United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations Committees, yesterday joined Balance of Power on BloombergTV to discuss the fiscal and monetary implications of President Trump’s landslide victory on November 5, 2024.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on his message to investors after President Trump’s victory: “I think what you need to keep in mind is that President Trump’s overarching goal is to see a lot more economic growth here in this economy. You can count on another effort to undertake a massive deregulation thrust. By some measures, the cost of deregulation under the Biden Administration has been more than a trillion dollars. It’s a compliance burden that is enormous. That’s something that can be lifted on our businesses. It will have an impact in a positive way on the economy, and that can be undertaken without any cost. If you think about where President Trump has gone in the past with respect to tax cuts, he’s done it in a manner that’s made us more competitive as a nation. Our corporate tax rate was the highest in the world before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was put in place in 2017. He brought that down to something more competitive, more middle of the pack, and what we saw was a lot of companies, the inversion stopped, and a lot of companies repatriating funds and our revenues went up. Corporate tax revenues went up as a result of that and have [continued to do so]. So, I wouldn’t follow the logic that coming in and taking axe on the tax package that I think is going to be front and center for us as we come into the new year. I wouldn’t think you would want to lose touch with the fact that it’s going to be overarchingly aimed at economic growth.”
Hagerty on the Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision: “I think everything should be on the table here. If you think about what Michael Barr has done as the Vice Chair: he’s taken a regulatory role here. I don’t think that deserves the same sort of protection that our monetary policy has. And his regulatory role has been actually contradicting congressional legislation, S.2155, for example. This Basel III Endgame: this has, in my view, a rogue operation, that has put a great deal of uncertainty to the marketplace. I’m glad that I’ve seen the banking community stand up against this, but Michael Barr is somebody that has come into a position, and I think in a very political way, in a way that’s had a dampening effect on our economic growth, has not done our nation any good. I’ve been very concerned about it. I’ve been vocal and articulate about that, and I remain so. So, I would look at any legal option that we might have to make a change there. The review process that he’s undertaken has been grossly unacceptable. And the fact is that he’s taken a regulatory posture, that should not get the same type of protections, again, as we provide monetary policy here in the United States.”
Hagerty on the future prospects of Basel III Endgame under the Trump Administration: “I haven’t had an opportunity to discuss that in particular with President Trump, but I certainly think that Basel III has been, all the proposals that I’ve seen, have been largely bad for the American economy because they make us less competitive as a nation. And I don’t understand why people here, particularly on the left, think that America should be guiding its regulatory construct toward Europe. Let’s look and see what happened to the European economy since they formed the Common Union. They’ve barely grown. America’s grown at more than ten times the rate since the common economy was formed there. We’ve grown at an amazing rate because we’ve not been burdened by the regulatory construct that they seem to want to impose in their economy. Why would we want to move in their direction?”
Hagerty on the role of tariffs in the Trump Administration: “The overarching problem is a lack of reciprocity, and there is a historic reason for this: If you go back to World War II, we were trying to move economies, like Japan’s economy, like European economies, toward America. We didn’t want them turning toward communism. We cut very favorable trade deals with them as a result. We should have time limited that. we should have put some sort of GDP-per-capita limit on it. We didn’t. We have fully formed economies, developed economies, that are trading in ways that are very advantageous to them, not so to us. America has got the most open economy in the world. Access to this economy deserves fair treatment, reciprocity. We haven’t been getting that, and I think this is an opportunity to come back and address it.”
Hagerty on the speculation surrounding the White House cabinet: “There is a lot of speculation that is bound to happen after any election victory like President Trump had. And, what a landslide. What a mandate that he received. I’ve got a huge job to do right now to make certain that the new majority in the United States Senate is lined up and prepared to support President Trump’s agenda, and I’m going to do everything I can to make certain we move our nation back in the right direction. President Trump has articulated that. I think that’s why the American populace has put him back into office with a landslide. And I’m not going to speculate on what the future might be. I’ll leave that to the speculators. Except to say, that I’m going to do everything I can to move us forward, bring our economy back, our national security back, and get America moving again.”
Hagerty on the potential to lose Senate colleagues to the Trump Administration: “We have a tremendous group of Senators in the United States Senate. I think that you couldn’t look at any one person and say that that would be a significant loss because any Senator would be replaced, hopefully, by the Governor of their State, a very competent person. I think that would be a consideration that would be undertaken. I’m not going to speculate on that type of activity because I don’t know that it would ever even involve me. But I think that the process as it would unfold, the Senate and the incoming President would be very certain that a very competent person would be there to be replaced.”
