US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum Talks Gas Prices

0:00For Begrim, one of Thailand's oldest established companies, growth does not begin with the deal. It begins with trust. Later in this podcast, hear how that approach has taken the company from Thailand to South Korea and the United States. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, Radio, News And joining us now live from the Convention Center here in Dallas is Secretary of the Interior Doug Bercom as we kick things off this evening. Mr. Secretary, welcome back to Bloomberg TV and radio. Appreciate you joining us in a very loud arena for a second night. Could we begin with this $5,000 Trump dividend suggestion from the President? Are we sending money to taxpayers potentially that taxpayers would be paying for? How would this work? Well, Kayleigh, we can start there, but I do want to thank you and Bloomberg. I know tomorrow you've got a full day of scheduling around 9-11. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy and I

1:02will be out at Shanksville at the United Airlines, the Flight 93 site, which is now a national park service historic site. So again, appreciate the coverage of that day. And of course, it's interesting that part of the theme of President Trump last night was we're still fighting battles in the Middle East and grateful for his leadership. Relativity or question, yeah, the Trump dividend, this is an idea the President's had about how we take the future prosperity to the country and get it back to the American workers. And I think it's as President Trump has had. This is a big idea, bold idea, a fresh idea. And I think it has a lot of potential because of the upside that we're seeing in America, the record trillions of dollars of direct foreign investment, the lower regulations, the lower taxes, the prosperity that's coming, and President Trump wants to make sure to share that with American workers. Can he do so without the authorization of Congress? He told CBS, he thought he could do this on his own, but Mr. Secretary, doesn't the power of the purse lie

2:04with your colleagues at the Capitol? Well, I think that remains to be seen. And I'm sure President Trump, who's just launched this big idea yesterday, perhaps has some ideas related to the revenue that's coming in or the savings that's being generated from other sources. But I'm sure there's many people in Congress that think this is a good idea as well. And of course, when we look at Congress in the past, or Democrats in the past, they promised, hey, we're going to give a trillion dollars of student college debt relief, which is really just a past to the universities, or we're going to change the rules around healthcare reimbursements, trillions of dollars, or we're going to do the green new deal, trillions of dollars over decades of subsidies. So there's been other big ideas that have been pitched out during election years. I mean, I think this one is the first time where President Trump is saying that people that are generating the prosperity, the workers of America, would be the ones that are the recipients. Well, you mentioned a moment ago, Mr. Secretary, that the President has also acknowledged as we

3:07mark the 25th anniversary of 9-11 tomorrow, that there is still a threat posed in the Middle East, has continually cast a rawn as the leaving state sponsor of terror. And that's part of the reason why he has started this military pursuit that has escalated in recent days. As it has escalated, Mr. Secretary, as I'm sure you know, we have seen oil prices move pretty substantially higher. And diesel was already marching toward $6 a gallon, even prior to the latest moves today. With the moves like what we are seeing with the refining capacity restrictions with diesel in particular, is the U.S. right now considering any kind of export restriction when it comes to diesel? There's every idea is on the table, but I think the thing that we've got to focus on right now is making sure that we get our domestic production up under the prior administration. There was refining capacity was shrinking in extreme cases like in California where they used to have

4:09over 30 refineries going from 8 to 7 to 6, a place like California importing foreign refined product to meet their needs as a state when they could be actually refining it there, but through policies at the state level, subtracting from our refining capacity, giving them the highest gas and diesel prices in the lower 48. But yeah, we acknowledge, certainly do. I mean, this is high diesel prices are affecting, you know, everywhere from farmers to lobstermen, but this is a short term situation because again, present Trump is eliminating a long-term multi-generational issue relative to having a terrorist group or terrorist groups plural, having nuclear weapons because of course, Iran was funding 24 different terror groups. If they had a nuclear weapon, they wouldn't just keep it to themselves like a country, they would be dispersed across terror groups. And that's a threat to every American wherever they live. And I think the other big picture thing here is what's present Trump is asking people to say, we're on a track to, and we are effectively with the actions in the lower 48 with Alaska,

5:11with Venezuela, moving the geopolitical center of oil and gas production back to the Western hemisphere really for the first time. And this ensures that America is going to have the lowest price, most secure energy, the most manufacturing jobs coming back, we're showing that up in the jobs report because if you take a look at natural gas, $2.70 for natural gas when Europe is paying 12 and other parts of the country paying 20. So we're blessed in America to be set up for the decades ahead under President Trump's energy dominance policy to have secure, reliable, affordable energy for manufacturing, for electricity production, and for prosperity. And Mr. Secretary, I'm going to try to speak clearly over the noise of that crowd just for clarity when you say everything is on the table. Does that mean that export controls on refined products are under consideration right now? Well, I would say the, when we say that everything's on the table, we want to look at, we don't want to exclude any options, but I think you know that in the past, whether there's been ideas on export control, export controls,

6:16export controls have actually raised domestic prices, not lower them. So everything's on the table that will help lower prices. All right, Mr. Secretary, a headline across the Bloomberg terminal just a few moments ago regarding Microsoft and AI hyperscaler, they're planning to triple their data center capacity to 38 gigawatts. And as we consider that kind of build out that we are seeing, not just from Microsoft, but all of these companies that the proliferation of data centers across the country, it has created a lot of pushback among an electorate and a consumer that is concerned about the drain on resources, on things like water, from your purview as the interior secretary, is that a real threat in terms of the resource drain? Well, I say with water, I think water needs to be debunked completely because most of the proposals for future data centers are all using closed-loop systems. You could have a car wash, like these ones that are popping up all over America, where you buy a monthly membership and

7:17roll through there. Those might use 20 to 30 times the water that a data center does. So the water thing can be handled. And of course, under President Trump's rate-payer protection plan, if anybody is building, they have to bring their own power or bring more than their own power if they want to be connected to the grid, bring their own power if they're off the grid. So we've basically got a commitment for all these hyperscalers that they're not going to be training the current electrical grid. They're going to be adding to it. And of course, when I was just governor of North Dakota 20 months ago, we built a data center there in a town of 800 people. They did water capture on the roof. The town ended up with more water. They did rebates on electrical things that everybody in that community and that rural area ended up with lower electrical bills. So if we have the right site selection and the right policies at the local level, these could be a tremendous benefit in terms of paying local property taxes, helping schools, and lowering the cost of electricity, increasing the water, the opposite of the concerns that you're hearing. But it's up to the industry to work hard to get that message out to everyone. And of course,

8:18we do know that there's a foreign state interference in trying to amplify that uncertainty because the AI arms race is an arms race. This is a modern challenge for us. In America, it has to be able to build things, build them quickly in this country and do that with the support of local communities. The best idea that I've heard is taking some of the compute that comes off of that data center, contributing it back to the local school district in the form of a personalized tutor for every single student in that district because the number one thing to raise educational outcomes in K-12 in America has been proven to be personalized learning help and AI would be an amazing tool for that. And that'd be the equivalent of having someone move in that said, hey, we're going to donate tens or 20s of millions of dollars to the local school district every year. That's unheard of in America to have that kind of philanthropy, but these hyperscalers would have the ability to do that by giving away some of their products, some of their compute that comes off of these wonderful manufacturing and tell it. They're basically a manufacturing site for intelligence, sharing some of that product

9:21in a local community, whether it's health care or education, could go a long way towards building local support. Well, Mr. Secretaries, we talk about data centers being built. There's a lot being built in DC right now under this president of ballroom at the White House updating of the reflecting pool or restoration, goal plating of statues, and of course the arch, which you said could have ground broken on it just recently in the next couple of weeks. There's obviously a group of veterans that have sued over the arch in particular arguing that it dis services those buried at Arlington National Cemetery. What do you say to Americans who are concerned that it's construction, frankly, is disrespectful? Well, on the arch in particular, you can go back to 1902 and 1922. Early plans, the McMillan plan, which helped lay this out, there's an empty circle that just has grass on it that's been that way for 125 years. It was designed in the original plan to

10:24be the halfway point between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery, and it was designed to be a monument to help honor those fallen heroes. The designs that I've seen for the final arch design include honoring our military around the architecture and the designs and the carvings that would go into the side of that arch, and the size and scale and the placement of that arch, I think enhances the whole arrival sequence at Arlington, which again 125 years ago was meant to do. If you look back at the original plans, it actually shows an arch at that site. Okay, we're about out of time, Mr. Secretary, but can I just ask whether it's the arch or any other beautification effort or those efforts that help earn Republicans more votes in the midterms? Well, I know that President Trump a year ago, when he ran, this is a promise made and promise kept, he said, if we're going to the greatest country in the world, we need to have the most beautiful and the most safe capital in

11:26the world, and 20 months ago in DC, it was a mess. I mean, whether it was a thousand graffiti sites, 153 homeless encampments, 22 fountains over 50 monuments, the role and disrepair President Trump has led the way. He's led the way on bringing all that back, and I think any DC resident would say the city has never looked better, and we statistically it's never been safer in terms of crime rates. And you mentioned the ballroom long overdue, I mean, to have the center of our government be able to only host state dinners for 120 people. I mean, you know, the Fargo holiday end can hold 800 for an event. The President building a secure ballroom with military facilities below and above it is something that every President going forward is going to be thanking the President, and that whole ballroom being built with with donations. So zero taxpayer dollars, but a massive improvement versus as you probably were at the correspondence dinner, and you saw the chaos that night of trying to hold an event for thousands of people in a hotel. You know, so it's a that's going to be a big plus when it opens.

12:31I think in the long term, that's going to stand the test of time and people are going to love it. All right, the US Interior Secretary Doug Bergen live from the Convention Hall. A new market, a new partner, a new project. Growth can sound simple, but for one of Thailand's most enduring companies, BeGrim, expansion starts long before any deal is signed. It starts with relationships. It starts with trust. We follow our vision. That's why we went to America. We enter into US market for the small hydro protect 30 MW in Malaysia. There are many, many companies that are very successful in their own metrics. And so I think everybody has to define their own way of success. I would find success by being a good part of society. People look at us say, yeah, this company does well for society that I would define as success. Find out more by searching BeGrim, stewards of compassion, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Barry Rittultz inviting you to join me for the Masters in Business podcast.

13:34Every week we bring you conversations with the people who shake markets, investing, and business. I speak with CEOs, Nobel laureates, market innovators, and legendary investors. Whether you own stockspons, real estate commodities, even crypto, these are discussions you absolutely need to hear. Subscribe to the Masters in Business podcast on Apple Spotify or anywhere you listen.