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CNBC
15-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Transcript: United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Speaks with CNBC's Brian Sullivan on 'Halftime Report' Today
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 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.
Wakala News
06-04-2025
- Business
- Wakala News
Transcript: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on 'Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,' April 6, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that aired on 'Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan' on April 6, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Secretary, welcome to 'Face the Nation.' COMMERCE SECRETARY HOWARD LUTNICK: Great to be here. MARGARET BRENNAN: We see about 60% of Americans have money in the stock market, which mean that retirees could be just as concerned as hedge fund managers this morning. Did you expect this level of shock in the financial markets? SEC. LUTNICK: Well, you've got to realize this is a national security issue. I mean, we don't make medicine in this country anymore. We don't make ships. We don't have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle, right? All our semiconductors are made overseas. So every button we press when we try to start our car or even use our microwave, these are all semiconductors. They're all made elsewhere. We've got to start to protect ourselves, and we've got to stop having all the countries of the world ripping us off. We have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and the rest of the world has a surplus with us. They're earning our money. They're taking our money, and Donald Trump has seen this, and he's going to stop it. So it is going to be a big change. Of course, it's going to be a big change, but the rest of the world has been ripping us off for all these many years. Donald Trump has seen it. He's spoken about it– MARGARET BRENNAN: –I understand that and– SEC. LUTNICK: –and he's just not going to take it anymore. And that's his model. MARGARET BRENNAN: And that was abundantly clear during the presidential campaign, how much the president truly believes in tariffs and putting them at the center of his economic policy, but you saw absolute panic in the global markets. Did you expect that or were you surprised? SEC. LUTNICK: No, I think the point is, you need to reset the power of the United States of America and reset it against all our allies and our enemies alike. The- the idea that all the countries of the world can run trade surpluses with America and buy our things with us– remember, $1.2 trillion. in 1980 we were a net investor- meaning we owned more of the rest of the world than they owned of us– MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah, it's a different world now, it's a different market. SEC. LUTNICK: And now- and now they own 18- they own $18 trillion of us, net. So that means the rest of the- every year when we run a $1.2 trillion deficit, the rest of the world buys $1.2 trillion of America, and it goes up and up and up. And eventually we're not going to own America, and we are going to be owned by the rest of the world. MARGARET BRENNAN: Are you talking about– SEC. LUTNICK: Imagine if we had a war and we can't build a ship, we can't fly a plane. We can't build our own planes– MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay– SEC. LUTNICK: –we don't have our own semiconductors. This is what the President is here to fix for America. It's- he- in his hands, and he wants to fix America. This is his chance– MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. So– SEC. LUTNICK: –to fix America, and we need him to fix it for our children and our grandchildren. MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, but for- for businesses to do what you're doing, because what I hear you laying out there is a plan to re-industrialize the United States and to bring companies back to America. For a CEO to choose to invest– SEC. LUTNICK: Well said. Well said. MARGARET BRENNAN: –but for a CEO to make those decisions- you know this- they need certainty. They need to know if it costs them more to stay overseas, or if it costs them more to move here. So can you give them clarity, so that they don't just cut jobs because they're dealing with the cost of these tariff- tariffs. Can you tell them how long they're staying in place? SEC. LUTNICK: Absolutely. The United States of America is going to protect the people who invest in America. Trillions and trillions of dollars- you heard the President speak about it- are coming to invest in America. This is the economy of the world. We are the consumer of the world, and companies need to build it here, and we will protect them for building it here. MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, so– SEC. LUTNICK: We will help the American workers, yes. American workers are more expensive, but they're better. MARGARET BRENNAN: I got it– SEC. LUTNICK: We're going to protect all the factories that come to America, and that's what's coming here. So, the President is on it– (CROSSTALK) MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, is the 10% tariff permanent? SEC. LUTNICK: He's going to protect them- well, remember, this is a national security issue– MARGARET BRENNAN: –I got it. Is the 10% tariff permanent? SEC. LUTNICK: –and he needs to address our budget deficit- that- the, you know, the laws of America are the laws of America, he would like it to be that we need to protect the companies that invest here, and we are going to protect the companies that invest here. That is the policy of the United States of America. That's why trillions of dollars are coming here. The rip off of the- of the United States of America is over. All these companies are going to come and invest here. That's what they're doing. That's why they've committed trillions of dollars. They know this is the economy– MARGARET BRENNAN: – Okay, Mr. Secretary, though– SEC. LUTNICK: –this is the place to go. MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Secretary, the campaign's over. You won. So I'm asking what the plan is. So the treasury secretary said on another network, 'we're going to hold the course.' 'It's not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks.' That makes it sound like the tariffs are staying in place at least for days or weeks. Is that correct? Or is the President considering postponing implementation to negotiate? SEC. LUTNICK: There is no postponing. They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks. That is sort of obvious. The president needs to reset global trade. Everybody has a trade surplus and we have a trade deficit. We are paying away our future and our lives. Come- the countries of the world are ripping us off, and it's got to end. The President has made it crystal, crystal clear. This is the policy we're going to protect. The factories that come build in America, we're going to protect them. They're going to be successful. That's why they're going to build in America, the greatest economy in the earth. All of these companies are going to come and build here. MARGARET BRENNAN: So when three of the President's other economic advisers, who are on other networks today, say that 50 different countries have been calling the White House to try to talk about the tariffs, what does that mean? Because that makes it sound like there is a negotiation, which is different from saying the tariffs are permanent. SEC. LUTNICK: Well, what it shows is that all these countries know that they've been ripping us off, and the day has come for that to end. Now the problem is, it's not just tariffs- like, I'll give you an example, like Vietnam said they'd like to be zero-zero. Remember, Vietnam sends us $120 billion worth of goods every year– MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes, cheap manufacturing SEC. LUTNICK: And we send them about $12 billion- wait, we send them $12 billion. So it's not the tariffs. It has nothing to do with tariffs. If they went to zero-zero, they would go to 200 billion with us. We need to stop the rip off, and zero-zero is- is the way– MARGARET BRENNAN: –I know but we don't have zero-zero, sir. SEC. LUTNICK: –to make it more of a rip off. We need– MARGARET BRENNAN: We don't have zero-zero actually, because when we saw the president stand in the Rose Garden holding up that chart that you helped make, that- that wasn't actually tariffs. That was actually confusing to investors, because it was some kind of other formula, and the countries themselves seemed kind of random. Like, why are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which don't export to the United States and are quite literally inhabited by penguins, why do they face a 10% tariff? Did you use AI to generate this? SEC. LUTNICK: No. No, the idea- look, the idea is that there are no countries left off. MARGARET BRENNAN: Why are they on the list? SEC. LUTNICK: Because the idea- what happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. Any country- like we had tariffs, the President put tariffs on China, right, in 2018, and then what China started doing is they started going through other countries to America. They just built through other countries, through America. And so, the President knows that, he's tired of it, and he's going to fix that. So basically he said, look, I can't let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them– MARGARET BRENNAN: Through the Heard Islands. SEC. LUTNICK: –so the end of those loopholes- these ridiculous loopholes. And now what he's trying to say is, I'm going to fix the trade deficit of the United States of America. It's a national security issue. We need to make medicine. We need to make semiconductors. We need to make ships. We need to have steel and aluminum. Come on, we need the greatness of America to actually be built in America. And he's tired of getting ripped off by the rest of the world. MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, but just to be clear, April 9, the so-called retaliatory tariffs- the reciprocal tariffs, I should say. Are those coming or are they open to negotiation? SEC. LUTNICK: The tariffs are coming. He announced it, and he wasn't kidding. The tariffs are coming. Of course they are. MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Is the administration considering any kind of offset, any kind of subsidy? You mentioned the first administration, there was some bailout to farmers to help them deal with the pain from Chinese retaliation. Are you looking at that now? SEC. LUTNICK: I'm- not that I've- I have not participated in any meetings with respect to that. The country is focused on- you realize, trillions of dollars of factories are going to be built in America. That's huge GDP. The factories being built in America are huge GDP– (BEGIN CROSSTALK) MARGARET BRENNAN: That takes years– SEC. LUTNICK: And that is going to matter to us. MARGARET BRENNAN: And you said that robots are going to fill those jobs. So those aren't union worker jobs. SEC. LUTNICK: No, it's really automated jobs. It's automated factories- automated factories. But the key is, who's going to build the factories? Who's going to operate the factories? Who's going to make them work? Great American workers. You know, we are going to replace– MARGARET BRENNAN: You said robots on other networks. You said that to FOX. SEC. LUTNICK: –the armies of millions of people- well, remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little- little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America. It's going to be automated and great Americans- the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They're going to be mechanics. There's going to be HVAC specialists. There's going to be electricians, the tradecraft of America. Our high school educated Americans- the core to our workforce, is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America. That's what's going to build our next generation of America. (END CROSSTALK) MARGARET BRENNAN: Are you concerned, in the time it will take for a company to move to America, that it will benefit China in the- in the immediate term, that other markets will look to other suppliers instead of dealing with the United States? SEC. LUTNICK: That is ridiculous. The problem is, everyone in the world sells to us. Our economy is the consumer of the world. We are the only one with a trade deficit. The rest of the world has a trade surplus. Why does Europe have a trade surplus? Is there something about Europe that's special? Seriously, are they a different world than we are? Why are they selling 200 billion a year– MARGARET BRENNAN: Oh, Mr. Secretary. SEC. LUTNICK: –more to us. It's because it's not fair. The rules are made not fair, and President Trump is going to fix them, and he's doing it for America, and he's doing it for your children and mine and our grandchildren. This is the moment that the United States of America takes hold of itself, and Donald Trump's been talking about this his whole life. This is Donald Trump's agenda, and we're all here to help him execute it.
