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With fewer than one hundred days until voters head to the polls. If re elected, former President Donald Trump is widely expected to appoint a so called Capitol Hill cabinet full of Congress made. A potential shortlist includes Republican Senator Bill Hagersey, who is being floated as a pick for Treasury Secretary. The senator joins us right now, Senator, it's great to catch up me, sir. We tried to do this last week, so this is our second attempt. I think this one's going to work.
Good to be back with you, Jonathan Lisa, thank you.
Let's start with foreign exchange, if we can, sir. We caught up with the former president here at Bloomberg just a number of weeks ago, and in Bloomberg Business Week he told us that he believes we have a bit of a currency problem in the United States for America. Senator, I would love your perspective on that, whether you agree with a former president on that issue, and what kind of policy tools do you think the government has to address it.
We have a number of problems with the economy. I think the biggest one, however, and is related is inflation is driving higher interest rates. Of course that has a direct impact on our currency. But President Trump's policies will have an immediate impact to bring inflation down because he's going to end this administration's war on fossil fuels, bring energy costs down, go back to a deregulatory construct as he did in the prior administration, taking down regulatory and
compliance barriers. All of these will have a lowering impact on cost here in America. It'll have a lower impact on inflation. Those will be directly beneficiary and basically help make the case then to bring reachs down and therefore bring our currency into a different position.
Senator, there are two other proposals as well, which I'm sure you're familiar with, much higher tariffs, a much tougher stance on immigration. I'm not going to sit here and say whether that's the right or wrong thing to do. I just want to talk about outcomes and consequences. Deutsche Bank, like others on Wall Street, Senators you know, have pointed out the tariffs and their associated stronger implications for the dollar are significantly more likely to be the dominant market
outcome than policies to pursue a week of dollar. Senator, my question to you would be, why wouldn't higher tariff and a toughest stance and immigration ultimately just lead to stagflation.
I'm fully aware of the concerns surrounding tariffs, but let me make this point. The United States of America has the lowest tariff barriers of any major economy in the world. The converse of that statement is that our major trading partners do not have the similar tarifsy have much higher tariffs. Therefore, we have a real lack of reciprocity. That's not fair.
That's something that needs to be addressed. Many of these issues date back all the way to World War Two, but there's come a time and a place to step up and address that. President Trump wants to see them addressed. We want to see more reciprocal and fair trading terms. The time has come to get that accomplished, Senator.
From a market perspective, people are struggling with these two goals sort of national security fairness on one hand, and on the other hand, the idea of the advantage of a weaker currency for trade purposes, which takes prominence pre eminence.
Well, I think It's something that always has to be balanced, Lisa, and I think you'll see any administration do their best to do it. I think President Trump did an excellent of that during his first administration. The playbook is laid out there. We were strong, we were tough with China. At the same time, we brought economic growth that was twice the rate of any of the major economy at the same time here in America. So we can do both. We can walk and shoo them at the same time.
I think that's the challenge. The most important thing, though, is that President Trump will come in and in these reckless policies domestically that have created inflation that has caused so many knock on effects. Again, back to energy independence, we need to get there. Not only will it be important for lowering inflation here, but it'll be an important geostrategic tool as we become much stronger allies who were able to export our energy to places like Europe and Asia.
All right, let's go there. You've mentioned it a couple times, this idea of war on fossil fuels, as well as the idea of not really achieving the goal of energy and dependence. We're pumping more oil in the United States. We're producing more oil than ever before, more than thirteen million barrels a day. This is something unseen before in terms of production from any other nation. How can you say that it's a war on fossil fuels time where it is record production.
Lisia clearly is a war on fossil fuels. Because Joe Biden came in and took federal lands off the map immediately upon taking office. That's a quarter of our capacity right there. What you're not saying is that there was a trajectory that was much more rapid, much higher. We took ourselves off of that growth trajectory and we flattened it. We continued to produce, but demand is outstripping it. Think
about the demand for electricity here in America. If you think about what we're going to need for artificial intelligence, the electrification of the grid, We've got to get back into the energy production business full blast. We have the technology to do it. This administration has done everything they
can to slow that down. We need to get back on a rapid growth path that'll put us on a trajectory to be not only stronger here domestically in lower inflation, but also stronger partners with our allies.
So senas right now, we're producing thirteen point three million powers of crude every single day, As Lisa points it out, that's a record, is more than anyone on the planet. How much crude do you think America should be and can be produce?
Sick We should be producing more than anybody else in the world as we are. We need to produce more LNG to become the strongest energy partner there is. You think about pipeline capacity and the difficulty of getting permits of this administration. You think about the difficulty beginning or refinery started here in America. All of these log jams and difficulties make it less possible for us, make it more difficult for us to be the best possible ally
that we could. We need to expand it. We need to realize that this is a true source of competitive advantage for the United States of America. Let's exploit it.
Let's talk about who is an ally and who isn't an ally. There's lots of conversations about what's going to happen we trade policy and China. I think we've sort of exhausted that conversation many times over the last few weeks, Senator, I want to talk about Mexico. I want your view
on Mexico. We saw from Elon Musk of Tesla that he's holding back investment decisions in the country because he thinks there might be a change in the next year that makes it difficult to produce automobiles over in Mexico. We've heard similar thoughts from all the manufacturers elsewhere worldwide. What is happening in Mexico and what kind of changes would you like to see?
Well, in twenty twenty six, the USMCA is up for renegotiation, and I think one of the greatest concerns is the fact that Chinese ev makers are looking to end run the USMC in run tariffs and use the USMCA and Mexico market in particular as it means to get into the US market, and they're using their subsidized product destroy the US market. That's going to have to take a
very solid look. I think. Also with respect to Mexico itself, we've seen some very concerning behavior there the prior administration there n ra Amlow actually nationalizing American company's assets. We've got to address that. I intend to speak with the new administration there very soon about what we can do to make certain we have much better and much stronger relationship there with Mexico and fairer terms.
Senator. The last time we tried to talk, you were at a bitcoin conference, and this was our cryptocurrency conference, and that was where the former President Trump was speaking and fundraising. And we've been asking this question on the show, Why Bitcoin? Why now? Why crypto assets? What's sort of the motivation to really embrace a network of crypto assets and become the preeminent network on the plan And from a Republican sort of stance, is this something that is concrete and why?
At least I think this is something that has evolved over time. I first began looking into crypto and the previous administration in twenty eighteen. That was my first engagement. I initially started at a point of skepticism, as I think many of my colleagues do. But when I begin to understand the underlying technology and realizing the potential for dramatic productivity gains, what I thought to myself is we need to make certain that it happens here in America.
The last thing we want is to see what happened with the semiconductor industry where it got pushed off shore and weakened us from a geopolitical standpoint, we need to see this innovation happening here. I've been in many conversations with President Trump. His thinking is likewise involved, and he's embracing the fact that this has tremendous potential for America. We want it to evolve here. We want to create the ecosystem for it to thrive here, and the last
thing we need to do is push it off shore. However, the current administration has done everything they can to attack this industry, to push it offshore again, to use the SEC, the CFTC, every tool at their disposal to come in and attack this industry and refuse to provide it with any time for regulatory framework. President Trump made the statement at the Bitcoin conference that one of the first things he'll do is change out the administration's leadership. Gerry Ginselari said,
will be fired. That brought people to their feet and applause. He's going to end operation chokepoint that's been taking place in the crypto industry here in America, and he's going to try to create the environment here where the industry can thrive and we'll see the next wave of innovation happening right here in America.
Senator, we've got to dance around the issue about your future. So this is how a frame mat. I've got twenty seconds left on the clock. Your favorite city to live in Nashville, Tokyo or Washington, DC?
Which one, No, it has to be Nashville, Tennessee. And if you've been there at the Crypto conference, you've seen the energy there. It is absolutely wonderful what's happening broadly across my state. That's why so many people are moving there.
Senator, Thank you, sir. Senator Ville haggartsy there on the latest with Crypto the economy,