Commerce Secretary Lutnick & A Midtown Tragedy 7/29/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. Deals before the next tariff deadline of August 1st, day two of trade talks in Sweden. Our Eamon Javers has the latest on the negotiations with China. No indication that any progress of any kind has been made so far. The bar was already pretty low for this. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explains the art of the deal with the European Union. It was important for them to have pharmaceuticals be part of the deal at 15 percent because President Trump is going to come out in the next two weeks with this pharmaceutical policy and it is going to be higher.

0:42A New York City gunman kills four in a Park Avenue building. Security expert Dave Commandant on what business leaders are asking today. Have they done all they can do to be prepared? And what changes might come. I think you could try to make it harder for people with mental illnesses to get guns as easily as they do. You hear that a lot from Second Amendment people. They always talk about mental illness, and then the left gets mad that they're talking about mental illness instead of just the gun itself. It's Tuesday, July 29th. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please.

1:17Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. We had a number of shots fired, and we're still unraveling what took place. Our hearts are heavy. Five innocent people shot tonight. At this time, I'm going to turn it over to the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, Commissioner Tish. Thank you, sir. At 6.28 p.m., the 911 call center started receiving multiple 911 calls for an active shooter inside of 345 Park Avenue at 52nd Street in Manhattan. Let's talk about what took place last night.

2:05Officials saying a gunman opened fire inside a midtown Manhattan office building and killed a New York police officer and three other people. Law enforcement sources telling NBC News the suspected shooter acted alone and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The building where that shooting took place houses offices for so many businesses, so many that we know so well here on this broadcast, the NFL as well as Blackstone, KPMG and real estate firm Rudin. Four senior law enforcement officials say the suspect has been identified as 27-year-old Shane Devon, Tamora of Las Vegas, the gunman's motive not disclosed, but officials familiar with the investigation, telling NBC News the suspect left a note at the scene voicing anger that his mental illness may be linked to his having played football.

2:53Two officials say in the note the suspect wonders about CTE being a possible cause of his mental illness. A 36-year-old NYPD officer who was expecting his third child was killed. Three civilians also died. Their names have not been released. But this is one of those stories that hits so close to home. I've been to that building so many times. I was texting literally with a bunch of people who were holed up last night in the building as this was all taking place. It was a very scary and very sad day and says, well, we could take this story into a hundred different directions. So I don't know where I don't know where you want to go with it, but it's football and NFL, I guess.

3:42that no motive announced yet, but that seems like more than maybe a coincidence. And he had a history of mental illness as well and was a football star at one point in either high school or college. It does raise concerns about the safety of these buildings in New York City, particularly after the UnitedHealthcare executive who was gunned down earlier in the year. Some issues around that, surrounding those things, too. But, again, it hits home because it's in the heart of the financial district here. And, obviously, it's a minor. I mean, it's Park Avenue. It's come straight to the middle of it.

4:23And I think that the murder last year that you referred to, I think, is a big issue. I think that the football piece of it is a big issue. I think the fact that he had mental illness and had a licensed firearm. Licensed to carry in Las Vegas. Licensed to carry in Las Vegas. It's obviously not legal here, but, you know, we talk about mental illness. We also talk about, you know, can you do anything about, you know, making sales of guns reasonable? You don't have to prevent people from buying guns. But when you have people who have mental illnesses, the idea that we allow people to get access to that.

4:58Well, we're trying to stop that, obviously. Well, I don't think we're trying to stop it well enough. If you go to that angle, then go to the safety concerns about New York City and who we're going to elect as mayor. You'd have social workers rushing the scene to try to talk the guy out. We're not going to disagree about that. All right. That's the other. We're not going to disagree about that at all. He's on record. Defund the police, please. So, you know, and with that looming in the future of New York City, it's not safe. It doesn't feel safe. Maybe it is, I mean, writ large, but there's a lot of people, obviously.

5:35By the way, to your point, though, or a point that you've made historically, not in this moment, most security in New York City that operates and runs buildings, meaning in the lobbies of buildings, are actually not all armed. They're not. No, but this was a police officer, an off-duty police officer. No, I'm saying, but there's a question. They've got free zones. But there's a question about safety in the city, and you've often argued, I think, that you actually need more people to be armed. Yes. All I'm saying is you can take this conversation in a hundred different ways. Gun-free zones are kind of absurd, because who is it that pays attention to the law that it's a gun-free zone?

6:15The law-biting citizens. And the people that are going to, if you're going to commit murder, you're not going to worry about carrying a gun in a gun-free zone or violating the gun-free zone rule. It's kind of absurd. Well, no, and so there's a very interesting question about security buildings. Do you want to harden those buildings in different ways? How do you do that? It requires a lot of training if you actually are going to put guns in the hands of security officers that are not police officers or former police officers. It's an intractable problem that I wish wasn't intractable. Yeah. It's that it is.

6:52I don't know if it is. I think it shouldn't be. I think there's probably ways to do things. Hardening things up is probably. I think you could probably do a combination of things. I think you could harden certain things up. And at the same time, I think you could try to make it harder for people with mental illnesses to get guns as easily as they do. Right. And I think if you can't think about all of the above rather than only one of the above, it gets very difficult. And that's why it's intractable. I think that's, you hear that a lot from Second Amendment people. Yeah, they always talk about mental illness, and then the left gets mad that they're talking about mental illness instead of just the gun itself.

7:33That happens all the time. It's like, oh, now you're going to talk about prayers and thoughts and mental illness instead of actually doing something. I think Mamdami wants all guns gone. Well, no, you've got to do something. By the way, if you want folks who have mental illnesses that are on the street off the streets, you should also want them not to have guns. I agree. I think that people don't. If you're there, then. That's what I'm saying. You know, we're not going to get right and left, but you hear mental illness all the time. We need to do more about mental illness from the Second Amendment types that say, yeah, it's not the guns, it's the mental illness.

8:08So deal with that first. And then that's a circular argument. You get back to what are they doing with guns in the first place. That's why you got to do it all. Well, yeah, it would be in a perfect world. You'd want no one that had any, you know, mental illness. If you're going to shoot someone, by definition, you're probably mentally ill. Back at the trade negotiating table for a second day in Sweden. Eamon Javers is in Stockholm, joins us now with more. Good morning, Eamon. Yeah, good morning to you, Joe. We know that talks are underway here for a second day after just under five and a half hours behind closed doors yesterday.

8:43No indication of any progress so far and really no indication of what was even discussed yesterday behind those closed doors. We do have a new post on social media from the president. Take a look at that. The president saying the fake news is reporting that I am seeking a summit with President Xi of China. This is not correct. I'm not seeking anything. I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended. Otherwise, no interest. Thank you for your attention to this matter. The question here, Joe and gang, is, you know, why is the president sort of backing off that meeting with Xi Jinping?

9:21He has been talking fairly favorably about a meeting with Xi Jinping, whether a summit or not, however you bill it. Now, this seems to be a change in tone. Does that reflect what's happening behind closed doors here in Stockholm? That's to be determined. We're going to wait and see what officials say when they emerge from their session today. We are hoping to get a press conference later today from officials here, at least on the U.S. side, to brief us on what's been discussed. The expectation is that they'll go through the day today, possibly into tomorrow. And we did get a picture behind the scenes provided to us by the Department of Treasury of both delegations at their tables, you know, notebooks and pens and bottles of water ready.

10:03So clearly a working session behind closed doors here, but no indication that any progress of any kind has been made so far. The bar was already pretty low for this. The expectation was that they might be able to extend that August 12th deadline for the previous deal to expire and kick that into the fall. We'll see if they can get there, though, Joe. No sense, as I say, that any progress has been made so far. It was a strange twist that you pointed out because a lot of the president and all his men, I guess you have to say, and all his people at this point. But they've repeatedly said, oh, that's between, you know, it's probably not going to happen at lower levels.

10:47For this to get done, it's going to happen between President Trump and President Xi. So it makes you wonder when all of a sudden the president is downplaying that that's going to happen anytime soon. It could be that things aren't going well in terms of that setting up that me or, you know, you never know whether he's trying to in some way force the hand of by saying that. You don't know if he's bargaining, you know, again, in some way to try and get China to the table. I don't know. It's impossible to to discern at this point. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a striking change in tone from the president on the possibility of that meeting.

11:27He's talked about it in a very positive way before. He said that Xi Jinping has invited him to Beijing. Yeah. We like each other, respect each other, all that. It's been very positive rhetoric. And this is this is dialing back from that. So, as you say, either this is reflective of something going wrong behind closed doors in the sessions here in Stockholm, or it's trying to position that meeting so that he doesn't seem as eager to have the meeting as he had been to make it seem as if Xi Jinping is more eager than he is. You can look for a number of different explanations for that, but it is something to note.

12:02All right. Thanks, Aimeon. Tough day for Levity, obviously, but you didn't have any more neat balls. I mean, at this point, they'd probably be sticking in your stomach. No. They're pretty heavy. That's what I mean. One night was enough. One night was enough. So last night, you know, we don't get off work here until like 11 p.m. local time. So we found the one restaurant that was still serving. The kitchen was still open last night. I had the shrimp salad last night. Seafood is very big here, too. Lots of water, as you can see behind me. Lots of harbors, lots of water, canals, rivers. You know, it's very nautical culture here.

12:41So that's why I had the seafood. Nautical. All right. Good. Good. I'm good. Yeah. You know, you can't have them every day. I'll bring you back some samples. Oh, I don't know. Put them in some ice. Dry ice. Thanks, Eamon. We'll see if they travel. We'll see how well they travel. Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics up by about 36 percent in the pre-market. The company says that it will resume shipping a Levitus, that's a muscular disorder gene therapy, to patients who can walk. Last week, the FDA recommended a pause in shipments because of serious safety concerns after three deaths of patients who were on Sarepta gene therapies.

13:22This past weekend, there were reports of a death of another child on Elevitus, but the death, the FDA now says, was unrelated to the gene therapy. In a statement, Sarepta's CEO says, we look forward to working collaboratively with the FDA to complete the safety label update for Elevitus and to discussing the approach to risk mitigation for non-ambulatory patients who remain on pause pending the outcome of those discussions. Despite this morning's jump, the Insurrupta shares, that stock is still down by about 84 percent this year. But again, guys, this was a really big and very public display of what was happening.

14:00There were concerns about deaths. There's a new guy at the FDA, Vinay Prasad, who's the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, he had originally said he wanted them to stop shipping it altogether. The deaths had taken place in people who were non-ambulatory. This is a progressive disease. First, it makes you disabled so you can't walk, and then it eventually kills you. They have not had problems with this gene therapy on people who were still ambulatory. The FDA wanted them to stop shipments to the still ambulatory patients who were on it. There was a huge pushback from the patients' families because this is the only therapy that's out there, the only drug they can get access to.

14:46The FDA later relented and said, okay, you could continue to make those shipments. But we've watched the stock play out with some huge drops. That's yesterday's. This was yesterday's Wall Street Journal. It was their lead op-ed story on this, talking about what they called the Sarepta mugging in drug innovation, basically saying that Vinay Patel, Prasad, has shut down a lot of the drug innovation that the first Trump administration was very well known for, for the pushes on innovation that they were coming in with. And so there was pushback that came not only from the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages, but it was on the right and the left.

15:19You've seen a lot just over the last weekend that kind of went after this because of what they've seen with it.

15:28Coming up on Squawk Pod, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recapping the White House's trade deal with the European Union. It all came down to autos and pharma. President Trump has been very, very clear. If you're going to sell here, you're going to produce here. And so the Europeans got in front of that freight train and said, we'll pay you 15 % for that, but we don't want you to rip all of our companies out of Europe and move them to America.

16:00This is Squawk Pod. Up and Andrew, Q. You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Trade talks continue today in Stockholm as the president's deadline, tariff deadline, approaches for some on August 1st, China, August 12th. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joins us right now. It's always good to see you, Mr. Secretary. Terry, will you bear with me for just a second before we before we before you talk, let's talk about the EU deal. And I know you think it's just great and a big victory for the president. That's you. That's your take.

16:38I'm going to let you explain why. I'm not going to defer to the Democrats or legacy media on whether it's a good deal or not. I'm going to go right to who it really seemed to upset. And that's France, France and Germany and even the European Commission president, you heard what she said. I thought it was very telling. She goes, look, I know this is awful for us. It's the best I could get. I'm trying to salvage them. So I think that indicates, and I don't want to be too jingoistic or America first, but to me that indicated that the president was able to get a pretty good deal. Exactly right. The president knew how far he could go and he went exactly that far.

17:19The thing about our president is he's got that intuitive nature when he's sitting across the table and making a deal. He knows how far he can push it. I mean, imagine they committed to$750 billion of energy purchases, natural gas and oil and nuclear during his term. They committed$600 billion of companies investing in America and then 15 % tariffs. They will pay 15 % pretty much across the board. And we, of course, have an open market to the$20 trillion,$20 trillion European market. It's five times bigger than any other, you know, Japan and India, five times bigger with 450 million people. It was a master class by President Trump.

18:07I think that they, and everybody's saying it, that the decision to accept the 15 % level was in sharp contrast to where they were recently, weeks ago, just weeks ago, with a much more adversarial tone. And they came to the realization that President Trump thinks that these 15 % tariffs should be permanent. And my question is, can you make a strong rationale for why that is the case? Wouldn't it, if it was zero, zero on both sides and even got some other things extracted from the EU, do we want this 15 % to onshore? Is that what it's all about, bringing stuff back here? Or is it about all the revenue that gets collected from whomever you want to say is paying it, whether you say it's foreign countries or companies here or consumers or whatever?

19:04Why is that the status quo, that it's going to be permanent? OK, so Europe has a$235 billion a year trade surplus with us, which means at the end of every year they end up with$235 billion worth of dollars. They sell us more stuff than we sell them. And you know what they do with those dollars? They just buy America. We're basically having America sold out from under us by continuing to have these 1.2 trillion globally trade deficit, which every economist says should not be able to happen. But it's been staying with us for more than decades. So it's got to end. The president is changing it. So his view is you can onshore to get rid of it or you can pay a tariff to get rid of it.

19:49But let's figure out how to get rid of it. And the key to why the Europeans did the deal is autos and pharmaceuticals. I mean, remember, we are the payer of the world, right? We all pharmaceuticals. They all make their money by selling to America. And President Trump has been very, very clear. If you're going to sell here, you're going to produce here. And so the Europeans got in front of that freight train and said, we'll pay you 15 percent for that. But we don't want you to rip all of our companies out of Europe and move them to America. So while the French have got a lot to say, they were able to protect Sanofi from staying in France because if they didn't do this deal, Sanofi would become an American company.

20:36Secretary Lutnik, I think there are still some questions and uncertainties that remain around it. I know both sides have agreed that this is a framework not legally binding at this point. But if you listen to some of the EU leaders, they'll say that there are some uncertainties still out there. And I just wonder where you think they came down, just in terms of steel and aluminum tariffs still being there at 50 percent. What happens with pharmaceuticals eventually? Will they be maintained at 15 percent or are there additional tariffs that come in there? Some of the certain natural resources as well.

21:04And they have said that they can't promise that these pretty hefty expectations for purchases and investment, those those massive targets, whether they'll be able to hit them or not, because they're relying in part, in large part, on private funding. There's still a lot to work out. They've said that sometimes these agreements usually will take years. Do you think that will be the case here? Well, historically, these kind of agreements would take a decade and they, of course, wouldn't come to fruition. Right. But Barack Obama spoke to them for his whole term and never got anything accomplished.

21:39President Trump works on a different time frame and on a different clock. He wants to get things done now. And he uses the power of the American economy to get things done now. So pharmaceuticals was key. It was important for them to have pharmaceuticals be part of the deal at 15 percent because President Trump is going to come out in the next two weeks with his pharmaceutical policy. and it is going to be higher. Basically, if you are not building your plant in America where we pay for pharmaceuticals, you are going to pay a massive tariff because why should we pay for your drugs and you make them overseas and you make your money overseas?

22:18At least if we're going to pay for your drugs, you're going to build them in America. So they got ahead of that. They got ahead of pharmaceuticals. They wanted to get ahead of cars because 25 % on autos means, as you've heard Donald Trump say it, You're going to build your cars in America. No one can afford to export and pay a 25 percent tariff. So the Europeans found the highest level that they could survive with because President Trump would not have cut it otherwise. And they could then keep their autos there. You know, they'll do many, many build plants here, but they don't have to move them all here.

22:52And that was the model. They can move a lot, but they don't have to move at all. So I think when time when we talk about it in a year, you'll see the Europeans are satisfied with it because when they see the full Donald Trump policy, which they understood, they knew this was the important deal for them. And of course, it was sensational for Donald Trump because it proves everything he said about tariffs is absolutely true. And you can see it right here, right now. Mr. Secretary, do you think the negotiations are over? And the reason I say over, meaning there's big questions about other issues I think that the president would like from Europe, for example, around big tech and the regulations on them and digital taxes and all sorts of other things.

23:34And so I raise the question, is it possible that there is additional conversations about some of those issues and that those issues get brought back into a different discussion around tariffs so that the ceiling becomes 15 percent? But actually, it could go lower, perhaps, if in fact there were other agreements that were reached. Is that even possible? Is that a chess piece? Well, I wouldn't say lower. I mean, natural resources, the president did include when he does a deal, he does include if you grow something and we don't grow it, that can come in for zero. So if we do a deal with a country that grows mangoes or pineapples, then they can come in without a tariff because coffee and cocoa would be other examples of natural resources.

24:24So an example for Europe that they brought up is cork, you know, like the cork, you know, that we all see in our houses. Cork can come into the United States without a tariff. And do I expect to continue to be talking to the European Commission's trade people? Yeah, they called me this morning to talk about what are other things to talk about. Digital services taxes and the attack on our tech companies. That is going to be on the table. It wasn't on the table today. There are other things that they would like, like steel and aluminum, that were not included in this deal that will be on the table.

24:58There's plenty of horse trading still to do. But the fundamentals of their$20 trillion economy are set. We sell into them without a tariff. They sell into us for 15%. But they protect themselves on autos. They protect themselves on pharma. They protect themselves on semiconductors. And those three protections were fundamental for the European Commission. And anybody who picks on them is going to learn over the next two weeks why the people who did that deal were really smart to get this deal done with Donald Trump. You can wrap China into this. But other countries where things are, I mean, Canada.

25:34What about Canada? I don't know what they're feeling now at this point. India, that's probably is that imminent? What do you expect to happen? And what's really happening with China in your view right now? Are things going OK with some of the president's comments about fake news says I want a meeting with Xi? It's not true. We thought that there was events are going to be some type of meeting between President Xi and President Trump. And that was going to be where we really got down to brass tacks. Well, I think with respect to other countries, what's happened is many, many countries had made us okay offers to open their markets, you know, 50 percent, 30 percent.