US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Talks New US-China Trade Truce
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I'm Kayleigh Lyons alongside Joe Matthew in Washington. We wanna go live to the North Lawn of the White House now where we're joined in an exclusive conversation by the US Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. Mr. Secretary, welcome back to Bloomberg TV and radio. You of course just left the East Room where President Trump held this one big beautiful event celebrating a bill that has yet to pass the Senate or repass the House. And obviously the parliamentarian in the Senate has thrown up some hurdles

today. Is the parliamentarian making this effort harder, making it harder to meet the president's deadline of July 4th? I think reconciliation has a process and we all respect the process. So I think they're just going through the way they do things in the Senate. And I think it's going to work out great for the president.

Secretary, it's good to see you. Welcome to Balance of Power once again. Your thoughts on some of the complications that we're hearing about beyond the parliamentarian. We've got the SALT caucus to satisfy. There are still questions about the level of cuts in the president's big, beautiful bill. Timeline is one thing. The final result is another here. When you consider what we just saw there in the East Room, what is there to celebrate today?

Well, I think today was motivational. You know, what we're doing is we're getting everybody together and saying, let's go, let's go pass this bill, right? There's lots of people, as the president said, there's lots of people who are, uh,

grandstanders, a few people that want to make their point. They want to get their moment in the sun, their big moment of fame. But in the end of the day, the Republican Party is behind Donald Trump. They're going to pass this bill. It'll be the largest tax cut in the history of the United States of America.

Or imagine if they didn't pass it, it would be the largest tax increase. So who isn't going to back the largest tax cut in the history of America? No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, really delivering on his promises. So I think we're all really excited about what's coming, and it's coming in the next week or two.

Well, when we consider who might not be super eager to vote on this package, Mr. Secretary, the aforementioned Joe caucus that or salt caucus that Joe was just referring to is still threatening basically not to support this measure. They found the first offer from the Treasury Department on some kind of compromise unsatisfactory. We understand there will be more meetings happening today. But are you as a New Yorker going to have to get involved in this as well? You know how close to home this issue is for those members.

Sure. But, you know, what's going to happen is these members and the senators, they're talking, they're pounding it out, they're working it out. And I am confident they're going to reach a consensus and this bill is going to pass. You know, look, this is hard fought. It's one big, beautiful bill, which means the key word is big. It covers all of

of the things that the president promised. And that's a huge amount of things to get accomplished. And I think we're feeling positive and we're feeling optimistic. And sure, is it a lot of work? Oh my gosh, it's a lot of work. Speaker Johnson and Senator Thune are doing a great job. And I think you're going to see this pass. It's hard work, but it's coming our way.

Secretary, I'm really interested in exploring the relationship between the tax bill and tariffs. If you can maybe take us by the hand here. Does the tax bill only work when you have the revenue coming from tariffs? And we're, of course, having this conversation as we walk ever closer to July 9th, the deadline here for the reciprocals. If the bill alters anymore, does the tariff program need to change with it?

Not at all. The tariff program is in the power of the presidency. Congress has given the president the power to work on these tariffs and to set these tariffs. So that's presidential power. So what's really interesting is this big, beautiful bill does not count the $88 billion of tariff revenue we've received. And now we're earning up to $30 billion a month

in tariff revenue so far. And as you get to July 9th, that number is only going to go higher. We're going to announce a whole bunch of deals over the next week or so. And then we're just going to send letters out to everybody who's responded to us, put them in the right category, and off we'll go. So there's going to be tens of billions per month, and those not included in the bill. So when they talk about the deficit, when they're talking about the bill, they're

only talking about the things that that bill touches. The extra 400 or 500 billion dollars a year that the tariffs bring in, the new tariffs bring in, that just doesn't count for the bill, but of course, of course that cash counts for America. Mr. Secretary, you just said that you're going to announce a whole bunch of deals over the course of the next week with what countries? And does that include the China deal the president suggested was signed yesterday? What is that?

So the China deal, we inked the deal. You remember we had a trip to Geneva, and then that was being slow-played. We got back together in London, and that deal was signed and sealed two days ago. The president just said it just the other, just, you know, I don't know, 15 minutes ago. And then he also suggested that we are, of course—

at the very close finish line with India course the way these deals happen is their prime minister and their parliament have to approve it and the president likes to close these deals himself I mean he's the dealmaker he loves to close it I think we have

deal after deal after deal. The president's going to make his calls. He's going to decide exactly the finishing touches on them. And then what we're going to do is we're going to lay out a structure of all the different kinds of tariff arrangements with different countries, right? There are countries with huge deficits. There are countries that are balanced. We're going to set that all up and get that ready for July 9th.

So it sounds to me, Secretary, and correct me if I'm wrong as I listen to you, that we either get 88 deals announced in the next two weeks or there's going to be action one way or the other by this administration that July 9th will be conclusive. If there's no deal, here's the new reciprocal tariff. Is that right?

Of course. So what we're going to do is we'll announce some deals, but basically the deals we're going to announce are sort of the head of the class, the structural spot in the line, and then all the other countries will fit behind those categories, right? So we're going to do top 10 deals, put them in the right category, and then these other countries will fit behind. So you'll have South American deals and you'll have African deals. You'll have it all structured and set up.

And that's the model how you do leadership. And we will put these people in their proper buckets on July 9th. So those who have deals will have deals. And everybody else who's been negotiating with us, they'll get a response from us. And then they'll go into that package. And July 9th will go forward. And as the president said, if people want to come back and negotiate further, they're entitled to. But that tariff rate will be set and off we'll go.

Where does Europe fall in that sequence, Mr. Secretary? There was reporting from Politico today that the European Commission has received the latest offer from the U.S. Are you expecting that offer to potentially be accepted by next week?

I think that Europe has done an excellent job. They are working hard. Remember, it was a very, very slow process, if you remember. And the president put out a truth, kind of motivated them with that truth, as Donald Trump is capable of doing. They came to the table then. They started negotiating. They really put it on the table. And I'm actually, I've become optimistic. I think

If you had asked me three weeks ago before that truth, I would have said no way. But since that truth by the president, I really feel I'm optimistic. I think we could get a deal done now. Europe will be right at the end. But you've got to remember, they're our largest trading partners, so the fact that they come at the very end makes some sense. It's deep. It's complex. But I'm kind of optimistic now. I wasn't optimistic three weeks ago, but now, since the president got involved, I'm pretty optimistic, actually.

How about that? Fascinating. Secretary, before you leave us, I just went to trumpcard.gov. It says Trump Card is coming. It's still on the way. When does this happen? How many will you sell when this is finally available? You've been saying that the phone's ringing off the hook here. Where are they coming from?

All right, our waiting list, right? And we've got a sort of a filtered waiting list where we go in and make sure the emails are correct, the people are correct. 75,000 people online at 5 million each, right? We're talking just under $400 billion of the people online waiting for it to go live. So obviously our focus is the big, beautiful bill.

and once the big beautiful bill comes off we're going to go with the trump card and i am really really excited for our objectives that has two things both it'll bring in hundreds of billions of dollars to reduce the deficit of the united states of america and it brings in great entrepreneurs into america and they'll build our economy as well so you get a double positive from the trump card howard lutnick u.s commerce secretary on the north lawn of the white house where it's

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