Chipmaker Deals with the White House 8/11/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Coming up today on Squawk Pod. Major chip makers NVIDIA and AMD agree to pay 15 % on sales in China back to the U.S. Is it a tax, a concession, or worse? The left and right are going to have problems. Well, I would think the right should have a lot of problems. Industrial policy. And speaking of chips, Intel CEO Lit Bouton is headed to the White House today amid President Trump's social media posts calling for his resignation. How surprised would you be if at the end of this meeting, Tan says, you know, I'll pay you 15 % if I can keep my job.

0:41President Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin prepping for a meeting in Alaska this week. Former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is wary of the optics. What troubled me the most is how Russia is celebrating this meeting as a major win for Putin. And so I think it's always good to talk, but there has to be preconditions. Why on American soil? Mick Mulvaney, a former acting White House chief of staff, says don't read into it. My guess is, and it's an educated guess, Alaska was simply the easiest place to meet on short notice. It's really, really hard to move the president. Plus, the artificial intelligence talent wars in big tech with The Verge's Alex Heath.

1:22It's really hard to ever state how behind Apple is right now from a talent perspective. And all the rest of today's news, the list of possible Fed chairs got, surprise, bigger. With American Idol or The Apprentice, when you're down to four, you don't go back and double it to eight again. It is a busy Monday, August 11th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand and your buy in three, two, one, cue Andrew. Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. NBC. We're live at the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross, working along with Joe Kernan. Becky's off today. Let's get to this story, though, because I'm still working through it.

2:04Today's top corporate story reports say NVIDIA and AMD have agreed to give the U.S. government 15 percent of the revenue that they generate from exporting AI chips to China. In return, the companies will receive export licenses to sell chips in China. The news followed, follows a report in that meeting between NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang and President Trump at the White House last week. 15 % of NVIDIA's revenue from selling H20 chips to China could amount to billions of dollars. Okay. I have thought of everything you could possibly say, and then you probably have some more concerns even than I've come up with.

2:46I'll tell you my thoughts. You don't really. I mean, I've already thought about left versus right and who thinks. I mean, you know, we need money, obviously. But if it was a security concern in the beginning, this doesn't change anything if you get a little blackmail money to allow it to happen, obviously. Why just chips? Are you going to do this with it? Why just AMD and NVIDIA? I mean, there's so many in its more industrial policy, which Republicans don't don't really like. You just want to steal all my lines at one time. I know you. OK, I've already thought of all this. And I'm sure you have other concerns.

3:25And instead of just embracing that we're basically taxing a U.S. corporation and getting great revenue to try to reduce the deficit. Suddenly, even the left is going to have problems with this. So here's where I stand. The left and right are going to have problems. Well, I would think the right should have a lot of problems. Industrial policy. The industrial policy piece of this is now we're not even macro managing or micromanaging. I hear you. At a sort of corporate level. I thought of this. I told you I'm working through it. No, I know. Working through it. I like the money. I guess I like the money, too.

3:58For the coffers. Sure. But I think the issue is there's the national security issue, which was already on the table. They decided to overlook that issue or to decide that it was actually in the best interest of the country for NVIDIA to be selling into China. Right. If that is true, that it is in the best interest of the United States to be selling to China for competitive reasons, because we don't want China to ultimately be able to own the AI business, the industry, that that could be a fair and valid reason. I'll go along with that. Once you start to get into a mode where there is an additional payment for that sort of reading, if you will, that's where it becomes because it undermines the credibility of the national security argument.

4:45Oh, it definitely undermines. And that's to me. I took it one step further. You go. So we're not stopping China and AI. There's no way. And I don't know. It'd be nice to win. But we could use some of this money to prepare to deal with China. For UBI? To prepare for what? For the eventual singularity? To prepare for the security we're going to need to compete against China. For the government. We're going to need to defend ourselves, theoretically, from powerful AI. And what about OpenAI? What about Microsoft? What about any company that— Hopefully we're going to win, but we're not going to hold China back.

5:30And I guess we might as well— But are we going to hold our companies back by charging them a tax? I would think that's something to worry about. I would rather have NVIDIA and AMD reinvesting that one. in their own businesses. But now I sound, that's what a conservative, that's what a Republican would want. They need to do it. This is like, there's a buyback story today. There are actually people that say companies shouldn't be able to do what they want to do with their own money if they want to do buy, they should be hiring more people. They should be raising, they should be raising, they should be raising salaries for people.

6:07That's not the way it should be. They should be able to do that. And I'm saying I have problems. I have the payoffs. To me, the thing is, it just looks like a payoff. That's actually, for me, that's the only thing. And I'd rather have companies, but then again. And I don't know where this goes. That's it. So to me, it's the payoff. And I don't know where this goes because our other company is going to have to start paying off the United States government to all sorts of things. Forget about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That's what it is. It should be all or nothing. Nobody should do this or you should just raise taxes if that's the way you want to do it.

6:43I guess, corporate taxes. I know, I thought of all these things. I, you know, I don't, but then again, we come down to be nice to have 40, 50 billion dollars to do all the great things that liberals want to do. Forget about what liberals want to do. Do child care, do it, give people a rebate, you know, do all these things. That's why Trump thinks. He doesn't, I don't think he, President Trump, I don't think he thinks necessarily money is money, money in the court, in the federal government's coffers. But now he wants to give it back. And we've been talking. We have this debt we got to deal with.

7:19I mean, it's just it's now suddenly liberals are worried about the debt. I know not liberals. I'm worried about the debt. I don't know. Democrats weren't worried for the last four years. That's true. They weren't. And they should have been. I know. I don't know. Is this really going to happen? I don't know if it's even really going to. I mean, there's nothing in the Constitution that says anything, but you're going to hear people say it's nothing in the Constitution that says that the U.S. government can ask. Right. Has to be on steel for golden shares in their in the company either. That's that's true, too.

7:51So I would think that they've talked to lawyers about whether you can even do this when you think. Well, the question is, who's I thought about this. You ask your dad. No, who's going to sue? Who has standing to sue? I don't believe the taxpayer, just like a random third party, has standing to sue. The only person who could sue is the company. They're the one agreeing to do it, though. Correct. And they're agreeing under some form of duress. Duress to be able to do it. And they could not go public and say, we hate you, Mr. President. We don't like this. We're not doing this. Right. Right? Because we now live in this universe.

8:30They'd rather have 85 percent than nothing. That's the position they're taking. I understand that. I thought about all this and dreaded this whole conversation. How's it going so far? Better than you thought. No, I mean, I knew what all the concerns would be, and I'm grappling with them. I don't know what the answer is. OK, we've got other news. Intel CEO also under attack from the president. He's going to reportedly visit the White House today. Talk about a conversation you'd want to be a fly on the wall for. Just a few days after President Trump called for his resignation, the Wall Street Journal saying that he is expected to brief the president on his personal and professional background.

9:11In a Thursday morning, Truth Social post, we brought it to you, I think, live as it was happening, President Trump calling Tan highly conflicted and said that he should step down immediately. That concern with questions from Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who had come out, claiming that Tan has connections to Chinese companies and potential ramifications for U.S. national security. How surprised would you be if at the end of this meeting, Tan says, you know, I'll pay you 15 % VIG. 15 % if I can keep my job. You want a 15 % VIG? No, that's getting down into where anything would. I don't know. Just saying.

9:45You would have been surprised by this news before. The Journal reporting that Tan may also use today's meeting with the president to propose some new ways the government and Intel could work together. that hasn't been working so well so far until saying it would not comment when CNBC contacted them. How about it's an export tax? Yeah. A lot of countries do that to us with other things, electricity, oil, potash, all kinds of different things. But normally it'd probably be, it would affect everyone. Everybody. If you do it, everybody. Look, if you want to have a tax on the AI industry, right? Maybe that's okay, except we've just been saying for the past.

10:23You get less of it if you tax it. Yeah, past year, we want to be the number one in the world. And so I don't understand why we're trying to punish our, as you would say, punish our best companies. You could say that, you know, Trump thinks that tariffs are raising a lot of money for the federal coffers. He does think this would raise money for the federal coffers. He's not getting it. So, I mean, at least in the back of his mind, he's aware that we have a problem in terms of debt. Totally. Well, that's a good thing. Sure, but then let's not get into the dividend story. Because you're giving it back to people.

10:58That's like, you know, that's a populist thing over time. But that's a ridiculous way to do it. If we're going to deal with the debt, let's deal with the debt. If we're not going to deal with the debt, why are we going to tax the companies? It is possible to throw a lot of stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. It's a strategy of sorts. President Trump reportedly expanding his list of contenders for the top job at the Federal Reserve. The Wall Street Journal saying the president's team considering tapping former St. Louis Fed president James Bullard for the job of Fed chair or former George W.

11:28Bush economic advisor Mark Summerlin. The paper saying the list of candidates now numbers about 10 people. So that's up from where we were just a week ago when we spoke to the president on this broadcast. Treasury Secretary Scott Bestin expected to lead initial interviews with those candidates. And then President Trump will speak with finalists. Names already floated for the next potential Fed chair are the two Kevins, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, former Fed Governor Kevin Walsh. Those are the two Kevins. And then current Fed Governor Christopher Waller. So we're going to see who else is on the list.

12:02Interestingly, Summerlin, there's a report that said that he was offered the opportunity at some point, I think back in the old Trump administration to be potentially nominated for one of the roles on the Fed in tandem with Judy Shelton at the time. And that he declined it back then. And that because of the controversy actually around Shelton's nomination, which had been taking months and months and months and months and months and months, that he didn't want to be involved in that. He obviously has a business and wanted to continue with that. So it'd be very interesting to see where this all heads.

12:38who do you like who do you like no idea get your poly market out i'm not yeah it's we thought we had uh the final you know with american idol you don't go back and start or the apprentice you don't you know when you're down to four you don't go back and double it to eight again what just means you're not happy with the current crop does it that's what i meant you don't know that but you don't know that but why would you do it otherwise that's what i mean that's what it kind of, you know, sort of what you think in the back of your mind that you're looking for out of the candidates you've talked about.

13:13I don't remember ever watching The Apprentice where they had like three people left and then they like added some people into the room. And you added some people in or American Idol. That doesn't happen until next season. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, it's all politics to us. Former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp argues NVIDIA's 15 percent sales revenue deal with the U.S. government symbolizes a shift in executive power. Just basically speaks to a pattern of use of executive power that is going to be hard to roll back unless people in Congress, you know what, grow something.

13:51Plus, the world awaits President Trump's meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin. A veteran from the first Trump White House, Mick Mulvaney, weighs in. I am interested that Zelensky is not going to be there. I think that's probably a message to Zelensky and the Europeans as much as anybody else. We'll be right back.

14:11Welcome back. This is Squawk Pod. Up in Andrew. Q. Watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC on a summer Monday. A summer Monday. Is that what this is? It's not a summer Friday. I'll tell you that. Hot. Yeah. I'm Andrew Osorkin. Joe Kernan is here. Becky's off. President Trump getting ready to meet with Russia's Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska. Join us now on that story and others. Former Democratic U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp. She's now the director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and a CNBC contributor. And Mick Mulvaney, former acting White House chief of staff, now ACTUM Strategic Advisors co-chair.

14:52And we'll talk about some of the business stuff, too. But we can start with with what I did in that intro, Senator. And I'm feeling very I don't know. I I'm considering both sides of everything lately, which is annoying. It's annoying for me. I don't know whether, you know, Andrew is Langone said has made a lot of progress with me. Maybe I'm making maybe you're making progress with me. I know. I can. Yeah, go ahead. I was just thinking, Joe, that, you know, it has gotten to the point where there's a great story about state-sponsored capitalism. And at the bottom, you're a capitalist. And what you're seeing is not capitalism, right?

15:34And so, of course, you're seeing both sides of it. Okay, I am. But even on this, I understand that Putin is a brutal tyrant that really hasn't made amends, apologies for anything he's done. So inviting him to the U.S. without any concessions could be seen as, you know, not a good thing. But then I immediately think of what Democrats used to say about meeting with Obama and Ahmadinejad back then. You have to talk to these people to try to get where you want to go to end bloodshed, to end a war. You can't do it through conflict. So I can always think of both sides. What about, so you would have to say this is a positive, but then Democrats just say Trump wants to win a Nobel Prize and he doesn't really care about the bloodshed.

16:29He just wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize, which is worthless now, obviously, because Obama got one for nothing. See, I'm going back and forth. I'm like hitting both sides. You don't even need us anymore. You can do this by yourself. You don't even need us this morning. You can just debate yourself. Yeah, I do that a lot. Easy. We've been doing this now for a couple years. I stopped doing that in high school. Anyway, go ahead. Well, I mean, I think talking is always right, But preconditions are absolutely critical. And the fact that the president of Ukraine may not be there, Zelensky, tells you something about, you know, is this an opening salvo?

17:09But what troubled me the most is how Russia is celebrating this meeting as a major win for Putin. And so I think it's always good to talk, but there has to be preconditions. And we don't see those preconditions in this dialogue. That is true, Mick, and it's annoying because we do, you know, we try to figure out how to feel in this country by looking at how the other country, like even I did that. When France and other EU countries were mad about that deal, I was like, wow, I love it. Must be a great deal that we got with the EU on trade because they were whining so much about it. So in this case, Russia is celebrating.

17:49Does that mean that we're getting taken advantage of? No, I think there's something that's missing here, which is Trump wanted to have a meeting as quickly as possible. He wanted to have a meeting for a long time. My guess is, and it's an educated guess, Alaska was simply the easiest place to meet on short notice. It's really, really hard to move the president. It's especially hard to move the president overseas. It would have taken weeks probably to set up meetings in, say, Helsinki or Rome or something like that. If we could set it up, my guess is it's probably going to be at a military base in Alaska.

18:19It's just the simplest logistic place to do the meeting. So I wouldn't read too much into it. I am interested that Zelensky is not going to be there. I think that's probably a message to Zelensky and the Europeans as much as anybody else, which is, look, Trump has said it before. They don't have the cards. If the U.S., Russia, and the EU want this war to stop, and the price for the war stopping as Crimea becomes officially part of Russia, the war is going to stop, and Crimea is going to officially be part of Russia. Ukraine simply doesn't have the cards, as Trump says, to participate as a full member.

18:52They're relying too heavily on the U.S. and the EU for their own defense here, which is why, as of right now, they don't have a seat at the table. Heidi, anything additional to that? I'll start with you on capitalism, because I love it now. You and all your socialist friends, the minute you get a chance to throw capitalism in a capitalist face, you do it. So now you like capitalism, and this stuff that Trump's doing is— Yeah, so now you like it. Now you like it all. I always love capitalism. I always love capitalism. Well, your friends on the coast do not. Your friends on the coast do not. Elizabeth Warren and others do not.

19:28Well, let me tell you, what Trump is doing, there's this article about state-sponsored capitalism. It's fascinating because it really puts a ribbon around everything that's going on. And if you think that the lesson Democrats are learning is that we need to return to some semblance of normal, the lesson they're learning is they haven't been brazen enough. And so this is going to be a race to the bottom. If we get a president who is on the left side, I could see them saying, look, you want to sell coffee? We're going to tariff coffee at 150 percent or 100 percent. And then you are going to have to unionize.

20:03And so this is not a good thing. And it's never been a good thing. And I have to tell you, on tariffs, I was one of the few people who said Congress needs to claw back that authority and worked really hard to try and do it. But it's going to be really hard now, given that Trump has, I think, really extended the look of how you exercise executive power. Is there anything to that, Mick? I mean, in terms of industrial policy or there's the latest thing with NVIDIA and AMD. And we've seen other companies sort of go to the White House and sort of the president's demanding some concessions. You know, there's a lot of Republicans, myself included, who don't like it.

20:49Industrial policy is not supposed to be a conservative thing. The Defense Department taking multi-hundred million dollar investments in rare earth minerals companies is not supposed to be a Republican conservative thing. Sovereign wealth funds are not supposed to be Republican conservative things. But that's because the party is no longer conservative. The party is populist. And Heidi is exactly right. The risk here that you run is that the populist wing of the Democrat Party is learning lessons from the populist wing of the Republican Party. And the message they're taking away from it is they're just not doing enough.

21:21And she's absolutely right. I mean, if Trump can spend$400 million investing in rare earths, why can't the Defense Department invest$3 trillion in solar panels? I mean, that's just that's that's where this is going. It is going down the wrong road. But here's a political question. We're worried about it as well. Right now, right now, our president has an extraordinary amount of power, as you know so very well. You may not like what you're seeing for whatever reason. And by the way, there may be people in the House and the Senate who don't like what they're seeing that are on the Republican side.

21:53But none of them are raising their hand. Yeah, but that's because the populist, the populist, the energy in both parties, Andrew, is in the populist wing. That's the populist Democrats you see in New York. It's the populist Republicans you see in Washington, D.C. right now. It's different. The parties are changing. And there is no real place right now for the conservative. There's no place right now for the sort of the moderate Democrat that Heidi used to be. So or probably still is. I'm sorry, Heidi. Yeah, that's that's where the energy is right now in both parties. And it does create new challenges for both of them.

22:26Nick, do the end. Go ahead, Heidi. I was going to say, with everything that the president does, this NVIDIA taking 15 percent, all of that just basically speaks to a pattern of use of executive power that is going to be hard to roll back unless people in Congress, you know what, grow something. And they aren't looking like they're going to do that one way or the other. And the Democratic base now is saying, look, you've got to fight fire with fire. But, Heidi, the Democrats don't want to roll it back. I mean, you and I were together in the House of Representatives for the State of the Union where Barack Obama said, look, if Congress doesn't act, I have a pen and a phone.

23:08And he got a standing ovation from the Republican elected officials of Congress. Heidi, the Democrats invented this. And it's even worse because in the last administration, there were all kinds of stuff that Biden did. Unfortunately, it was somebody, probably not him. It was some auto pen guy. I was like, Zients or whatever his name is, it was doing it. Joe, the whataboutism, it doesn't even compare. You always say that. It's not hypocrisy. It's whataboutism. So you can do whatever you want, slash and burn for four years under Biden. And then if a Republican... Go ahead, Mick. Whataboutism is just a comparison that you don't like.

23:48That's all it is. Yeah, whataboutism is a comparison that you don't like that hits home, especially with when we're talking about that. Let me tell you, let me tell you, this administration on executive power is on steroids, and that wasn't true over the last four years. No, the court systems on steroids stop in every single executive power. Anyway. Really? Really, Joe? I mean, come on. I mean, you know, these are mainly judges You've seen the numbers? You've seen the numbers, right? You've seen the numbers for how many things? How many, Nick, compared to previous administrations that have these, you know?

24:21Well, how do you feel, Joe, how do you feel about that tariff action in the D.C. circuit court? You know, this is being led by Republicans, by conservative organizations who think this has gone too far. There's a lot of people out there. We'll just find another way. People like Mick who understand that this is a historic moment and it's going to be really hard to roll this path. The president is granted wide power for trade. And if this if it does go south in the Supreme Court on this, this the way they're doing it now, they're going to be able to do it another way. He's allowed to do a lot of those things for trade, I think, or at least that'll be the bottom.