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We want to go now to Capitol Hill, where a lot of these conversations are ongoing. I'm pleased to stay joining us on Balance and Power here on Bloomberg TV and Radio's Republican Senator Bill Haggerty of Tennessee. Senator, welcome back, and there's obviously much we'd like to discuss with you, including your new stable coin legislation. But if we could first begin with tariffs, as that has dominated the news cycle in the last several days, how are you viewing
what President Trump is actually using these levees for. If it was just to extract concessions from Canada and Mexico, or if this is really about raising revenue to pay for tax guns.
Well, the answer is both.
But President Trump was very clear when he imposed the revue, when he imposed the tarofts on Canada and Mexico, that they needed to do something dramatic to stop the flow of illegal migrants coming into our country, the flow of ventnol coming into our country, the human trafficking that has been the.
Primary and overarching concern.
And I've made it clear to my people that reached out to me for both nations that it's clear there's something they can do about it.
They need to step up, and frankly they have.
President Trump was clear about what he wanted to see happen, and the Mexican government and the Canadian government, we're both stepping up to stop the flow of funnel, to address issues at their border, to maintain border security on their side, and to be better partners.
That's what he's trying to accomplish, and I think that's what he's achieved.
Well, you're, of course a former diplomat senator, as you represented the United States as our ambassador to Canada, so it.
Gives you to Japan, forgive me.
We've been talking about a lot in Canada, a lot here in that period of time. Now, that gave you a unique view on these issues that maybe not all lawmakers have. Are tariffs or threats of tariffs, the new form of diplomacy in this administration.
Well, Joe, this is an important piece of context.
We've talked about it before, but the United States has basically the lowest trade weighted tariffs in the world. Access to our markets has been extraordinarily easy.
There's a historic reason for this.
For countries like Japan, countries in Europe whose economies were devastated after World War Two. We aggressively made our economy open to them so they wouldn't turn toward communism and socialism.
But we should have time limited that.
We should have put some sort of GDP per capital limit on it, because what we have now are extremely unfair and non reciprocal trade terms with many of our trading partners. President Trump has been clearer, he's just trying to bring a reciprocity to bear, trying to get.
Us to the table with an even deal.
A lot of these countries that don't want to address this do so because they have a better deal now than we do.
We're going to fix that.
President Trump has been clear about it, and I'm very pleased to see him take decisive action in that regard.
Well, Senator, if we could leave the diplomatic hat on for a moment longer. I do wonder what you make of the efforts, or at least on the part of Elon Musk. And he says he is the President's buy in to dismantle USAID. What does that do to US soft power?
Well, you've got a lot of significant problems at USAID. Some of the things that have come to bear, some of the things that have come to light in terms of US taxpayer dollars going to Dei Initition's transgender surgeries in Guatemala, things of this nature. I think the American public is shocked. And the fact that we're basically taking a pause, taking a very hard look and looking at agencies like this that have basically gotten out of control.
I think the time has come. The American public are ready for it.
That doesn't mean that we will not have AID programs going forward, but you've got Secretary of State Marco Rubio taking charge here. He's going to make certain that those those AID programs go to advancing US interest and not some of these wild eyed exploits that the previous administration and administrations prior to that have been on the USAID. Again, basically out of control organization. I'm glad to see it rained in.
Well, we've seen some pretty interesting exploits on behalf of DOGE and by Elon Musk. It's not just USAID, of course, it's accessing the payment system inside the US Treasury Department. Senator, and we understand that Musk is now a special government employee, something that emerged in just the last couple of days
with the Education Department. Now the next target as a senator providing advice and consent, would you like Elon Musk to come up to Capitol Hill to endure a confirmation hearing since this apparently is a government job.
Well, the special government employee classification is about one hundred and thirty days. That allows people to come in from the outside, often people that are very capable, as is Elon Musk, to come in.
And provide special advice for the president.
It's a tool that has been used in administration's Republican and Democrat. I'm glad to see this sort of expertise deployed. Elon Musk obviously knows how to come in and streamline operations and make things work more efficiently.
Look what he did at Twitter. So I'm very pleased to see him step in and do this.
This doesn't require confirmation, it's not that type of position, but he is offering his advice, and President Trump has been clear where he wants to accept the advice. Where he feels Elon musk efforts are warranted, He's going to deploy him there.
I've talked with Elon about what he's doing.
I think he's got some very creative ideas about bringing much needed efficiency and actually getting far higher return on investment for the taxpayer dollum.
But is there a rule for Congress to place to ensure that whatever access he's granted at Treasury, whether it's to the payment system specifically or in other cases, that it isn't going to interfere with the Treasury's usual business of paying bondholders and conducting auctions.
Well, we certainly have oversight responsibility, Kaylee. We intend to fully exercise that. That's not what I've talked with Elon about doing. He's looking for efficiencies, ways to do things better, to stop doing things that aren't advancing us interest, and to do things that you doubled down on, things that are going to become more and more productive for US
taxpayers and advance the American cause. It's not unusual at all to take a pause to take a hard look in survey what's happening inside these agencies.
I'm glad that he's doing it.
I think there's a lot of pro clutching going on right now and a lot of expectation that something terrible is going to happen. Know In fact, what I think is we're going to see is a new wave of efficiency coming.
From all of this, and I'm looking forward to it.
Well, just wait for the pro clutching to start when you start debating taxes and reconciliation centator to ask you about where all this stands, because these were supposed to come as a package. Right, you'd extend the Trump tax cuts, maybe get some of the other things that Donald Trump had promised on the campaign trail, and offset those with revenue from tariffs that had been promised during the campaign
as well. We talked to Scott Besson about that at length before he was tapped to be the Treasury Secretary. With tariffs put aside here, you still have to have a debate over taxes, and as the House drags its feet on this, I wonder if the Senate and your new leader in John Thune might help to lead the way. What's about to happen.
Well, Joe I met with John Thune last night a group of us did We're continuing to advance the ball on this very subject.
Again. We know the.
American public expects us to address the tax package and where we're going to do that. We have a number of other issues that we're trying to address at the same time. How we do it from a process standpoint, I'm much less concerned about. I think the concern is that we get it done quickly, that we get it done efficiently, and I'm optimistic that we will get get it done despite the procedural back and forth between the House and the Senate.
We're going to get it done and we're very focused on it.
Senator, I'd like to talk about something else you're looking to get done in the Senate, and that's new stable coin legislation you've introduced alongside Senator's Lummus and jilibrand, calling it the Genius Act. And I do wonder about the timeline here. Is it your intent that this legislation be pushed through before broader market structure legislation, for example that maybewhere could sway through both the Banking and agg oriented committees in both chambers.
Sure, and Kaylee, I'll add Senator Tim Scott, the chair of the Banking Committee, is on this legislation with us.
We're very excited about it.
This is the first step and we're going to do this first before we get to broader market structure, but it's going to enable us to take a very positive step in the direction of ensuring that the United States is a positive environment for cryptocurrency technology. Stable coins is one of these issues that I think the United States can be a leader on.
It's time for us to do so.
Look, they're roughly twenty eight trillion dollars worth of stable got transaction is taking place right now across the world.
We need to be a leader here in America.
This legislation allows us to do that, and I'm extraordinarily optimistic that we're taking that lead. It's going to open the door for many other positive things in the industry, and I'm so excited to have my colleagues on both sides of the aisle join me here. This is going to be an important first step to opening up the market here in America.
Senator President Trump is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjaminett Yahoo today, the first world leader to visit the new president in this second term. They're going to be holding a news conference a little bit later on that we will carry if you could put your diplomatic hat back on and explore what these two are going to be talking about. When it comes number one to a phase two and
a cease fire. But maybe more importantly this report by the New York Times today that Iran is developing plans for a faster cruider weapon based on intelligence here in the United States. There are some who suggest this is the time now to preemptively strike Iran while it's on its Are you one of them?
Well, Joe, the last thing I'm going to do is get ahead of the President and Prime Minister Netanyahu on this very important strategic discussion.
But I'll say this, these two.
Gentlemen are not afraid to point to the real cause of all this disruption in.
The Middle East, and that is Iran.
Their proxies, the Huthis, Hamas Hesbola, they've been behind all of this disruption. But this is Iranian funding, Iranian technology behind all of it. So I think the New York Times is right to look at the cause here. Finally you will see I think both gentlemen today who are meeting talking about Iran as the proximate cause for this terrorism. And what we've seen is Iran significantly weakened by the actions of the Israeli government. What they've done in southern Lebanon,
taking hesbela down. What's happened in Syria I think is significantly exposed and weakened Iran.
They are not the strong nation that they'd like us to believe they are.
And I think you'll see a strong and united American in Israeli front standing up to Iran.
But I won't go beyond the specifics at that point. It's good to have you back, Senator.
We'll of course be listening when the bilateral news conference begins after five PM. Bill Haggerty, the Republican Senator from Tennessee,