US Energy Secretary Chris Wright Talks Today's Markets

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I don't know if you've seen, but it is a tough day in the market. Stocks were hit really hard, Oils off two percent, smp is off almost three percent. Growth fears and tariffears directly impacting the market. What do you say, Oh.

Look, this president's a businessman.

He's a negotiator, not his career in politics and his career in business. And what has been the end result of that improvements for the American people. But we're in the midst of a deal right now. We're in midst of negotiations. Trump is fighting every day to make conditions, business conditions, cost of living conditions better for Americans. I think that's the trajectory we're on. But you've always got uncertainty on the road.

There's there's pain for gain, right, but like how long that pain lasts for it can be really tricky, particularly when we're trying to actually invest.

Yeah, look, he's got two big goals on trade.

Number one we've heard about.

I don't think it's been talked about enough, is Look, one hundred thousand or more premature deaths of mostly young Americans from fentanyl. He's massively motivated by that. Anyone who's been touched by a friend or a family friend that's seeing a death from fentanyl, this is just heartbreaking. So he's trying to work with both of our neighbor to the south and are nable to the north. How can we go as far as we can to shut down the trafficking in fentanyl?

I think it's hard to go too far in that direction.

The other thing President Trump wants to do is have free trade, but fair trade. You've heard him talk about reciprocal tariffs. You know, we have two hundred and fifty percent tariffs to export, you know, dairy products into Canada. That doesn't make any sense. That certainly hurts American dairy farmers. So let's have the parties come together and together work to lower tariff barriers together and have reciprocal trade.

So it's faritaboth sides.

All right, let's unpack that for a second. I'm going first to the trade barrier part. Just example, when you have a tax and a teriff Canadian imports of oil, won't that actually hurt consumers because all of a sudden you're going to have refiner margins are going to plummet and you're gonna have higher gasoline prices. Every analyst on the street is saying that they.

Might be wrong, they might be wrong, but they're right.

I mean, we don't have that oil in the US, right, we don't have heavy oil, so we cannotver find it here.

Yes, it's good for that oil to come into our marketplace, and I suspect that market will continue coming into our marketplace. So look, there's uncertainty, is unsettling, and that leads to a loss of confidence, that leads to fear. But look, life is long. This administration has been in fifty days. We've had four actions on LNG exports. We're getting rid of nonsense regulations on home appliances to make them lower costs and higher performing. There's so much positive going on.

Okay, at the end of the day, we want a.

Lower cost for Americans and expand opportunity for Americans, and I think that's what you'll see coming.

But what if the sausage becomes higher gasoline prices or diesel prices because of the tariffs.

Well, since President Trump was elected and since he was inaugurated, you've seen the decline in oil prices, and i've decline in gasoline prices.

You saw decline further today.

This is true if they're down about seventeen percent oil prices since the peak back in January. But on the flip side, if I'm a driller, how do I drill more? Because I don't want to drill when oils at sixty nine.

So President Trump's worked hard to lower the cost of doing business in the United States. We had four years in the Biden administration where there was so many barriers and you never knew where the next one was coming. You can't get a permit on federal land, you can't build a gathering line, you can't maybe you're not going to be able to export your natural gas. I don't want to drill if I'm not sure where it's going

Sure, But on the flip side, if you have tariffs coming in on aluminum steel, that will raise the break even prices for well drilled We need.

Two motivations there.

Number One, we've seen so much exporting of manufacturing jobs in the United States over the last twenty five years, mostly to Asia, driven in large park by China. So he has a goal, I think, a great goal to reshore manufacturing in the United States. We can make heavy industry again in this country. But there's a transition time there for sure. But look, he's a negotiator, he's a businessman.

Is just how long the pain will last? I think is really at the heart of the question. And as a CEO, I have not yet to meet a CEO here today that tells me they're going to a drill more because they're worried about the uncertainty.

Uncertainty's unsettling. Uncertainty's unsalling.

You know you're a CEO of a no oil company.

Absolutely, but look, you've got to give it a little bit of time. We saw the results last time Trump was in four years in his first term, Trump forty five, there was a lot of fear there.

What happened.

Inflation average below two percent, Energy prices came down, wages grew in America, particularly for blue collar working class people. It's the same agenda. It's the same agenda this time.

So let's go to the IRA for a second. You guys are reviewing, of course, what parts of the IRA will stay. Tax credits. Everyone I talked to loves the tax credits.

They love them.

They love them for hydrogen, they love them for when, they love them for solar. Will you keep those? Well, the administration keep them.

Everybody loves to get other people's money, you know, whether it's business or consumers or whatever. But look where that's led us, Alex, Look where that's led us almost a two trillion dollar deficit in the last year of the Biden administration in peacetime with relatively low on them deployment.

That's just un sustainable.

If you shovel money out the door, everyone can get a sugar high, but you have to pay the piper.

So there's of course.

Politics, and it's the House and the Senate will decide what from the IRA bill stays and what goes. I'm of course advising on that, but I don't have a vote in the House or the Senate.

But we had four years of a lot of.

Money going out of the door, a lot of it in the name of new energies or whatever. And what do we get higher priced energy over.

Those four years. Of course there's going to be a different tack this time.

It will be if we label a clean tech for a moment, our analyst at Bloomberg they're called Bloomberg n EF said that over two trillion was invested in clean tech last year, about double fossil fuels, but nine percent of that was from China. If we don't invest in clean tech, are we basically giving China free run in that industry. And that's exactly not what the administration wants.

Of course, I rejected label clean tech. That's just a marketing term. That means is lower greenhouse gas emissions. But much more material intensity, much more land and intermittent solar panels. So and you're right, China is huge in the manufacturing of these systems. China has built lots of wind and solar, but China last year permitted one hundred gigawatts of coal power. Their energy system is more hydrocarbon dominant than ours. So

States and Europe.

So far, I would say it's worked for them better than it's worked for us. The United States gets just over three percent of our primary energy from wind, solar, and batteries three percent. Hundreds of billions of dollars for three percent.

Okay, so you're not worried about that. So you don't want to like on shore US solar panels. Here in a world where you don't like solar panels.

I'm not saying I don't like solar panels, okay, but the look I am. I'm actually I've worked in solar. I think solar has got a great future. It's growing rapidly. That's not at all true. It's just we do don't want to race down the road Europe went down right, we could.

Put lots of windmills up in solar panels as.

Germany and UK did, in double or triple our electricity prices and export our industry. That's just simply not the agenda of this administration. We want more energy, more affordable, reliable, secure energy that could come from all different sources. But ultimately the only constituency being aimed at is the American citizen.

When we take a look at other forms of energy, we haven't brought up natural gas and energy exports, which was a huge focus of your speech today at Sarah Week. How are the conversations going for the ability to build out in the West energy export facilities to be more efficient to get energy to Japan.

Yeah, Look, there's a project in Alaska we're talking about.

There's several other projects.

Ultimately, the infrastructure that comes from private industries and private players. So our goal is not to decide what the energy system is. It's just to get out of the way and enable businesses and consumers to decide with their own pocketbook and their own investments, what energy is going to be.

But yes, we've had four years of it.

Making it very hard to build new infrastructure that has changed now. I think you're going to see a lot of infrastructure built, but the specific projects will be built that'll be determined by consumers and investors builders of those projects.

You haven't had talks with the Japanese government about this or anything.

Absolutely, we have, okay, tremendous interest in Japan to get trust or just thoughts.

Oh I would say, firm interests, firm interests. Yeah, I did that.

Japan and the United States have had a great alliance across many sectors. The United States is blessed with abundance of energy. Japan didn't get the same abundances we have, but they also have the start of AI and technology growing in Japan. They have growing energy demand needs and where better to get that energy supplied than from the United States. Oh, I think we have very productive dialogues going on with Japan.

And last question for you, because I have to ask it, are we going to see increased and harsher sanctions on Iran's oil industry and how does that then play into the UN as his relationship with Saudi Arabia and OPEQ plus and Russia.

Look, President Trump has great cards in his hands right now. Given the American energy system and the willingness to produce more energy here. When he was president last time, Iranian oil exports shrunk down to very modest levels. It starved that regime of money to fund terrorists and to make trouble around the world. Biden didn't remove those sanctions, but he stopped enforcing him That enriched Iran. And now we've seen what's happened with the hu Thies, hesbl and Hamas

Bring peace to the world. Absolutely.

Can we afford the squeezing off of Iranian oil exports? Absolutely from the United States number one, but also from our allies abroad. You know, I think people realize America is open for business again, and we're seeing increased oil production and increased investments not just in America but around the world.