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Or Pleased to be join honor set here in Milwaukee by Republican Senator from Tennessee, Bill Haggerty, a member of the Senate Banking Committee. Senator, welcome back to Bloomberg. It's always great to have you with you. I would like first to begin with the fact that one of your colleagues on the committee is now the vice presidential nominee
in JD. Vance, the junior Senator from Ohio. There's a lot of conversation happening within the business community today now that he is the pick, a question as to whether or not a JD. Vance selection is actually an anti big business selection, given some of the stances he is taking on competition. For example, he has praised Lena Khan at the FTC. He has actually advocated for some regulation around big banks when it comes to executive compensation Clawbax.
How should business be looking at, Senator Vance.
I think the business community needs to look at the overall ticket and look at the potential of what's going to happen in November. The momentum in the grounds well, and I think JDB brings a tremendous amount to this he's going to help President Trump win in November, and
the policies that President Trump will implement. If the business community just looks back to President Trump's prior administration, you think about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the impact on this sclerotic regulatory framework that's in place, this will give us a chance to go back in and make the United States a far more friendly business environment in general.
With respect to Senator Vance's particular points of view and perspectives, I'm not going to comment on his behalf on those, and he'll consolidate all of that, I'm certain with the President's platform going forward. But I do think that broadly speaking, JD is going to help the president in terms of cementing support here in America.
He's going to bring.
People together that I think it's just an incredibly brilliant pick. You think about President Trump, who has actually been such a great defender of the forgotten men and women here in America, and JD's lived the life that they've experienced, and together, I think they're going to cut across demographic groups. I think it's going to be a massively impactful pick that will help see a change in November that the business community should welcome to.
Kayley's point, though JD.
Advance's economic priorities include tariffs, a higher minimum wage, an anti trust, which doesn't sound like the economic policies of the Grand Old Party. Is this the new Republican economic platform?
Well, the Republican Party certainly is moving in a way that is embracing the challenges that Americans feel today.
If he's an embracing economic populism, well, I.
Think that's one way to phrase it. But if you think about what Americans are experiencing, we've seen inflation that's really been through the roof, gasoline prices, food prices up forty percent, over twenty percent, real wages down four percent. And President Trump was in office before every demographic sector was moving up. They were improving blue collar better than why collar. So there's a real appetite and hunger to
see that sort of success again. And I think that's exactly what you're going to see in terms of the policies that will emerge.
From the eventual Trump administration.
Do you think that policy, especially when it comes to things like trade and tariffs that JD. Vans also has advocated for in addition to Donald Trump, essentially cement that if they were to win in November, tariffs will be higher.
I think tariffs are certainly going to be on the agenda because what we have is a situation right now on a global basis where we do not have reciprocal trade. The term free trade has been misused so many times, and what we have here in America is one of the most open markets in the world if you look at our tariff traid certainly compared to other nations that
are our trading partners. We have countries like China that don't play by the rules at all, and one of the most potent tools to deal with this is tariff's and I fully expect that I saw it in the previous Trump administration. I work very closely with Bob Leithheuser and his team because the same team that put the Phase one tariffs in place on China worked closely with me on the free trade agreement that we negotiated and
got executed with Japan. There are real issues there that need to be addressed, so I look forward to seeing it address myself.
I have to note that the national debt is not mentioned in the New Party platform when we talk about tariffs. The potential inflationary impacts making the twenty seventeen Trump tax cuts permanent. You've seen all the economic reports, and we've even talked about them, yes, right here on Bloomberg with you, Senator, that this would add an enormous amounts to the federal debt. How do you square this? As someone we consider to be a traditional Republican.
I have a very optimistic view about this, and I think that a lot of the CBO scoring doesn't take into account the fact that the policies, whether they be tax policies or regulatory policies that encourage capital investment, actually have the effect of growing the economy and in a dynamic way, have the effect of increasing the tax space. We saw this happen after the twenty seventeen tax cuts and jobsc was put in place. So I see real
potential to grow the economy. And I also say this in President Trump and I have talked about this on numerous occasions.
There are great opportunities to cut spending.
What we have in Washington is a huge spending problem, and coming in and taking the very focused and deliberate view toward some of the waste and mismanagement that I see across the board. It's going to be a combination of factors that will be required to begin to get our debt moving in the right direction. But as that begins to happen, I think that we'll see even further economic growth as confidence comes into the system.
I understand the argument that you and many of your colleagues make when it comes to the fact that you could see greater return from the growth that is spurred by tax cuts. Does that mean, though, that no pay force are necessary. If we could just get specific about what it is that you would cut in order to offset or where this will be paid for, other than just this general idea of growth.
Oh, there are plenty of places I think we get cut.
Look at some of the programs that were put in place for these multi trillion dollar, totally partisan bills that would pass back in twenty twenty one by the Democrats. You think about eighty billion dollars going to the irs to come and snoop on Americans. There are places we've already started to cut back on that. There are places like that that we can cut immediately, and I think
we'll continue to dig in and find opportunities. President Trump will challenge each of his cabinet secretaries and agency heads to find those opportunities. I've lived this at a state level. I was Commerce secretary of my home state. We cut a tremendous amount of funding out, saved money, found waste and sclerosis, and took it out.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget had a palpitation when they saw this plan and ran the numbers themselves. And the message from Mia McGuinness, who I know, you know there, was you can't get to this with a billion here, a billion there. This will require entitlement reform. You have to get to Medicare and Social Security.
JD.
Vance doesn't want to touch security and Donald Trump has said that he will not either.
Do you.
Well, here's what I think people miss. We're talking about mandatory versus discretionary spending, and most of my colleagues and I spend all of our time on discretionary spending. But there is a huge chunk of mandatory spending that has nothing to do with Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and even more was added to it through the twenty twenty
one Partisan Reconciliation bills. We need to go and take an extremely hard look at these mandatory spending obligations that we have that have nothing to do with people's retirement, their social security.
They're Medicare and Medicaid, and begin to address that.
We can make significant headway again on both the mandatory side as well as the discretionary side, and still abide by the pledge not to touch Medicare, Medicaid.
Or social Security.
I'd also like to ask you about cryptocurrencies, given your role on the Banking Committee, but also knowing that Senator jd Vance is from Ohio, a state in which the chairman of the Banking Committee, Shared Brown is in a tough re election fight against a pro crypto candidate, Bernie Marino, And I wonder if jd Vance entering the race puts crypto more into the actual four of this election cycle.
How do you expect it to play in, not just in the race that could define the next chair ranking member of the Banking Committee, but more broadly, well, I certainly.
Hope it puts it into play.
I think crypto, actually, cryptotechnology is a defining point in this election. If you like centralized control over your financial transactions, that's exactly where Shared Brown and the Democrats, this White House administration have been. They have been incredibly hostile toward crypto technology. If you like a decentralized option that allows for more freedom and liberty and also supports some of the greatest technology innovations that I've seen since the development
of the Internet. I think you're going to be supporting President Trump and JD Vance. JD has a great deal of experience in Silicon Valley. I think he possesses the great capacity to see this potential here. President Trump and I have spent a significant amount of time talking about the crypto technology industry and the potential that it holds for America. I can tell you both, gentlemen, want to
see this industry here in America as it evolves. We want to see this innovation happening here because I think it has great potential, great potential. We don't want to see it go offshore. And what we need is a regulatory constructor that will allow that, not push it away. And right now, what you have is a choice that would crush the industry. That's what comes from the SEC right now, That's what comes from Frankly Democrat members of my own Senate Banking Committee.
In this administration.
We need to move toward the policies that I'm certain we're going to adopt in the Republican administration that will be very favorable toward this industry.
Senator, we have to ask you, of course, about Donald Trump's well being after what happened last weekend. We were reporting that he was making a lot of phone calls the day after on Sunday, and you indicated earlier that you were on the other end of the line on those calls.
What did you talk about.
I talked to them Sunday evening for I don't know twenty twenty five minutes, and he was immediately talked about how divine intervention played a role in this, and if you think about how close he came to being assassinated, it's just I fully appreciate the hand of God that watched for him. But he immediately talked about the father of two, the firefighter that lost his life, that leaving a family without a dad, those that were injured on stage there that day.
He has very real concern for that.
I was with Kid Rock that night and we got on stage together and really fired up the crowd to go to the go fundme site to support those people their families and in a terrible time for them. President Trump was not surprising to me at all. He's always been that way in terms of his care and concern for others. That was the top of the conversation, and then we talked about how things are going to move forward. And I really think that the public is shocked by
what happened. I think it shocked us all to our core. And we need resilience, we need strength. And when he came up with his fist raised in the air, I think that's a picture that's going to be one of the most iconic in the world. America needs a strong leader right now. The world needs a strong leader right now. I speak with world leaders very often. Given my role in the Foreign Relations Committee and the fact that I
served in the previous administration as a diplomat. There is a great need for a strong America right now, and I think President Trump is moving right into that lane, all right.
Senator Bill Haggerty, the Republican from Tennessee and a member of the Senate Banking Committee, thank you so much for joining us, of course, also former ambassador to Japan under the first Trump administration.
Thank you, sir, Thanks sir,