# Tariff Adjustments and Venezuela Oil Strategy

**Podcast:** Bloomberg Daybreak: US Edition
**Published:** 2026-02-13

## Transcript

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Good morning.
I'm Nathan Hager.
And I'm John Tucker.
Here are the stories we're following today.
John, we begin with new developments this morning on global tariffs.
Bloomberg News has learned the Trump administration is working to narrow its broad duties on steel and aluminum products.
We get more from Bloomberg Global Trade Czar Brendan Murray.
Dioxide and other gases endanger public health.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldon calls this a major deregulatory action.
President Trump says ultimately it saves money.
All right, Amy, thank you.
On Capitol Hill, it's gone quiet.
The Senate has headed out for a week-long recess.
The Federal Government is headed for its second partial shutdown in as many months and the third since President Trump returned to office.
This one will affect only the Department of Homeland Security.
That includes the Transportation Security Administration, which could mean a strain at the airports.
And more fallout this morning from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Goldman Sachs top lawyer, Kathy Rembler, leaving the firm.
This follows a cache of Department of Justice documents showing her links to the sex offender.
Rembler, who's going to leave on June 30th, was well known for her time as a White House counsel in Barack Obama's administration.
She was hired by Goldman Sachs in 2020 and later became its legal chief.
Tomorrow will be two weeks since the Today Show host's mother was last seen at her home near Tucson.
The FBI has doubled the reward for information leading to her captors to $100,000.
And investigators are asking neighbors to share surveillance camera footage of suspicious cars or people they may have seen in the month before she disappeared.
This neighbor just hopes they find Nancy Guthrie.
Sources are telling Bloomberg that officials in Caracas are poised to award the exploration of production blocks as soon as this week.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright spoke to Bloomberg's and Marie Horidan about rebuilding the country's oil sector.
I think in the first year we'll see pretty significant 30, 40 percent growth in Venezuelan oil production this year.
You can continue production growth rate at a pretty good clip.
Venezuela does have the largest proved oil reserves, which is the technical concept, much larger than the U.S.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaking to Bloomberg's and Marie Horderne in Caracas.
The Trump administration is expected to issue a general license to allow international oil companies to explore and produce in Venezuela without violating U.S.
sanctions.
He says the biggest risk to the economy right now is policymakers underestimating how much rates are restraining growth.
Increased potential output that can be accommodated by looser monetary policy.
And so the combination of these things leads me to think that monetary policy is tighter than it needs to be, and that we can we can we can uh we can afford to have lower interest rates.
Fed Governor Steven Myron spoke at an event in Dallas.
He says underlying inflation is very close to the Fed's two percent target.
And another big payday for a banking boss.
Citigroup has boosted the pay of Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser to 42 billion dollars.
A 22 percent increase follows a year in which Citigroup's stock rose 66 percent.
That's more than any other Wall Street bank.
Well, the pay bump puts uh Fraser's total package for the year of 2025 just a million dollars behind that of JP Morgan Shea's CEO, Jamie Diamond.
And John, we're watching the skies this morning with NASA set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station, replacing a crew that had to be evacuated early due to a medical issue.
This is Crew 12's mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The pre-done launch was delayed by two days due to adverse weather conditions across the East Coast.
These astronauts are expected to arrive at the orbiting ISS by tomorrow afternoon.
And that brings us to 509 on Wall Street.
Time for a look at some of the other stories making news in New York and around the world.
And for that, which went by Bloomberg's Michael Barr.
Michael, good morning.
Good morning, John.
It's a victory for the Gateway Tunnel Project under the Hudson River in New York.
The Trump administration is expected to restore federal funding for the tunnel construction after a deadline passed for an appeals court to block a judge's order to release the money.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey acting attorney General Jennifer Davenport said the administration must immediately release funding for the project, as the order is now in effect.
This is about an administration that is out of control on so many different levels.
Because retired service members have told him they change what they say and do because of how President Trump is acting.
The pride flag is flying once again at the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
New York City elected officials raised the flag once again.
Earlier this week, the National Park Service removed the rainbow flag at the federal monument dedicated to LGBTQ right, saying it was in line with administration guidelines.
Global News, 24 hours a day.
And whenever you want it with Bloomberg News Now, I'm Michael Bar, and this is Bloomberg.
Thanks, Michael.
Time now for a Bloomberg Sports Udate.
For that, we bring in John Stash Hour.
Last game before the NBA All-Star Break, the Lakers won by 20 over Dallas, and LeBron James at age 41 scored or assisted on each of the Lakers' first 23 points.
He had never done that before.
In the NBA game, and he had a triple-double, the oldest to ever do that.
At the Olympics today, the U.S.
will play Italy in the women's hockey quarterfinals.
The U.S.
team is 4-0 by a combined score of 20 to 1.
And in men's finger skating, the American Elia Mallin goes for the gold.
That's a Bloomberg Sports Update.
Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Daybreak coming up after this.com/slash podcast offer to learn more.
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This is Bloomberg Daybreak.
Good morning.
I'm Nathan Hager.
The White House may be ready to do some tinkering with a piece of President Trump's tariff regime that has proven complicated.
Bloomberg News has learned the administration's working to narrow its abroad duties on steel and aluminum.
For more, we're joined by Bloomberg News Global Trade Czar, Brendan Murray.
Brendan, good morning.
What are we hearing about the Trump administration's plans here?
So if you recall, the president put uh 25% tariff on steel and aluminum uh in March of last year, then he raised it to 50% in June of last year, and then and then he added uh about four hundred uh products that in that have uh steel and aluminum in them in August.
So he that captured a lot of imports uh and created uh some collateral damage uh from companies that use steel and aluminum.
It's you can imagine how hard it is to figure out uh how much of the contents of of a product you import contains steel and aluminum, and those companies have complained to the White House, and the White House has acknowledged that the complexity has gotten to uh too uh too too much for these companies to handle.
So it sounds like our reporting says that uh the the the administration is gonna come at come at this with a more tailored approach rather than the sort of shotgun approach they had last year.
So what would a tailored approach necessarily look like?
Well, they could they could pull back the uh the derivative product uh tariffs that they that they rolled out in August.
Uh that really annoyed the the Europeans because the Europeans just a few weeks earlier had negotiated a a trade deal with the U.S.
And when they and when they hit these other uh hundreds of products, the Europeans were like, you know, I thought we had a deal here, but uh but but you've just hit us with a a whole lot more.
So they could they could pull those back, they could uh create some exclusions for the for for tariffs that companies are are having trouble paying.
Uh and so ultimately the these were designed to uh protect the steel industry, but what they've done is they've hit the the users of steel, the domestic users of steel, uh and you you could all you have to look at is uh Ford and General Motors this week said that they paid five billion dollars combined last year on in U.S.
tariffs, and that's because automakers use a lot of steel and aluminum.
So is this the kind of thing that could smooth over the U.S.
EU trade deal?
I mean, there's been uh a lot of back and forth in terms of getting this thing ratified.
Yeah, that's it.
And if it can be if it could be dealt with and narrowed, then that will go a long way toward uh resolving some of Brussels' uh is issues with with uh the the tariffs as they see them now.
Though the the implementation of that deal is still uh hasn't been fully uh carried through on the European side, and so that could uh help bring that deal over the line.
And of course, Brendan, as you know, this is coming at a time where a lot of Americans are concerned about the cost of living and whether tariffs uh are feeding into that.
Uh, is that part of the calculus here from what you're hearing uh from the White House as far as the steel and aluminum tariffs go, that this could be a a a means to address some of those concerns?
Absolutely.
We've seen we've heard from both the Federal Reserve and the Congressional Budget Office this week that American consumers and businesses are paying uh the lion's share of the tariff bill.
And we'll get to get some consumer uh price numbers this morning, so we'll see how inflation looks uh as it as it stood in January.
So absolutely the uh the White House is is trying to moderate its approach uh given the pressures that are coming from Congress and from and from uh consumers uh on the cost of living and the affordability issue.
And given the potential impact here on the auto industry, what could this mean for uh the you know the ongoing negotiations around the US Mexico Canada agreement?
We've been reporting that President Trump is at least privately talking about why don't I just walk away from it?
Yeah, exactly.
So that the the President Trump has really uh been picking on the Canadians recently, and uh you know Mexico and Canada uh, you know, would be would be uh inter uh woven into the auto supply chain with the U.S.
and and Mexico and and Canada also, you know, have a lot of uh, you know, sort of steel and aluminum uh imports.
So it it all factors into the broader uh negotiations that are gonna take place this year for that uh North American Free Trade Agreement.
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