The US and China finalized a trade understanding reached last month in Geneva, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, adding that the White House has imminent plans to reach agreements with a set of 10 major trading partners.
The China deal, which Lutnick said had been signed two days ago, codifies the terms laid out in trade talks between Beijing and Washington, including a commitment from China to deliver rare earths used in everything from wind turbines to jet planes.
“They’re going to deliver rare earths to us” and once they do that, “we’ll take down our countermeasures,” Lutnick to...
Questions asked in this interview
8
0:00Is the parliamentarian making this effort harder, making it harder to meet the president's deadline of July 4th?
0:33When you consider what we just saw there in the East Room, what is there to celebrate today?
1:47But are you, as a New Yorker, going to have to get involved in this as well?
2:59If the bill alters anymore, does the tariff program need to change with it?
4:33Does that include the China deal the president suggested was signed yesterday?
5:43If there's no deal, here's the new reciprocal tariff. Is that right?
6:51Are you expecting that offer to potentially be accepted by next week?
7:52You've been saying that the phone's ringing off the hook here. Where are they coming from?
You, of course, just left the East Room where President Trump held this one big, beautiful event celebrating a bill that has yet to pass the Senate or repass the House. And obviously the parliamentarian in the Senate has thrown up some hurdles today. Is the parliamentarian making this effort harder, making it harder to meet the president's deadline of July 4th?
I think reconciliation has a process and we all respect the process. So I think they're just going through the way they do things in the Senate and I think it's going to work out great for the president.
Secretary, it's good to see you. Welcome to Balance of Power. Once again, your thoughts on some of the complications that we're hearing about beyond the parliamentarian. We've got the SALT Caucus to satisfy. There are still questions about the level of cuts in the president's big, beautiful bill. Timeline is one thing. The final results is another here. When you consider what we just saw there in the East Room, what is there to celebrate today?
Well, I think today was motivational. You know, what we're doing is we're getting everybody together and saying, let's go, let's go pass this bill. Right. There's lots of people, as the president said, there's lots of people. We're grandstanders, people that want to make their point. They want to get their moment in the sun, their, you know, their big moment of fame. But at the end of the day, the Republican Party is behind Donald Trump. They're going to pass this bill. It'll be the largest tax cut in the history of the United States of America. Or imagine if they didn't pass it, it would be the largest tax increase. So who isn't going to back the largest tax cut in the history of America? No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, really delivering on his promises. So I think we're all really excited about what's coming and it's coming in the next week or two.
Well, when we consider who might not be super eager to vote on this package, Mr. Secretary, the aforementioned SALT Caucus that Joe was just referring to is still threatening basically not to support this measure. They found the first offer from the Treasury Department on some kind of compromise unsatisfactory. We understand there will be more meetings happening today. But are you, as a New Yorker, going to have to get involved in this as well? You know how close to home this issue is for those members.
Sure. But you know, what's going to happen is these members and the senators there are talking, they're pounding it out, they're working it out. And I am confident they're going to reach a consensus and this bill is going to pass. You know, look, this is hard fought. It's one big, beautiful bill, which means the key word is big. It covers all of the things that the president promised. And that's a huge amount of things to get accomplished. And I think we're feeling positive and we're feeling optimistic. And sure, is it a lot of work? Oh, my gosh. It's a lot of work. Speaker Johnson and Senator Thune are doing a great job. And I think you're going to see this pass. It's hard work, but it's coming our way.
Secretary, I'm really interested in exploring the relationship between the tax bill and tariffs. If you can maybe take us by the hand here. Does the tax bill only work when you have the revenue coming from tariffs? And we're of course having this conversation as we walk ever closer to July 9th, the deadline here for the reciprocal. If the bill alters anymore, does the tariff program need to change with it?
Not at all. That tariff program is in the power of the presidency. Right. Congress has given the president the power to work on these tariffs and to set these tariffs. So that's presidential power. So what's really interesting is this big, beautiful bill does not count the $88 billion of tariff revenue we've received and now we're earning up to $30 billion a month in tariff revenue so far. And as you get to July 9th, that number is only going to go higher. We're going to announce a whole bunch of deals over the next week or so. And then we're just going to send letters out to everybody who's responded to us, put them in the right category, and off will go. So there's going to be tens of billions per month and those are not included in the bill. So when they talk about the deficit, when they're talking about the bill, they're only talking about the things that that bill touches. The extra $400 or $500 billion a year that the new tariffs bring in, that just doesn't count for the bill. But of course, of course, that cash is for America.
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Lutnick, H. (2025, June 26). US-China Trade Truce Signed, More Deals On The Way: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2960038/
MLA
Howard Lutnick. "US-China Trade Truce Signed, More Deals On The Way: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick." Bloomberg Podcasts, 26 Jun. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2960038/.
BibTeX
@misc{lutnick2025_2960038,
author = {Howard Lutnick},
title = {US-China Trade Truce Signed, More Deals On The Way: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2960038/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
