What Trump Told Bloomberg Businessweek About Plans for His Second Term

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Former President Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination at the party’s convention this week, just two days after an attempted assassination attempt at a campaign rally over the weekend. Prior to that attack, and shortly before his first debate with President Joe Biden, Trump laid out his vision for a second term in a wide-ranging, 90-minute interview with journalists from Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

David Gura: The Republican National Convention is underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and former President Donald Trump is, of course, at the center of it.

RNC: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump… [applause]

Gura: It was the first time the public saw Trump since an attempt on his life over the weekend. And Nancy Cook, who’s a senior national political correspondent for Bloomberg, says we can expect to see a lot more of Trump over the coming days.

Nancy Cook: He is a showman at heart. You know, a huge part of his rise in politics is fueled by his reality TV career and his appearance on The Apprentice. I don't know if he'll talk every night, but I think visually he's going to be front and center the whole time.

Gura: The Trump campaign says Saturday’s assassination attempt won’t upend the RNC’s plans, and the former president posted this on Truth Social: “I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else.”

Cook:  I think he sees this as a moment to really pick up independents, you know, white suburban women, voters who maybe were nervous about him, but may have sympathy for him after the assassination attempt.

I think he really, really wants to win and so I think he's doing things like putting forth a much more disciplined message as he has since the shooting, talking much more about unity.

You know, he's approaching this in the most disciplined way that I've ever seen him since I've covered him since 2015.

Gura: Nancy says that more disciplined approach … is unlike what we saw in Trump’s previous campaigns:

Cook: This is not the Trump White House where there's people knifing each other and there's leaks all the time and you know, there's policy pronouncements at 6am over Twitter. 

Gura: Nancy told me that the former president’s staffers are succeeding this time around at keeping him focused on “core issues,” including the economy. 

The economic data look good – when it comes to inflation, and the jobs market, but there’s still a disconnect between that and sentiment: how Americans feel about the economy and their prospects.  

And what Trump is promising is a return to the way things were – before the COVID-19 pandemic.

But what is Trump’s plan? How does he propose to do that? Well, Nancy was one of a small group of Bloomberg journalists, who sat down with the former president a few days before the first presidential debate. 

Brad Stone was another. (He’s the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek.) And he says that, during a newsy, hour-and-a-half-long interview, they pressed the candidate for details … on “Trumponomics.” 

Brad Stone: It's low inflation. It's lower interest rates. It's higher growth, and, you know, to him, critically, it's bringing manufacturing back to the states.

Gura: They came back with a lot of news – new information about the former president’s plans, and about potential policies and personnel. 

I’m David Gura, and this is The Big Take, from Bloomberg News. 

Today on the show: Donald Trump’s conversation about the economy and his economic platform, with Bloomberg Businessweek, and his plans for a second term. 

How the former president is trying to  appeal to voters  and to business leaders  who abandoned him. 

Bloomberg Businessweek’s interview with Donald Trump took place in late June – just before the CNN presidential debate.

Brad and Nancy have written a profile of the former president, with Mario Parker and Josh Green, and you can find that – and a transcript of their conversation at Bloomberg.com.

They had ninety minutes with Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago Club, in Palm Beach, Florida. 

Gura: Set the scene for us. Are you in a ballroom? Are you in his office? What does it look like?

Stone: I would say this is the clubhouse, one of the main gathering spaces, uh, and dining spaces for the, for the club membership. It is, um, you know, you, you, you might imagine some, some very Trump style, uh, luxury, high vaulted ceilings, lots of mementos and celebrations of President Trump himself including in the bathrooms.

Gura: The interview happened at a busy time, on the eve of what turned out to be a very consequential debate, as both candidates were ramping up their campaigning and fundraising. 

I asked Brad and Nancy why they thought Trump agreed to do the interview at such a pivotal moment, and why he gave them so much time.  

Cook: I mean, Trump is a transactional person, and so I think that he agreed to the interview with Businessweek because it's a magazine and, you know, as a product of, you know, someone who's, you know, sort of height of popularity was the 1980s or 1990s in New York, he still likes being on the cover of magazines.

And so I think he likes the idea of being on the cover of Businessweek. He likes the idea that it's Businessweek.

You know, his economic message is the one that he wants to lead with. And so he wants to talk about the business, he wants to talk about the economy. At one point, when the club manager came through, and they were sort of talking about how this was the best club and the best location, Trump at the end sort of excuses him and says, ‘Well, you know, we've got to get back to our conversation. We've got to go macro.’ 

And the club manager leaves. And so, I think he wants to associate with donors and CEOs and win them over and he views this as part of it.

Gura: In fact, most of what my colleagues talked about, with Trump, was the economy… President Biden has been campaigning on Bidenomics, shorthand for his economic agenda. Brad and Nancy asked the former President about Trumponomics…

Stone: There's perhaps not a lot of depth to it, which is why you're seeing a little bit of a struggle right now among the Trump campaign to distance itself from potential proxies that would try to define it.

But, you know, what he said, how he answered is it's low inflation, it's lower interest rates, it's higher growth, and, you know, to him, critically, it's bringing manufacturing back to the states.

Gura: Nancy, I know that you look at and study polling and when you look at the latest survey results, a lot of Americans express optimism in how Donald Trump would shape the economy or direct the economy. What stands out to them?

Cook: Trump, you know, inflation was not high during his presidency, and I think that Americans remember that, and, and he is really trying to lead with his economic message, you know, that he feels like given what he did on “The Apprentice,” given his background as a real estate developer, he is best positioned to really push appeal to new voters, swing voters, based on this idea that the economy was better under him than Biden. And that is the message that he's leading with.

Gura: Nancy, does he have a plan for bringing down inflation?

Cook: So that's a good question. We pressed him several times on both what he would do with the Federal Reserve, which as you know, David, sets the interest rates to try to deal with inflation, and then also what his plan was to deal with inflation. And the most concrete response we got from him was that he would open up, you know, more oil drilling and energy exploration in the US as a means of increasing the supply of energy and bringing down gas prices. And that was sort of his answer to inflation. 

Gura: A few months ago, the former president said if he's reelected, he would remove the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. I know you asked him about that. Is that still his position that if he's reelected, he wants a change in leadership at the US Central Bank?

Cook: He said there's a lot of false information out there. This, these were his words. And then we asked him if he would allow Jay Powell to serve out to the term that Biden appointed him to. And he said he would allow him to serve. He did add the caveat, like, as long as I thought he was doing things right. 

I mean, my complete speculation just as someone who's covered him for a long time, as I do think he was a little coached on that answer. But you know, he, that's what he said. He said he would allow Jay Powell to serve.

Gura: And Nancy, he has opinions, it's clear, of what the Fed should be doing at this

Cook: He does. And it was interesting because he said he did not think that he, they should cut interest rates before the election, sort of, again, implying that if they did, that would be like a political move to sort of help Biden. 

And also he sort of resisted several questions that we asked him about sort of nudging the Fed or what he would do. You know, he did not give the impression that he was going to threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve, which is what a handful of his formal advisors have sort of talked about among themselves and is not a plan that the Trump campaign or Trump has endorsed or gotten behind.

Gura: Is this likely to allay fears about that? 

Cook: I think it'll allay fears for a little while. I also think that it seems like the Fed will start cutting interest rates potentially by the time Trump takes office if he wins. And I feel like that would sort of remove a lot of this will he, won't he, with Powell?

Gura: As Nancy said, something the former president talks a lot about – and has talked a lot about – is trade, and the power (as he sees it) of protectionist trade policies. 

Trump is a big believer in tariffs, which are effectively taxes on imported goods. And he’s said he’ll impose more of them, and higher tariffs, if he’s elected again. It’s a proposal that’s gotten a lot of pushback. 

What did Donald Trump say in the face of data that suggests that higher, broader tariffs, the likes of which he's proposing, would be devastating to the US economy? And what does he say to all those economists who are saying the exact same thing, Nancy?

Cook: Well, I think that what he said to us at one point, you know, even really, really smart people do not understand tariffs. And his response to the people who say that tariffs will raise prices, or wreck the US economy, is that they didn't wreck the US economy when he was president, and they have not wrecked the US economy when Biden was president.

You have to remember, Biden kept in place, the tariffs that Trump had imposed on China, and also recently increased them, increased some of them, on specific products. And so I think the Trump campaign feels very vindicated in their tariffs on China because the Democrats have sort of come around to their view.

And I think he feels like this is an area where economists and pundits have really gotten things wrong.

Gura: In his interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump talked about his relationships with world leaders and CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook. 

After the break, Brad and Nancy fill us in on the former president’s plans for policing Big Tech, his approach to China and Taiwan, and we get a sense of how the Trump campaign will move forward after the assassination attempt.

Cook: Trump is actually, Like sort of hospitable in person—

Stone: Yeah, yeah.

Cook: And like really kind of solicitous in a way you wouldn't expect, which is which is true when he was president…

Gura: Nancy Cook and Brad Stone interviewed Donald Trump a couple weeks ago, with Josh Green and Mario Parker, for a Bloomberg Businessweek profile of the former president, and I asked Brad what it was like to be in the room with him: 

Stone: I will say that spending time with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, you know, one thing that comes through is his inordinate and almost ridiculous pride in the club itself. So, you know, he met us in the club room. He walked us around a little bit, trying to find a comfortable seat.

He of course, uh, offered us, uh, Cokes and trotted out his familiar riff, which I think debuted, uh, about 10 years ago on Twitter about Diet Coke and how only overweight people order Diet Coke.

He introduced a hat, a MAGA hat that said “Trump was right about everything.” And then at the end of the interview, he tried to give me the hat, which of course, uh, I, I politely declined.

Gura: Before Brad became the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year, he spent decades covering technology. So, of course, he had a few questions for the former president about Big Tech, and the titans of Silicon Valley.

Stone: Let me just say, when it comes to tech and Trump, they're two strong and almost opposite forces. You know, one is the, the pride in, in US companies, the evangelism for US companies, in addition to the skepticism of social media companies. 

And then you also have the fear and the skepticism of, of China and the desire to bring manufacturing and, and, and keep, uh, U. S. tech primacy, here in the States. So Facebook, you know, Mark Zuckerberg committed the cardinal sin in Trump's eyes of booting him off the platform after January 6th.

TikTok is a Chinese company owned by ByteDance, that Trump for, for a long time was skeptical of and even discussed banning and now says, uh, he supports.

He's very popular on the TikTok platform and one of the major investors of ByteDance, uh, a U.S. financier named Jeff Yass, is a supporter of President Trump. And so the politics of personal loyalty, of the injuries that he seems to carry, they kind of conflict here.

Gura: Brad, you bring up Mark Zuckerberg. I think also of Tim Cook who did seem to have, uh, at least a working relationship with, with the president. Does that continue? Does, does he continue to have what seemed like admiration for the head of Apple?

Stone: The first time around, Apple, I think, won some exemptions from the Trump tariffs, in part because Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, went to the White House, you know, talked to President Trump, and then, announced, or at least re-announced, perhaps, a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, where they were going to make one of the models of the MacBook.

So, I think Tim Cook is a great example of how, you know, CEOs can kind of navigate these tariffs, but also kind of Trump policy through a combination of big landmark announcements of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and taking the time to go and and show President Trump the respect that he seems to crave.

Gura: Because of the growth we’re seeing in artificial intelligence, there’s a lot of demand for high-end microchips – most of which are manufactured in Taiwan.

Which has added to Washington’s concern about the safety and security of that country. 

What did he say about a role that the United States would play under his leadership if China were to threaten Taiwan?

Cook: He was very cool to the idea of the US sort of standing up for and protecting Taiwan against Chinese aggression. And his whole rationale for that was, what have they done for us? He made the argument that Taiwan has basically stolen all of the US chips business, you know, they should be paying us for our protection. He called the US like an insurance policy for them.

And he basically, you know, made it clear that if he was president, like, the US defending Taiwan all the time, like, that would be a policy that would be very much up for grabs and very much could change.

And I think it just shows like, if he becomes president again, he will not only shift, you know the way the US economy runs and business runs but there will be huge shifts globally not just on trade but also on these foreign policy questions.

I know allies in Europe are really freaking out about that over the potential for 10 percent, these global minimum tariffs. But I think that everyone's just very worried about sort of the world order in general, and how it could be reordered if he's president.

Gura: Uncertainty abounds, about what to expect if there is a second Trump administration – how he’d approach the economy, and foreign policy. But also, about something more personal: 

Brad, you, you wanted to talk a lot about the economy, economic policy. Of course, the backdrop to that conversation was Donald Trump's recent conviction here in New York. What's his thinking on legal vulnerability going into a second term if he wins?

Stone: When Nancy talked about his answer on the Fed feeling kind of coached, I think it was the same here. And he said he wouldn't pardon himself. But look, I mean, the, the grievance over these cases and over the conviction I think is still strongly held. He, you know, he lashed out at President Biden.

No surprise, he feels that these cases are politically motivated, and thinks he'll be vindicated, believes or even, or at least says that this was a political process and, and at least claims to, to let the justice process play out and believes he'll be vindicated.

Gura: On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed a case against Trump. The Justice Department had accused him of mishandling classified information. Minutes later, the former president reacted to the judge’s decision on Truth Social, using a familiar phrase. 

This “should be the first step,” he wrote. “Followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts.”

(Corrects length of Powell’s term as chair of the Federal Reserve.)

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