code. DILLER: I just said I didn't want to live a hypocritical life, and so I it was really rules. It was, you know, in a way, rules of conduct that I just adopted for myself. Interestingly, when I was like 20, 21, 20, somewhere around that period, I knew enough, and I said, well, there are things I will do and I won't do and and those are my rules. And it was a, it was adopted because I didn't want to be a hypocrite and yet I didn't want to tell anybody anything. So I said, I have to have rules for that, and I made them up. SORKIN: Rules for a life he lived in fear, but Diller says that gave him a superpower that propelled his career in business. DILLER: If you have one great fear, you don't have room for many others. And I think that in a weird way, as painful, you know, as the early development was, I think that's actually a great gift, gift, odd, crazy-ish gift that I was given that it allowed me to be fearless in so many other areas. SORKIN: What do you think you learned about yourself in the process of this? DILLER: I've always had a problem living in the moment, and so doing it, actually it's living in the old moments since I didn't really live in those moments at the time, was kind of fun for me, and I learned things in the process of doing it that I had never known. SORKIN: You just said something that's fascinating to me, and I think it's actually true of some more successful people in the world, but I also think it's a bit of a prison. You just said you don't live in the moment. DILLER: Yep. SORKIN: I think that you live oftentimes in the future. I think you're often you can be somewhere, but you're thinking about other things that you are hoping and projecting are going to happen in the future. Is that what's happening? DILLER: Yeah. For a lot of reasons, I worried that if I lived too much in the moment, it would take things away from me. I thought if I lived in the moment, it would make me cynical. One of the things I've always tried to hold on to is a certain kind of naivete. DILLER ON STATE OF MEDIA, DEALMAKING, ENTERTAINMENT & MORE SORKIN: Okay. We're going to talk about all sorts of deals that are in the headlines now. But I have one question about deals in your book. Was there any of the deals that you talk about in the book, something that you didn't want to talk about? Was there any that they have -- DILLER: What do you mean didn't want to? SORKIN: Well, is there anything in the book where you were like, I'm not -- because remember, there were parts of the book I think you weren't sure you were going to publish. DILLER: Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't think there was any -- I think I -- when I approached talking about probably the, well, the third Paramount little try, I actually took out of the book. BECKY QUICK: Why? DILLER: Because I thought, why should I put another thing in that I didn't do rather than the things that I did do? Because while we were in there for three or four months— SORKIN: Which is the third try. Is this the most recent try? DILLER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. SORKIN: You mean around the Skydance situation? DILLER: Yeah. SORKIN: Okay, well, here we are then. So, let's go for it. If it's not in the book, we can do it here. DILLER: Well, no, it doesn't matter. It was. We were in there for a few months, and I realized they're about duty than desire. Duty in the sense that it would be a great -- first of all, a great way to end a book, given that my life was Paramount, kind of twice. But in the end, I thought, I just don't want to do that. And so, we dropped out. QUICK: Didn't want— DILLER: And we would have lost anyway, because who's, who wants to be in an auction with someone who has a better balance sheet? And Larry Ellison has a better balance sheet than I do. QUICK: Didn't want to do it in the sense that it didn't make business sense from— DILLER: No, no. By the way, I think it makes enormous business sense, I think so, I think they bought it abominably cheap. And so no, I absolutely think it -- it's there for the doing. And so no, I think it's a perfectly legitimate economic transaction. SORKIN: Okay. Let me ask you a more complicated one. DILLER: What was that? SORKIN: So, that deal is not closed yet. And there is a real question about whether it will close because it sounds like— DILLER: Oh, it will close. SORKIN: Well, maybe it will, but the question is— DILLER: I mean— SORKIN: What the, what Shari Redstone and that team is going to ultimately have to do -- DILLER: Yes. Well, they have— SORKIN: To effectively placate the administration. You saw just yesterday, they effectively fired the head of CBS News, and they pushed out the head of "60 Minutes" a couple of weeks earlier. DILLER: Yeah. SORKIN: What would you, what would you do if you were in that situation? DILLER: Oh, I hope I'd brave it through. I hope I would, but I didn't have a guillotine at my neck, as Shari Redstone has because for her, if that deal does not go through, I mean, she was in technical bankruptcy. So, I guess you do what you have to do. Even saying that is kind of seems like I wish not. What I think is heinous is that for a stupid lawsuit, there is no one who thinks this lawsuit has any merit. At least I haven't heard anyone. Maybe a plaintiff's lawyer, but even that would have to cock his eyes. So, for, it is utterly frivolous. So, you ought to think, fine. Go through. Sue us. But the idea that the FCC actually says that is then a standard for holding up the transaction? QUICK: Look, we've seen this before though. DILLER: I mean, what have we come to? Where have we seen this before? QUICK: With the AT&T deal in the first Trump administration that was put upon and put upon and put upon before you had the spin before -- to put everything together, before it was unspun again. DILLER: Yeah. And by the way, of course, eventually, it happened because there was nothing to stand in its way. There's nothing— QUICK: But it took so long to go through that process. DILLER: There's nothing— QUICK: You can't fight city hall. DILLER: There is nothing to stand in the way that's legitimate of this deal. Nothing. Whether they settle it or not, I don't know. SORKIN: Let me ask you about a different deal. DILLER: Yeah. SORKIN: I don't know what you thought of Charter and Cox getting together just this past— DILLER: Inevitable. SORKIN: Inevitable? DILLER: Absolutely. SORKIN: And do you think that deal will go through? DILLER: Sure. They don't compete with each other. Why wouldn't it? SORKIN: And what ultimately happens then to, for example, parent company of this network, at least currently? Because we're -- it's a spinoff. But I think long term— DILLER: You are all in such great shape. SORKIN: God bless. DILLER: By the way, let it go out, buy the stock, which will probably trade at a very low multiple. It'll be money good really quickly. It's a great— QUICK: Why? SORKIN: From your lips. From your lips. QUICK: Why? What's the— DILLER: Because the— QUICK: What's the street missing? DILLER: Because right now, everything linear is being discounted. QUICK: Yeah. DILLER: Everything. What will happen? Just like happened in the record business, which is you had this great deaccessioning and then because people wanted records, old term, and streaming came along, it got resurrected. What will happen to these linear channels is they're going to all get reconnected into a bundle. And this is not going to be a— QUICK: And the streaming, the streaming money will make up for -- DILLER: This is not going to be a world of a la carte. QUICK: Yeah. DILLER: So, eventually all that stuff gets reconnected. Not necessarily the incredible high price points that it was, but legitimately enough to pay the bills with a lot left over. So, it's just a matter of time. SORKIN: Do you feel that way about all of these businesses? I mean, one of the, you know, there's this business then, you know, David Zaslav potentially is— DILLER: They're doing the same. SORKIN: Pushing off some of his linear channels, including maybe CNN. And you're going to see, you might see a lot of this. DILLER: Yeah. What an opportunity. SORKIN: And so how long does it take to get resolved? DILLER: Oh, you mean for it to— QUICK: Come back? DILLER: Well, first of all, by the way— SORKIN: If we're sitting here in five years from now— DILLER: Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. These are all very profitable businesses. That -- the ability of Warner to spin this off is because it can take an awful lot of debt with it, because they're legitimate businesses that have billions of dollars of cash flow. It's totally reasonable. By the way, I wouldn't spin them off. SORKIN: You wouldn't? DILLER: No. QUICK: Why? DILLER: Because I think they're enormously valuable. QUICK: Even if you're Brian Roberts, and you hold a voting control in the spinoff company, too? DILLER: Well, no, look, I think -- again, I think keeping them is probably better. But if you're going to spin them off and you can keep control of them, which is vital, because what you don't want is someone to come in and cobble them up for scrap if they're out there with no protection. Having Brian, the best steward, having voting control of it protects it for the time it will take for it all to get reconnected, which I say is 3 to 5 years. SORKIN: Okay. DILLER: But what do I know. SORKIN: There's another -- there is a lot. There's another question, though, about -- in the media business right now, which is just how value -- how valuable, what people think of as the most valuable parts of these businesses really are anymore, which is some of the streaming businesses? So, you know, how valuable ultimately is HBO Max or, by the way, Peacock and NBC? Or you can go down the line, meaning the businesses, there are certain businesses that are being split up. DILLER: Yeah, I get the point. SORKIN: You get it? DILLER: Sorry. Here I go. The businesses are all okay. They're just never going to be, they can't really be big growth businesses anymore. The old, you know, the hegemony has passed from the Hollywood, quote, studios. They will no longer dominate things. Everything now is dominated by the tech overlords because they really control it. Netflix, Amazon and Apple control the entertainment business. They have, I don't know, what would you say, 100 times the resources of these legacy companies and they're in control. They ain't giving it up. Doesn't mean these other companies can't survive. They will survive. They'll just be smaller entities.
CNBC
14-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Medicaid work requirements would 'kick a lot of people off' of health care coverage, Sen. Warnock says
Republican lawmakers may be looking at substantial cuts to Medicaid in upcoming reconciliation legislation. But one method of restricting access to coverage — work requirements — could have disastrous results for Americans, based on efforts in Arkansas and Georgia to implement such policies, according to a new report issued by Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga. Those rules typically require people to meet certain thresholds, such as a set number of hours of work per month, to qualify for Medicaid coverage. While labeled as "work requirements," they would be more correctly called "work reporting requirements" because they involve so many rules, forms and other red tape that they can prevent working Americans from accessing coverage, according to Warnock. "These work reporting requirements are not incentivizing work; there's no evidence of that," Warnock said in an interview with "What we see is that this is a good way to kick a lot of people off of their health care — hardworking everyday Americans who are struggling," Warnock said. A Republican House budget resolution included about $880 billion in spending cuts through 2034 from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In a March report, the Congressional Budget Office found Republicans cannot achieve their budget goals without cutting Medicaid. House Republicans on Sunday released draft legislative language of the reconciliation bill. Work requirements are among the eligibility policies on the table. Based on the current proposal, 9.7 million to 14.4 million people would be at risk for losing Medicaid coverage in 2034 if they are unable to show they meet the work requirements, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., who is chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in support of the work hurdles. "When so many Americans who are truly in need rely on Medicaid for life-saving services, Washington can't afford to undermine the program further by subsidizing capable adults who choose not to work," Guthrie wrote in the op-ed published on Sunday. "That's why our bill would implement sensible work requirements," Guthrie wrote. Those requirements would be in line with current policies, according to Guthrie, where working adults, seniors on Medicare and veterans have all worked in exchange for health coverage eligibility. However, Warnock argues that thinking is backwards. By providing health care coverage without those requirements, that will then help encourage people to work because they are getting the care they need to be healthy, he said. "If you provide basic health care to the people who are eligible, you actually have more people working," Warnock said. "You have a stronger economy." Two states — Arkansas and Georgia — have tested work reporting requirements for Medicaid, with subpar results, according to Warnock's report. "These are two cautionary tales, and the idea of now expanding a failed experiment nationwide is a bad idea," Warnock said. Georgia, Warnock's home state, is currently the only one in the country that has Medicaid work reporting requirements in place. The state's program, Georgia Pathways to Coverage, lets adults qualify if they have 80 hours of qualifying work per month, have income below the federal poverty line and pay mandatory premiums. The program, which was implemented on July 1, 2023, has lackluster enrollment, according to Warnock's report. Twenty months in, the program has only enrolled around 7,000 people, while nearly 500,000 people need health care coverage in Georgia, according to Warnock. "It gets a big fat 'F,'" Warnock said of the program. "It's failed." Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and some other state Republicans have spoken about the program as a success. Georgia is among the states that opted not to expand Medicaid, and therefore make coverage more accessible, following the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, Arkansas did implement Medicaid expansion in 2014 and subsequently put work requirements in place from 2018 to 2019. However, those efforts failed, with 18,000 people losing Medicaid coverage in the first seven months and only a small share of people able to get coverage back the following year, according to a 2023 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. More from Personal Finance:Two key issues to watch in House Republican tax debateAs student loan collections resume, credit scores tumbleStagflation is a looming economic risk. What it means for your money Low compliance with work requirements may come from a variety of factors that have nothing to do with employment, according to research from the Urban Institute. That may include limited access to the internet or transportation, health limitations or disabilities and low education levels. Others may simply not quite meet the requirements their states have set out. That is the case for Heather Payne, 52, of Dalton, Georgia, who suffered a series of strokes in 2022. As a result, Payne can no longer work as a traveling nurse and has opted to enroll in graduate school to become a nurse practitioner, a role that will be less physically grueling. "I really do love nursing so much, and I cannot continue to do it the same way that I used to do it since my strokes," Payne said. While Payne is considered a full-time student, she is just short of the hours to qualify for Medicaid under Georgia's work requirements. As a result, she is paying for private health care coverage with her tuition, which is adding to the debts she will have to pay off once she graduates. Because her health insurance plan doesn't cover all her care, she estimates she's incurred "tens of thousands of dollars" in medical debt. Payne, who said she is "not very savvy on politics," attended President Joe Biden's 2024 State of the Union Address in Washington, D.C., as Warnock's guest in an effort to draw attention to the coverage gap. The U.S. is one of the few industrialized countries without universal health coverage, which is "really kind of embarrassing," Payne said. "And instead of trying to go toward that, we're trying to yank it away from everyone possible," Payne said.
CNBC
12-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Excerpts: United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Speaks with CNBC's 'Squawk Box' Today
WHEN: Today, Monday, May 12, 2025 WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box" Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Monday, May 12. Following are links to video on and All references must be sourced to CNBC. BESSENT ON UNITED STATES AND CHINA RELATIONS BESSENT: I would characterize it very much as President Trump, the equivalent of President Trump's relationship with party Chairman Xi. They have a good relationship, but they both advocate strongly for their respective countries, for their respective citizens. So it was always respectful. We have the two largest economies in the world. We were firm and we moved forward. We tried to identify shared interests. We came with a list of problems that we were trying to solve, and I think we did a good job on that. BESSENT ON 90 DAY PAUSE BESSENT: This is a 90 day pause for our tariff program. We had a plan, we had a process. And now what we have with the Chinese is a mechanism to avoid the upward tariff pressure like we did last time. So this is a 90 day pause. BESSENT ON CHINA DUAL CIRCULATION BESSENT: Dual circulation means export and domestic use. Dual circulation cannot mean that China overproduces and that only Chinese goods are consumed in China, and then they export the excess to the rest of the world. So we have had the equivalent because of these high tariff rates of an embargo on China, and those goods are going to leak to the rest of the world. So, you know, our negotiations, we don't need to tell other countries what they need to do. They are seeing this wave of Chinese goods coming to their shore. They have to find a home, and that could be at a discount price, undercutting local producers. BESSE ON DECOUPLING BESSENT: We do not want a generalized decoupling from China. But what we do want is a decoupling for strategic necessities, which we were unable to obtain during Covid and we realized that efficient supply chains were not resilient supply chains. BESSENT ON GOAL TO OPEN CHINA FOR AMERICAN BUSINESSES BESSENT: One of the goals here is to open China for American businesses in a fair way. We want American businesses to be able to sell into China. And part of the goal is bringing down these unfair non-tariff trade barriers and that's what we will be focusing on. BESSENT ON TARIFFS BESSENT: If we were going to see any kind of an economic downside from that, it would already be apparent, I would think. And the economic data has surprised on the upside. And now that we have brought these very high tariffs down to 10%, I think the markets, business people live in the future. So, I think we can go through at that 10% baseline, which is very easily, easy to calibrate with.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Judge dismisses most of the FTX claims against Tom Brady
When the crypto-trading platform FTX imploded, various celebrity endorsers found themselves on the wrong end of a civil action. Now, a judge has dismissed most of the claims against a group of big names, including Tom Brady. Via MacKenzie Sigalos of a federal judge in Florida has found that the plaintiffs failed to prove that Brady and others had sufficient knowledge that FTX and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried were engaged in misconduct. Other defendants include Gisele Bündchen, Steph Curry, Shohei Ohtani, Larry David, the Golden State Warriors, Udonis Haslem, David Ortiz, and Naomi Osaka. The judge explained that, even thought Brady and others may have been "uninformed, negligent, or even reckless,' the plaintiffs failed to show that they had actual knowledge of fraud or intent to deceive or defraud FTX investors. The judge did not dismiss claims based on Florida and Oklahoma securities laws; both states prohibit the sale of unregistered securities. Also, the plaintiffs were given an opportunity to amend their complaint, which could result in fresh claims that will stick. Per the report, Shaquille O'Neal reached a settlement the FTX investors last month. Brady had been a prominent endorser of what ultimately was a house of cards. It was if nothing else a major embarrassment for the six-time Super Bowl winner. The financial fiasco hasn't really stuck to him the way it could have and arguably should have. As Brady said in one of his commercials, "FTX is the safest and easiest way to buy crypto." (It was not.) Brady and others could still end up being stuck with legal responsibility to partially compensate some of the folks who lost money when they took Brady's advice and gave FTX their money.
