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Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business App. Joining us now to discuss the state of energy, not just domestically but worldwide, the seventeenth United States Secretary of Energy, Chris Right, Mister Secretary, welcome back to the program sir, looking forward to an in dev conversation with you about what you cover every single day. So, first of all, just on a run so we can deal with that. What is the current stance of the US officially on the use and import of the running crude?
Oh, the sanctions are still in pl no change there. I think the Trump what President Trump was referring to there is Hey, if we make a large piece and sanctions come off, aron can flourish.
If you could a decent understanding the miss the Secretary of just how much of running crud is being consumed and impulsive already as things stand, despite the sanctions.
We do so, a RAM produces about three and a half million barrels a day, and they've been import they've been exporting about one and a half million barrels of oil a day, and the maximum pressure campaign that President Trump did in his last term tamp that down to only one hundred or two hundred thousand barrels a day. They cut off ninety percent of it. That was a possible strategy here as well, but hadn't been implemented yet.
We tried to give negotiations a chance see if we can do it without maximum pressure.
So is maximum pressure still on the table or is the ad ministration walking away from that?
Well, the goal right now, of course, is to get a peace deal, is to get peace into the middle and spread the focus on commerce not conflict. So no, it's not actively being discussed right now, but the situation is still dynamic there. We want to see peace, prosperity and security as the future of the Middle East.
When it comes to what's going on in Iran as well. In terms of the IAEA, the Foreign Minister said yesterday that basically they have no plans to having the Director General Raphael Grossy in Iran and doesn't sound like they're willing to give the inspectors the space, time and access they need to look at these nuclear facilities.
What is the United States response to that?
Yeah, look, this is early on.
This is early on.
Iran has just had most of its nuclear program entirely devastated by Israel and the United States. They're a little bit humbled, they're a little bit shell shocked right now. So yeah, I wouldn't put too much weight on those words, but a final peace steal certainly has to have confidence in a dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program and that people can have security it won't be resurrected in the future.
You deal with a lot of nuclear at the Energy Department before the US strikes, but after the Israeli strikes. Raphael Grossi told us that the IAEA cannot verify with the four hundred kilograms of sixty percent enriched uranium in Isfahan was currently where it was?
Was it still there? Do the Irradians take it out?
Doesn't the IAEA need to go in and verify where this enriched uranium is.
I think that's quite likely part of a future negotiation or a future deal.
Miss the Secretary. Of course, this is just one part of the conversaction and energy right now. I can tell you earlier on this morning, there's a report that you might have seen that came from reuts As. Actually the Administraction is readying a package of executive actions aimed a boosting energy supply to power the US expansion of artificial energy. Mister Secretary, what can you share with this this morning?
Yeah, Look, artificial intelligence is an incredibly exciting development that's coming. It is going to revolutionize not just our economy but our health drug discovery, but it also plays huge role in national defense, which is why I've compared it to the Manhattan Project. It's critical, it'll be transformative, and we must lead. We cannot be second place in AI. And to do that, we have the scientist, we have the capital. You have to have a huge growth in US electricity production.
So we need to get the morass in the way that's really hobbled the American energy system for the last four years, and we got to unleash American investment in American capitalism. That's going to take building a lot of new power generation.
Mister Secretary, to build on that idea, what type of energy production are you looking at? I know that New York State was just looking at potentially creating a new nuclear energy plan.
Is that one of the paths of travel.
That you think is going to be pivotal for the United States?
Absolutely, look to have a secure power glided into power AI. You need ninety nine point percent of the time on power and so that today our biggest source of reliable power today by far as natural gas. Our second biggest source is nuclear, and our third biggest source right behind that is coal. So those are the three keys to the future of our electricity grid. Nuclear we haven't built much for a while, so I was thrilled to see
the governor's announcement embracing nuclear in New York. We have the governors of Tennessee and Georgia and Virginia passionate about getting new nuclear built in their states. So yes, one of our goals in this administration is is to launch the American nuclear renaissance.
Mister Secretary, how do you encourage this type of investment at a time where the goal of the President has also been to lower prices. And we've seen this particularly in the energy space, where the President has been very vocal about the desire to see energy prices lower. And this has led to a number of oil rigs in the shell patch to be taken offline because it isn't profitable for a lot of these companies to be producing as much as they used to.
How do you sort of square that circle?
Yes, yeah, prices are supply and demand. Prices are supply and demand. But what we're doing in the administration is everything possible to lower the cost to produce energy in the United States. Cheaper to produce a barrel of oil or an mcf and natural gas, you know, or a ton of coal or a kilo one hour of electricity from nuclear plants. So that's deregulatory, that's common sense regulation focused on health and safety and the environment, but not
the nonsense that just burdens burdens energy producers. Nuclear will be a little bit more expensive at the start, but I think that cost will be borne by hyperscalers. They want to see nuclear rearrives and they'll sign higher power purchase agreements to help kickstart nuclear we need to grow the energy supply and keep cost down. You're right, that's a challenge. You're right to bring that issue up, and that's what I work on seven days a week.
Let's get at the regulatory burden. We're lucky to have someone in your seat that's actually ran an energy company in this country. As you know, permitting it is really difficult across many dimensions. You have to go state by state and the things you can do at the executive level to make this a lot easier. Could you describe those kind of things.
That there are a number of things, and it is why we created the National Energy Dominance Council. That's really to bring people leaders from all different agencies that impact the ability to build things in our country together and say what We talked to producers and say, you know, why aren't you building that? And they'll give us a list of seven things. It'll take us seven years, and we're really worried about this one and that one. So we dive into those issues and say how can we
simplify that. But I'll highlight a Supreme Court decision from just a few weeks ago on to get more oil out of Utah via train that've been held up for years through suits over NEPA, and the Supreme Court ruled eight to zero. Every Supreme Court justice involved in the case said, yes, we need to put NEPA back in its box. It's to check to make sure the environment's
being considered. It's not to have years long, endless delays because if you delay something, you make it more uncertain, more expensive, and simply less things get built.
Miss the Secretary, appreciate your time, sir, as always to break down the situation. Hopefully we can engage on this conversation again, Chris. Right there, the Energy Secretary of the United States, Tobin Marcus of All for Research, joins us now for more. Tobin, welcome to the program. I just want to pick up on the language, the words used by the COMMA secretary. How would lot mak we inked the deal? What's the deal? Do you have any details whatsoever?
This seems to be the third time for the giving this particular deal because it seems to be a solidification of the framework to get back to the Geneva and census that was reached about two months ago. So it's good to have that lockdown. But it does not really look to me like that's delivering any kind of incremental
relief or incremental steps forward. It's just solidifying the set of understandings that was required to keep the trading relationship from going further off track in terms of access to RARR earths on their side and the rollback of some of the incremental export controls on our side.
I was at those talks in London. I still can't get from this administration and idea of what the language looks like. Who signed it. The Chinese say earlier this morning the US side will correspondingly cancel a series of restrictive measures taken against China, which measures.
So it seems from my perspective that the Chinese have been primarily focused on the further expansion of export controls and took place after the Geneva meeting. So certainly the restrictions on natural gas liquids, on aerospace, on EA software, those are I think are clearly in the set of
things that are going to be rolled off. The initial vote of contention from the Chinese side was this declaration that anyone using baway send chips is in violation of US export controls, that the uside characterized as a restatement of existing policy, and the Chinese side characterized as incremental expansion of export control. So that, in my mind is
the question. I don't think that the US has committed to rolling that back, but that I think is sort of the final piece of wiggle room in how we understand this.
This isn't a trade deal.
This is just an understanding of some of the de escalation we've seen in these talks in Geneva and London. So where does this leave the relationship more long term, for more of a comprehensive agreement.
It still looks very challenging to me. I think that the bullish narrative in markets immediately after the Geneva meeting was we've come down to thirty but of that thirty, twenty percent is FEDYL related, and that should be an easy thing for the Chinese side to alleviate Trump's concern on you know, this is an authoritarian society, Well like we should just think that they can flip a switch and do whatever they need to do on export controls
on tentinal precursors to satisfy the US side. I think that's easier said than done, even to the extent that they can fully lay our substantive concerns, you know. I mean there have been multiple rounds of headlines from Boomberg among others about Vietnam aiming towards a twenty to twenty five percent teriff rate in their talks.
Even if we've.
Reached a deal, that's what the to look consist of, and we're taking Vietnam to twenty five, it does not really make sense to take off that twenty percent Fennel tariff and China at ten. It would be very upside down to go after Vietnam, where the main concerns have been around them as sort of an outlet for Chinese industrial over capacity and transshipping and so forth, and hit them harder than China itself. So I think we have
a long way to go. I mean, the Chinese love slow delivered to mechanisms, and that's what we have in place now. And I think these talks will drag out for quite a while longer before we get further inco mentally easy.
Isn't that Tobin?
Kind of what we expect across the board, that this is going to be a process and they're going to be frameworks that are going to be announced on July ninth.
That will then kick the can down the road.
And right now the market is banking on escalate to de escalate, as John was talking about when it came to a run, but also when it comes to trade deals and what the path forward is likely to be for the president.
Yeah, so I think I am less optimistic about exactly what these deals are going to deliver in terms of market relevant relief than I think sort of hull blue about deals in general and deal making as an enter would suggest, you know, latnux indication that there's going to be ten of these deals, and now we'll see they've been teasing a bunch of deals right around the corner
for about two months now. But even if deals get rolled out, I mean, again in Vietnam being in my mind sort of the easiest or most important example, we seem to be aiming towards a significant increase in reciprocal
terriff rates in that set of talks. So if we roll out that deal, that's not like good news for the market, it's not good news for I need to take one name that was mentioned just a moment ago, and similarly elsewhere, you know, like the sectoral tariffs have been the sticking point primarily with Japan, with India to some extent, they will be a huge sticking point with the EU, although those talks are not quite as far along. It doesn't really look to me like the US side
is going to give on those. And so if we get a bunch of deals that don't drop the sectoral tariffs, I don't really think that this represents a big kind of dubbish impulse for markets.
Type and appreciate your time and your opinion, Thank you, sir, type of Marcus there before Free said it's not just this morning the White House announcing imminem plans assigned trade agreements with ten countries, with the focus now shifting to the European Union. Marissa Adams of HSBC stand constructive, writing, we have entered a new era for trade. We don't expect things to go back to the way they were, Marissa, joints is now for more. Marissa, good morning, it's going.
To see you. Good morning.
Thanks for having me.
You've said this before. Trade doesn't stand still, but it has changed. Can you just walk us all through how it's changed.
Yeah, And it's really interesting because we did see disruption through the pandemic.
You know, we've seen a different.
Period of negotiations, but really posts April second, it's changed that I am at both on the supply side and the demand side. Now we've see these ten percent baseline tariffs that are now in place, and I think it is really clear. I always want to keep reminding people they're there, so whilst we have a lot of negotiations, ten percent is actually in place. But what's really changed is the speed of negotiations. And you know, we've heard
this morning around the China deal. The Indian trade negotiators are in DC this week. There's optimism around you deal, and I think that this is actually quite a positive sign that quite quickly we're looking to come to agreements. Now, I would say there are deals in principle, they're not free trade agreements, and free trade agreements, as we know, take five to ten multiple years to really get down
to the nitty gritty detail. But at least this is a positive sign that we're getting to some certainty For corporates.
What are you seeing from individual corporations at the moment, what are they doing. We've been having this debate with economists and maybe it's better to have this debate with you. Are you seeing them take the hit on margins, pass it on to consumers, something in between? What are they doing?
So it really depends sector bisector, and I think the one industry where we've seen at the most is in consumer retail. They have shorter order cycles, the lower margins, So what we're seeing there is that some of them are actually taking a hit to their bottom line. We've seen a few companies come out this week around that. The numbers, though still are fairly small, and I think
ten percent is something that co corporates can absorb. When it starts to get to twenty five, thirty, forty fifty, that's at a stage where even if you want to compress your margins are going to have past pass costs on to consumers.
How much confidence do they have in terms of where tariffs are going to be the highest i e. China, that they're actually moving production. How quickly is that happening?
And it's a really good question in the sense that it depends if you are a shorter industry or a longer order industry. So we've seen in the tech industry, as an example, a lot of investment in semiconductors here in the United States. But a factory isn't built overnight. So we've got those commitments there, but five to six seven years.
To build a factory.
You're only going to do that once you know there is a certain path around how much more it will cost to come on shore. And again, margins is key. So some of those high margin tech industry tech businesses in the OEMs, they can afford to come back to the US. If you're in the ones that are a little bit narrow, you're still having to compete with OEMs in Asia for the ultimate end game. So that's where
it becomes a bit of a challenge. So we've seen movement, and even over the past three four years there was a lot of movement into Latin America into Canada's trading partners, but even that is still five six seven years away from really being fully up and in production.
John alluded to this earlier, and it's a really good point, the idea that ahead of any kind of tariff, there was a stockpiling of goods at prices pre tariff, and so we haven't really seen the ramifications either when it comes to margins or when it comes to consumer pricing, when does that run out?
I mean, how long is that runway?
Yeah, and Q one data actually, you know, you look at Q one data, really strong results. The wto trade index at quite a significant high that's seen, and that
is really due to that front loading. I think we'll start to see some of the effects in Q four, But industry by industry, So if you look at the healthcare industry, I've been in New York this week speaking to a lot of pharmaceutical companies and they have long term contracts, so they are locked in for a year and a half two years for some of that production, so they may not actually see it for quite a time.
Same thing with the energy sector, where you have long term energy sector contracts, but anything that is shorter order and where they're able to adjust, they will. Now one of your guests earlier was talking about the fact that exporters don't really seem to be taking the hit at
this stage. That also might start to change because as you're starting to negotiate with those suppliers, is there a stage fore you you know, you've got to get them to lower their prices a little bit to offset the tariffs. So I think in Q four we'll start to see some of those effects.
The political cell though for tariffs is to bring manufacturing not to Canada or Mexico but to the United States is ten percent getting it done.
It's starting to create those conversations. And I think in addition to it's not just terriffs that's an impact. If there's tax incentives, if there's other regulatory incentives. Now, the other thing that is hasn't necessarily been expressed here is also about resiliency, and we saw after the pandemic, corporates were really focused on resiliency. How do you get those
items actually into the country. So there is a huge benefit in the healthcare industry, for example, they have already done region for regions, so where they are supplying medications here in the United States, they've actually brought that production on shore. So it is really starting to happen. It's just that it's a little bit longer of an order cycle and they need some more incentives to actually make that investment.
What about the sectoral tariffs that were potentially going to get when it comes to things like pharmaceuticals that are also going to be on what many would say more sound legal footing.
And that I'd say is more of a concern for corporates than the percent. So where those land and how that means they have to rejig some of their supply chains is going to be a challenge, so.
They're looking at that.
What I would say is that the biggest challenge of the moment is still this uncertainty. So you don't want to make an investment. You're waiting to pause to move through that, and as a result of that, companies are delaying decisions.
There's only so long you can delay.
Now. I can't tell you whether three months is okay, six months is okay, at nine months, but we will start to see that and that is a challenge, especially if you want to supply onshore and also create more production capabilities in the United States.
Just quickly, how has your business changed? How have you and the team had to winnovate? What kind of solutions have you had to come up with the corporations?
So great question. Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it. And we are having to do three things. So the first thing is really doubling down on working capital treasurers and CFOs. I think over six seven years ago, we're lucky a little bit blessed in the low interest certain environment with less volatility, But now they're looking for more tools in their toolkits, so we're looking at ways
to help them finance receivables, payables, inventory as well. So inventory finance is a relatively new product area where again you weren't having to hold so much on shore now you are. The second area is around services. So services trade is twenty six percent of global trade. It's growing at three times the break and actually we're seeing a
lot of traditional goods manufacturers going into services trade. So we've started to create contract monetization facilities for that, financing those long term contracts that again are not traditional goods trade, but actually it is an exchange and trade of information.
You've got ten seconds to time me the third one.
The third one is we are working with them on how they look at new corridors.
So I think HSBC we're.
In over sixty markets. We have local presence with their suppliers, so we're helping them to advance the new markets.
Perfect time, and we'll continue this conversation. I'm up against the heartbreaks. We've got to go, but it's good to see you. Thank you, thank you, very much. Marissa Adams there of HSBC joining us NAT's have that conversation. Alejandro Vindol of ned Davis Research, Al Hondre, welcome back to the program. Just frame things from your standpoint. Where's this labor market at right now? Chair and Pou spent hours talking about an economy that was solid. Do you believe it's solid?
You know, of course solid is a relative. Colin again, thank you for having me back again. So the way I would frame the labor market, it's not a super technical term.
But I would say it's okay.
So we've been seeing signs of softening through a broad array of reports, whether it's the jobless claims from the continuing Claims data we saw yesterday rose to the highest since twenty eleven or twenty twenty one, I'm sorry, some weakness and payrolls, more balancing in the labor market from the Jolt survey. But if you look at most of that data, it's still quite far from their recessionary thresholds.
So it still gives the Fed some time to sort of sit and wait and see how a lot of you know, these potential polye changes can impact growth and inflation in the coming months.
Alle hundred.
Can we continue to see the sort of just weakening but not weak trend When does weakening tip over into weak.
Our base case scenario is kind of, you know, just sort of going about a slower pace of growth, not necessarily recession, which is I think of what you meant by week. Ultimately the base that the main thing to watch is the labor market. So we've kind of had these slow downs and growth over the past few years, some upticks, but we haven't fallen into that recession territory really because of that resiliency and the labor market.
So that's why we're watching it so closely. I don't know.
Our base case is that we kind of muddle through with about the same sort of this slowing in growth, but still away from recessionary thresholds. But again it's very dependent on policy. If most of the downside risks come into fruition, whether it comes through tariffs or higher inflation and increase uncertainty, we could see pronounced weakness in the
labor market. If care sort of settle at a more reasonable level, we get the big beautiful bill with tax cuts in some expansionary policy, then that could sort of keep the labor market from falling over the edge. So just in general, a lot of uncertainty, pretty much what you guys were mentioning earlier.
Which is what everyone's been talking about.
We have a week until that July fourth self imposed deadline for the one big beautiful bill where no one's going to be going on vacation, essensibly because John canceled it or amor canceled it earlier. But there is this question going forward about how much the economic outlook could change, not only with a week from now that July fourth deadline, but also July ninth. How big is the sort of range of scenarios for you.
Well, again, the base case and the highest probability of more than fifty percent is just slowing growth and then either stable or slightly higher inflation, So kind of what you guys mentioned before, that stagflation light. But there are some tail risks that you could maybe see things get
extraordinarily better. Right, Let's just say we do miraculously get these ninety deals in ninety day within the next couple of weeks or less than that, actually within one week we get the big beautiful bill, that could be you know, maybe a tail positive upside surprise, but I think it's a lesser likely scenario. And then I talked before about the potential recessionary scenario, but I do think that's lower
as well. So yeah, base case actually very in line with what the FED has said, is a slow down in growth below potential but still positive and slightly higher inflation.
Well, you have individuals who are saying, like Michael Hartnett this morning, a pivot from tariff to text cuts, raycuts could lead to higher risk of a bubble in the second half of the year. But you think the second half of the year is still going to be talking about policy uncertainty.
In Washington, d C. Yeah, I do think it'll.
Part of it is I don't think these tariff deals are going to be done that quickly, so there's still going to be some back and forth and some uncertainty. We should have a little more uncertainty from the big beautiful bill. I would suspect that's probably going to get approved at least over the next month or so, or we get some closure there. But I do think the tariff uncertainty will continue, and the impact it's going to have on inflation will take some time.
So I think we'll be watching the data.
And then there's also a lot of other policies that have happened since the beginning of the year. We had the Doge cuts at the beginning of the year that could have reciprocal impacts on state and local governments. What we started seeing at the federal level, and then also the immigration policies. What are they going to do to the labor force? What are they going to do to growth?
So it's not just those tariffs and big beautiful bill, but there's a lot of other things going on that may just have more of a delayed ripple effect as the year progresses, and just contributing uncertainty.
How quickly do we need to get to some clarity and all these issues for the US to maintain this exceptionalism.
Well exceptionalism, the way I describe it is just the fact, especially compared to the rest of the developed world, we just have the potential to grow so much faster.
And it's pretty much just based on two things.
We have generally faster labor force growth, we have faster productivity growth, and over short periods of time, it's really hard to see the effect, say the long term effect on the long term growth of those items. But if we were to see a huge production in our labor force because of maybe some of the immigration policy, some of the early retirement we've been seeing, that could create a downside risk to long term US exceptionalism and growth.
And then, of course tariffs right holding all lost constant tariffs reduce competitiveness, They reduce the gains from comparative advantage, and could reduce that strong productivity the US has. On the other end, we're also just generally more productive than a lot of the developed world because we're less regulated, we have more fluid labor markets, we have lower taxes. Big Beautiful Bill will probably contribute to that as well.
We're also energy independent, so there's a lot of things that still work in our favor, but there's a few policy items that could whittle down some of that advantage that we've had for several years now.
Every time I see you, I want to move to the sumbub. Every single time I one that grill, I want that terrace, the trees in the back.
I think she should run architectural idea.
We move into Florida.
Yeah, oh gosh, it's always beautiful. It's like perfect.
We're moving to Florida. We're moving one hundred grad Dock. I have met Davis Freesaid. This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast, bringing you the best in markets, economics, and geopolitics. You can watch the show live on Bloomberg TV weekday mornings from six am to nine am Eastern. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen, and as always, on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business app.