Morning Wire - Investment Up, GDP Down & Drill, Baby, Drill | 5.1.25

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Inflation and gross domestic product are both down while investment in the U.S. surges, we go on location with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and the China trade war hits U.S. farmers. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Good Ranchers: https://goodranchers.com and subscribe to any box using code WIRE to claim $40 off + free meat for life! ZocDoc: Find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Visit https://Zocdoc.com/WIRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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agent of voyage. The conditions can't apply. Inflation drops, but so does gross domestic product. Will U.S. investment be able to reshape the U.S. economy? You have 3% growth, so we really like where we're at now.

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, May 1st, and this is Morning Wire. Trump vowed to drill baby drill to make America energy independent. We go on location with Interior Secretary Doug Bergam, who's making good on Trump's promise. We're going to mine baby mine so we can build baby build. And China is quietly backing off on some tariffs, but slams the brakes on U.S. farm orders. We're fully committed to raising pork not only domestically, but globally. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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American investment is surging despite turmoil around Trump's tariffs and the GDP slightly slipping. Joining us to lay out the data is Daily Wire reporter Marade Allorty. So, Mairead, how are economists interpreting this latest data? Hi, Georgia. So there's a lot of catastrophes going on right now around the economy. The GDP shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter, and the Dow dropped about 200 points yesterday at that news. But if we dig into the numbers a little bit, the truth is that the data is mixed, and there

are actually some significant positives in the latest numbers. During President Trump's Wednesday cabinet meeting, which was broadcast live at Trump and other administration officials poked holes in the media's narrative about the economy. Trump said they are turning Biden's economy around and explained that core GDP is actually up. That's Biden. That's not Trump. I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy destroying our country. But we took over his mess in so many different ways. Core GDP, removing distortions from imports, inventories, and government spending was up. plus 3% when you add it.

We had numbers that despite what we were handed, we turned them around. So the Trump administration is feeling somewhat positive. How are they responding to critics? Well, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro broke down how the administration crunched the numbers, and he said we really like where we are at now when it comes to the economy. The Trump program with the deregulation, with the tax cuts that's coming, which will be retroactive to January, which will allow complete expenses, it surged, it surged like, what is it, 22%, 22%. And consumption, despite the soft data with the confidence being down, consumption has been robust. So that number's

a really good number when you sort out all of that stuff. And we should be celebrating Trump policy and that number. Now, we've also heard the Trump administration say that more companies are coming back to U.S. soil. What do we know about that? Well, that's also another thing the media is downplaying the surge in domestic investment in response to the tariffs. Here's Navarro again. The markets need to like look beneath the surface of that. We had a 22% increase in domestic investment. That is off the chart. In that same cabinet meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik laid out details about how another semiconductor company, which is the main chip supplier for Apple is building a major manufacturing plant in Arizona.

Here's Lutnik. So they're investing $165 billion in 1100 acres in Arizona. And they're building the highest tech chip manufacturing semiconductors and 4,000 employees, you know, American tradecraft, right? Technicians doing every kind of work, the classic foundation of America. Trump also said he has gotten $8 trillion dollars. in new investments in the United States since taking office. If we didn't do the tariffs, they wouldn't be doing that.

So it takes a little while to get those facilities built, but they're coming in with big, big numbers. They're all coming in with big numbers. We have more money being spent than any time in the history of our country. We're up to close to $8 trillion, I think, I can say. And really, it's going to be a lot higher than that. There are also other good economic markers right now. inflation slowed to its lowest rates since September, and consumer spending surged 135 billion or 0.7%.

Much of that was Americans buying cars and other big-ticket items, partly to get ahead of Trump's tariffs. Meanwhile, prices stayed the same in March, and personal incomes rose by 116.8 billion or 0.5%. These are all healthy markers. Of course, we can't predict everything with the volatility of the tariffs, but it's certainly not all doom and gloom. Well, a lot to watch here, and we're going to continue while. watching each of these markers. Ray, thanks for reporting. Thanks, Georgia.

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As part of our Trump's 100-day special coverage daily wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips spent the day with the secretary in a cave. Right. As part of that time. What is he focused on? Two words, energy independence. I know when a lot of people think of the most powerful cabinet positions, it can be easy to overlook the Secretary of Interior,

but it's a crucial role, especially for this administration. Yeah. The department oversees billions of acres of federal lands and waterways and all of our national parks. I met the secretary at one of those parks, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It's actually the longest cave system in the world. It was a lot of fun. But Beyond Parks, Bergam also has the power to open up new land for mining and drilling operations, and he's doing just that.

This month when China announced a new ban on the export of several rare earth minerals, Secretary Bergam announced that he would be reversing President Biden's so-called war on mining to ensure that America could begin producing those minerals on our own. Obama, Biden, their whole approach was we're going to shut down mining, we're going to shut down oil and gas development. They really, I'm going to say, crushed the mining industry. both the extraction of these resources, but also the processing of that.

China was happy to have the rest of the Western world stopped mining so that they could take control of the markets around these critical minerals, which we need for defense, for technology, for electronics, really for everything today and modern life depends on it. So now in the United States, we've got to get back in the game. There's a capability called fast-tracking

where you can speed up. There had only been two mining operations in the US history that had ever been put on that list ever been put on that list to accelerate their permitting. President Trump added 10, last 10 more mining projects last week. There's going to be dozens more in the weeks ahead that will be announced that are being added to that list. So we're getting back in the game. And because President Trump made an emergency energy declaration, Secretary Bergam, who's also the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, was able to bypass regulations

that typically result in years-long delays on new mining projects. Now they're going to be taking just two weeks. Bergam told me that over-regulation of the mining industry here in America has driven businesses elsewhere forcing us to be more reliant on places like China. The tool that's been used to kill all of these natural resource industries in America has been permitting. I mean, permitting has been just drag on, drag on years, decades, then finally a permits issue, then a lawsuit is filed, then it drags on in court. And that uncertainty has driven the capital formation, out of these industries.

And it's caused actually even American companies to say, well, if I'm gonna do mining, I better do it overseas. And it's worth noting, Bergam says that bringing mining operations back to the US will actually be better for the environment globally as a whole. Here he is making that case. We do it cleaner, better, safer, smarter, and healthier here in the US.

Because when we attack these resource-based industries, we don't reduce the demand. We just shift the supply to overseas. And then shifted to China, who might be extracting, this from the DRC in the middle of Africa, and they're doing it without reclamation. They're doing it with sometimes slave labor, prisoner labor.

I mean, they're doing it with no emissions control on what they're doing. So it's worse for the global environment. It helps our adversaries. It hurts our economy, and it's horrible for national security. Now, Secretary Bergam is also pitching in on Trump's efforts to secure the border. This is pretty interesting.

Tell us about that. Yeah, this month, Bergham transferred a long strip of borderland that stretches hundreds of miles from control of the Department of Interior to the Department of Defense. That's important because it'll give the U.S. military the ability to protect the border themselves on that land. We've had human trafficking, smuggling. We've had fentanyl flowing in.

So to mass invasion, mass casualties. Well, now we have a 60-foot strip that's been transferred to the U.S. DoD. If someone sets foot on that, they're trespassing on a military installation. Now the troops that President Trump, through the border emergency has deployed down there, they can detain someone for that trespassing until the border patrol, who's got arrest authority, can arrest them.

So this is going to help with the collaboration between the border patrol and the NRDOD. We got into a lot more during our day spent together, including the behind-the-scenes story of renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. It was actually Bergam's job. You can watch the full video of our day together on YouTube or DailyWire.com.

It's definitely worth the watch. He's got a lot on his platey, certainly hit the ground running. Kevin, thanks so much for reporting. Absolutely. President Trump continues to tout his trade policies as China quietly makes concessions, but also cancels major U.S. agriculture orders. Here with more is Daily Wire reporter, Amanda Presto Giacomo. So Amanda, a lot of developments out of China as this trade war progresses. Let's start with the reported concessions out of Beijing. What's happening there? Yeah, so there was a report from Reuters yesterday that said that China has

created a list of U.S. made products that they're going to exempt from their retaliatory 125% tariffs. Now, that would be in addition to other exemptions that China has already made on things like pharmaceuticals, microchips, and aircraft engines. Behind the scenes, we have Beijing apparently privately notifying companies about these latest exemptions. Now, that would obviously be to preserve this posture from China that they're going to fight Trump to the end on these tariffs. To that point, just this week, China released a propaganda video about fighting Trump and it's titled, Never Kneel Down. Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst. It only deepens the crisis. Make no mistake, the U.S. will keep flip-flopping and playing hardball. But China will stand firm.

No matter how hard the wind blows, no matter how clouds rage. It's also worth noting that Trump has said that he is in trade talks with China and that President Xi actually did call him. recently. China, though, has denied that. So perhaps another example of private concessions while China puts on a bold public face. So hopefully some quiet compromise behind the scenes there. Exactly. Now, what's going on on the agriculture front? Yeah, so just last week, China made its largest cancellation of pork orders in five years, halting about 12,000 tons of U.S. pork. The nation has also significantly dropped its soybean orders by 97 percent compared to just two weeks ago. For some context, U.S. farmers export more than $176 billion worth of agricultural products a year.

Nearly 10% of that is soybean and pork for China. Here's one farmer from Iowa, a leading pork-producing state, discussing her concerns about China and her desire for fair trade. And what we really want is fair trade, and we want to make a living doing it. So we want fair prices. We want to be able to sell our product not only within the United States, but globally. So whether that's to China, whether that's Mexico, Canada, we want to be able to sell it. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins addressed potential implications we could see with China during this trade war.

And she said that she's looking to open up markets for American farmers. I mean, almost every country in the world treats their farmers better than ours have been treated under the tariff regime of the rest of the world and not of America. That is what is realigning right now. My focus is to expand market access. So while we're renegotiating those deals with current partners, working and moving into Japan and Vietnam and India and Brazil and other countries to make sure that not only do we have the same amount of product that goes in as was done in the last Trump administration,

obviously it shrunk under the Biden administration, but that we expand that greatly and that our farmers and ranchers see an era of prosperity that's unprecedented for them. In addition to the Department of Agriculture looking to expand the U.S. export market, Trump said back in March that he really wants to boost agricultural production to be sold right here in the U.S. Well, hopefully over the next few months, we can get all these trade deals sorted out. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome.

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow morning with the news you need to know.