On Sunday, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick spoke with CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" about President Trump's tariff policies.
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Questions asked in this interview
8
0:01What were some of the things that they agreed on in these talks in Switzerland?
0:56So, did something fundamentally change or is he sort of saying that to try to encourage the talks to continue?
1:44I just have one other question and I completely understand where you are that it's the Secretary of the Treasury who is over there, but do you have any sense — I know you're in touch with them — if China has made any concessions?
2:18So, my question for you is how is that a good thing?
3:53... which you just described, is going to mean that the American people, whether they work at a port or whether they're truck drivers or whether they're consumers, they're just going to have to suffer in the short term, maybe even longer?
6:14Is this something that Americans just need to understand is going to be harder to buy?
8:25Is the 10% tariff that we're seeing in the framework for the UK going to be in place for the foreseeable future?
10:43Is that 10% tariff kind of a baseline in the way you're approaching these other countries that you're negotiating with?
Here with me now is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Thank you so much for being here. I very much appreciate it. I want to start with what President Trump said on social media that there was much agreed to in negotiations on Saturday. What were some of the things that they agreed on in these talks in Switzerland?
Well, first I just have to wish you a happy Mother's Day and what a great day to be alive, and I want to wish my wife a happy Mother's Day as well. The team is in Switzerland meeting with their counterparts from China and they are hard at it. There's a lot to accomplish. There's both a lot to take care of and get off the table and they're working hard at it. At the end of the day they felt good, the president felt good and I'm going to leave it to them, but it felt good yesterday. The president tweeted that out and truthed that out, but things feel really good.
Well, he said even more than that as you saw. The president said there was a total reset. So, did something fundamentally change or is he sort of saying that to try to encourage the talks to continue?
Well, I'm leaving it to the trade team. You know, they are right now. They're in the room right now. So, I'm just going to leave it to them to take care of that themselves. But they felt good yesterday and that was really uplifting. I mean, what a day yesterday. I mean, ceasefire in India and Pakistan. I mean, how wonderful is that? Think of all of the lives that the United States, J.D. Vance and Senator Marco Rubio got involved. The president was involved. I mean, how wonderful to cause a ceasefire all the way on the other side of the world. Wonderful, wonderful day for Mother's Day.
Yeah, definitely a lot going on. I just have one other question and I completely understand where you are that it's the Secretary of the Treasury who is over there, but do you have any sense — I know you're in touch with them — if China has made any concessions?
I really want to leave it to the team to take care of that. I mean, this is really important for the United States, it's really important to China. Let's let the team take care of that and they're hard at it right now and everybody's rooting for them from both sides, but I think we're optimistic that things will work out well.
Okay. As the Secretary of Commerce, I do want to ask about the fact that there are no ships carrying goods from China bound for the West Coast right now. President Trump said earlier this week that drops in imports is actually a good thing because it's going to affect people's wallets and jobs. Well, he said it's a good thing because it shows that the imports are — that the tariffs are working, but in reality it's going to affect people's wallets and jobs. Truck drivers, port workers, American consumers. So, my question for you is how is that a good thing?
Well, I think the point that the president makes with his tariffs is that America has a 1.2 trillion-dollar trade deficit. That means other people are selling us goods more than we are selling them. And that's just not balanced, it's not fair. We're losing 1.2 trillion dollars a year, of which directly and indirectly to China, that's about a trillion dollars. You know, China sells goods to Vietnam, Vietnam re-packages them and sells them to us. So, the idea is the president wants balanced and fair trade and tariffs are the tool to create balanced and fair trade. It's just unsustainable for 1.2 trillion dollars to be exported to the rest of the world, meaning our money is going to the rest of the world, it's building them up and over time it's taken us down and the president's here to fix it. So, that's what he's trying to do with his tariffs.
And I understand what you're talking about with regard to sort of economic policy, but there's economic policy and then there's how people in the United States actually feel and the immediate effect on them. So, just to be clear, are you saying that ultimately fixing what the president sees as a problem, which you just described, is going to mean that the American people, whether they work at a port or whether they're truck drivers or whether they're consumers, they're just going to have to suffer in the short term, maybe even longer?
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Lutnick, H. (2025, May 11). FULL INTERVIEW: Commerce Secretary Lutnick Discusses Trump's Tariffs, Future Deals With Dana Bash [Interview transcript]. Forbes Breaking News. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2959885/
MLA
Howard Lutnick. "FULL INTERVIEW: Commerce Secretary Lutnick Discusses Trump's Tariffs, Future Deals With Dana Bash." Forbes Breaking News, 11 May. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2959885/.
BibTeX
@misc{lutnick2025_2959885,
author = {Howard Lutnick},
title = {FULL INTERVIEW: Commerce Secretary Lutnick Discusses Trump's Tariffs, Future Deals With Dana Bash},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Forbes Breaking News. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2959885/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
