House Majority Leader Scalise & November Jobs 12/16/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The clock is ticking on health care as the Obamacare subsidies cliff looms. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Republicans' new potential legislation. 80 % premium increases just for people in Obamacare. We want to help lower their premiums, but right now nobody has options. It's really not a competitive marketplace. And the problem we can't seem to solve, choice in the health insurance market. You turn on the TV, there are commercials with lizards and all kind of other animals that are selling you options to get lower insurance.

0:41You don't really have that in health insurance. Americans' views of President Trump's handling of the economy worsen, according to new data right from CNBC. Steve Leisman reports. Public now prefers a democratically controlled Congress by a 50 to 46 percent majority. Slim margin, but the biggest one we've seen since 2020. Plus the rest of today's news on a Jobs Tuesday due to shutdown delayed data, high stakes for Fed chair, stock trading 23 hours a day, and Ford pulling the plug on EVs saying the market's just not there yet. We could ultimately just be completely and utterly left behind. Except for Tesla.

1:21The question here is, are we effectively ceding the EV industry to other players around the world? It's Tuesday, December 16th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand and or buy in three, two, one, cue and. Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live at the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, along with Melissa Lee. Joe and Becky are off today. It's nice to see you again. Good morning to you. Two days in a row. On today's Squawk Planner, key economic data, most importantly, the latest jobs numbers from the Labor Department. This is a combined report with information on October as well as November, rescheduled because the six-week government shutdown prevented data from being collected.

2:06The report will help economists make sense of the employment picture and help Fed members, as they weigh further interest rate moves, will get an unemployment reading for November, but not one for October because government workers couldn't survey households during the shutdown. It is the first time the government will not be able to release a monthly unemployment number. The October jobs picture will also face distortion because of government workers who took deferred buyouts as part of White House efforts to shrink the federal workforce. So what are we supposed to make of it? Well, I think that it's interesting.

2:36You know, we had the Fed meeting last week, and there's some debate as to whether or not they should have postponed the meeting in order to see this piece of data. But is this so backward looking that it's maybe just... Well, then you can say they don't need any of this data if it's all backward looking. Yeah, but this one in particular... This one in particular is backward looking. There are a lot of things to look through. There are a lot of exceptions. It's not clean... It's not clean data. Clean data. But still. We got some corporate news for you this morning. Ford saying it's going to take roughly$20 billion in charges related to a pullback on investments in all electric vehicles and restructuring of its business priorities.

3:11EV sales slumping domestically after the Trump administration put an end, an early end, I should say, to the federal tax credit for car buyers. Ford's plan includes refocusing investments on hybrid cars and canceling a new generation of large all-electric trucks in exchange for smaller, more affordable EVs. A one highlight, Ford's all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck will transition to an extended range EV that includes an electric powertrain as well as a gas power generator. Take a look at what Ford CEO Jim Farley had to say on CNBC about all of this yesterday. The very high-end EVs, the$50 ,000,$70 ,000,$80 ,000 vehicles, they just weren't selling.

3:54And we had planned a full EV lineup, but we also have hybrids and we learned a lot about the market. and we think it was the right time to listen to the customers. We evaluated the market and we made the call. Ford also announcing plans to use battery plants in Kentucky and Michigan for a new energy storage business. But at some point, you know, I interviewed Mary Barr just a couple weeks ago at DealBook and here we have Jim Farley saying a very similar thing. I mean, they'd already talked about charges and things. So when something like this happens, do you say to yourself, what was the mistake?

4:30It was. But was the mistake in misjudging the consumer demand? Was the mistake in misjudging the politics and policy that was going to go into the subsidies for these cars? Was the mistake in misjudging the investment in infrastructure that never happened? Where do you, and if a board and a management team is responsible for these kind of losses and these kind of big long-term investments, how do you judge it or misjudge it? I mean, I think it was a combination of all these things. I think when you take a free market and you distort it in some way with policy changes that help create a new market, you run that risk.

5:13Either the market grows to meet that or it doesn't. And maybe in this case, it didn't. And there was too much investment being put in. There's too much assumption that the investment would be put in in terms of the infrastructure, the charging side of things. And that didn't come. Well, the flip side of this, by the way, is putting aside any of the climate issues, there's an argument to be made that without the subsidy investment that we are no longer making in our automobile industry and the tariff program that we are now implementing, that from a competitive set, you're going to go to Asia, you're going to go to Europe, you're going to go to other parts of the world, and the kind of cars that you're going to be able to get there are going to be materially better for materially less.

5:56and we could ultimately just be completely and utterly left behind. Except for Tesla. Although, I mean, I think that the question here is, are we effectively ceding the EV industry to other players around the world? But then the question is, are we ceding the entire automobile industry? If you ultimately believe the automobile industry is going to be EVs, have you just decided that we are just not in that business anymore? Except that we have Tesla still. We being the United States of America. Sure. Which is a viable, profitable player, and the players in Asia are not profitable and do still survive on subsidies within those markets.

6:34So, I mean, it's no coincidence. BYD, for all the cars it sells, it's not making money on these cars. Right, but ultimately, if they can get to a point of escape velocity, which, by the way, Tesla did get to escape velocity. Right, that's true. Then you actually run yourself into a real problem. Right. But we can't forget Tesla being a major player, a dominant player in the EV market, period, and being a profitable player. Yeah, but I think that it's still just a I'm not saying it's a small player, but it's a small in the United States. It's on a relative basis to what the rest of the industry looks like.

7:10And then the question is, what happens to the rest of the if there's if there is no competition, then what? That's the other piece. The only competition is going to come from combustion engine companies. Well, it's not that they're not going to make any EVs. They're just going to make different EVs, smaller EVs, more affordable EVs. Same thing with GM. GM, as you know, took a$1.6 billion charge on its EV business, but they still make EVs. So they're just sort of right-sizing the EV business to what the market actually is without the subsidies. Without the subsidies. And I think maybe there's a question about whether we should have done that or not.

7:42Right. Are you changing the marketplace with these policies? Look, we changed the marketplace the first time with these policies, But the rest of the world was also changing the policies. And right. I mean, so life is relative. Yeah, absolutely. Now let's get to the latest on the race to be the next Fed chair. This morning, prediction market Kalashie puts former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh in the lead with better seeing a 48 percent chance he'll be nominated by President Trump. Previous frontrunner Kevin Hassett, who leads the National Economic Council, is now in second place. Sources tell CNBC Hassett's candidacy has seen pushback by high level people close to President Trump.

8:18Some are worried the bond market could see upheaval for time if investors see Hassett as too close to the president. Meantime, the Nasdaq looking to expand trading hours. According to an SEC filing, the exchange wants investors to be able to trade 23 hours a day, five days a week. That would include a new night session from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern time. In addition, the exchange's current pre-market, regular and post-market hours. The New York Stock Exchange and CBOE Global Markets also recently announced plans to move to round-the-clock stock trading. I don't know where you land on that as an idea.

8:52We don't have to cover those sessions. I'm OK with it. But, I mean, in theory, it could, in fact, increase the volatility because there will be more swings at other times of the day. So is that a feature or a bug to be able to trade 24 hours a day? I mean, Robinhood offers trading. You can sell U.S. stocks around the clock. At all times. So on some level, it exists. But this is mainly for overseas players. Right, right. And prosecutors in California set to decide whether and how to charge the son of filmmaker Rob Reiner. After he was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder, Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home over the weekend.

9:37Nick Reiner is being held in jail without bail. Sources telling NBC News the 32-year-old had been disruptive at a holiday party on Saturday with his parents hours before they were found dead. President Trump drawing criticism after he posted on social media about the deaths of Rob and Michelle Reiner, making claims that their deaths were related to Reiner's political activism. Police have not provided information about a motive. It's a terrible, I can't even fathom what happened that evening. If this in fact happened, because we don't know yet, imagine the last images in your head, your child doing that to you and you're thinking, what is happening?

10:19It's just heartbreaking. And separately, though it's just a pile on at this point because everybody's already said it, it's disgraceful what the president said yesterday. It doesn't matter what your politics are. It's just it's one of those moments that's beyond beyond the pale. No matter no matter what side of it you're on, I hope I hope that people recognize that and people who are around him recognize that. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, Congress wraps up its legislative year and House Republicans are still battling over health care and the soon to expire subsidies tied to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

10:56Will there be any kind of deal in time? House Majority Leader Steve Scalise joins us. We got to get it through the House. It's never easy when we have a two-seat majority. I'd love to say a lot of Democrats will join in, but for whatever reason, they are stuck in this Obamacare or bust mode. Plus, another Steve, our own Steve Leisman, with exclusive results from CNBC's latest All-America survey. President Trump's approval rating on inflation and the cost of living fell to a new low. So if you were the president, what would you do right now? I guess I wouldn't be saying that affordability is a Democratic hoax.

11:33This is Squawk Pod from CNBC, today with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Melissa Lee. President Trump's approval rating remains challenged by the affordability issue. Our senior economics reporter Steve Leesman joins us with the results of the CNBC All-America survey. What are you seeing here? Yesterday we did what consumers were saying about it. Now this is the political side of it. President Trump's approval on the critical issue of inflation and the cost of living. fell to a new low in the CNBC All-America economic survey, with the president continuing to lose support, not just from the broader American public, but from some of his own key constituencies as well.

12:09The survey of 1 ,000 people nationwide found that over the course of the year, approval of the president's handling on inflation has dropped from 37 % to 31%, disapproval risen to 260 % from 60%, sorry, to 66 % from 60%. The result, minus 23 net approval. The president is now minus 35 with a further eight-point decline in just the last quarter. You can see that widening gap right there. Among the big changes from Trump supporters on inflation, Republican voters plus 58 on inflation are now plus 32. Blue collar was split, blue collar workers. Now they're minus 30 on the president on inflation. And in rural counties, they were plus 13 in April.

12:51Now they're minus 14 for a big, big switch there. For the first time since April, a majority of Republicans also rating the economy as just, fair, or poor. Democrats at 93 percent, independents at 86 percent. Republicans now 53 percent. That's above the majority level there. The good news for the president, the decline on inflation views has not hurt or even helped his overall economic approval ratings. They'll both remain underwater, especially economic approval at minus 11 on net. It's a feature of this second term here that his economic approval is below his overall approval. And that one reason why his numbers are staying up there is because Republicans remain solidly behind the president on the economy and on issues of immigration and tariffs.

13:33Despite, you can see their overall negative views by the public. Eighty nine percent Republican approval on immigration versus 46 percent for the broader public. Eighty one percent on tariffs, which is 41 percent. Still, the numbers are not trending well for the president and Republicans for the midterms. Public now prefers a democratically controlled Congress by 50 to 46 percent majority. It's a slim margin, but the biggest one we've seen since 2020. And I guess I'd say that politically, this is a big issue. But economically, that's where it becomes really interesting, because most economists and politicians are saying, oh, the tariff inflation issue is not that big a deal.

14:14What we're hearing from consumers and the way it's affecting political views suggests that price increases are a bigger deal now than they've been. Well, particularly if you piece together what you brought us yesterday with what we saw today, and that is people are spending more and they say it's because we are paying more for the same amount of goods. And we're not hearing it necessarily from the retail analysts that there's a problem out there. Remember, the Biden administration underestimated the effects of inflation on the political situation. That was a mistake they made. Not I'm sure what they could have done about it other than not spend as much as they had.

14:53So if you were the president, what would you do right now? I guess I wouldn't be saying that affordability is a Democratic hoax. And I'm interested because it doesn't seem like that political position is playing very well. I wouldn't be saying that. I'm saying you think that they could do what they could back off tariffs. They could back off tariffs in a hurry and you would probably see interest rates decline and you'd almost certainly see inflation decline. What's interesting here, just don't the mistake I think some people might be making is the overall inflation rate is kind of steady and didn't go up as much.

15:283%. But there is inflation in goods. And that's where it is. And our survey suggests that people are seeing it at the checkout counter. Because what I checked yesterday was, if it was just a sentiment thing, then we wouldn't have seen it among people who had done their shopping. But people who did their shopping had the same view on prices as those who hadn't done their shopping. So people are seeing it at the checkout counter. And it's something that's out there right now. Now, the other thing the president can do is just ride it out, because if it ends up being a one-time increase in the price level, then you should see less of it next year.

16:04Which is what Powell effectively believes, right? That it is going to pass through and that they will get closer to 2%. So you're taking on the chin now politically, and maybe it hurts you in the midterms. But by next year, if there is not another increase, that said, I'm talking to some people that say we've only seen a piece of the pass through on tariffs. The only thing is that the inflation goods is one piece of it. Then you have the health care issue. You have all these other things piling up on top of the consumer. And it's like you can ride that out in terms of the bump in goods from tariffs.

16:35But that doesn't isolate the inflation, you know, insulate, I should say, consumers from the effect of inflation on other areas that they are paying for. I also think that one tremendous value for this survey is recognizing that we live in a very distinct milieu of people who are wealthy and they're getting wealthier through the stock market. That is not necessarily true for the bulk of Americans who are out there, 61 percent telling us that they believe their wages are not keeping place with inflation. And that's the reality for a lot of Americans out there. So go online, read this survey and see how average Americans think versus what is out there in your world.

17:18Do you remember Greg Yip wrote a piece two weeks ago in The Wall Street Journal about this idea of affordability being he didn't say it was a con job, which is sort of what the president said. But that affordability is almost like a psychological sense of relativity. That actually has no real basis in sort of history or where things, I mean, if you were to look at sort of where we are on historical basis, you'd actually think pretty good, maybe, but maybe not. There's no doubt there's a psychological aspect to this. It's in the headlines. But I was thinking about that this morning. It's like here I am with the actual results of the survey reporting it.

17:58And perhaps some of the survey results are a result of previous reporting. So it gets a little circular. It is true. However, I've also learned over the years, Andrew, not to tell people they're experiencing a different reality from the one they're telling us. By the way, that was a mistake that Biden made. If you say things are bad, I'm not going to argue with it. Because one of the things I think we know is that people know their economic reality better than almost anybody. It's why, by the way, sometimes we ask people, how's the country? And they say it's terrible. How are you? We're OK. We get a lot of that in these surveys.

18:35Steve, thank you. Pleasure. And we should tell everybody that tomorrow on Squawk Box, Steve's going to bring us a special live interview with Fed Governor Christopher Waller. Waller, of course, has been in the run-in to succeed Jay Powell. Steve will bring us that conversation with Waller live from the Yale CEO Summit. It's at 8.15 Eastern time. We were looking at the Calci numbers. Are you are you are you surprised that Warsh is now apparently outpacing at least just by a hair? Our report yesterday perhaps had an influence on that where we heard that there was some pushback from Wall Street. I'm not surprised.

19:12I think the president has latitude to do what he wants with certain departments. I feel like he has less latitude with the Fed. And I feel like people on Wall Street have told the president, do what you want with justice through the Defense Department, but don't mess with the Fed. Make sure that there's somebody credible in there. It's so important for the Fed to have that credibility. And people, they score not. But remember, while we went through the high inflation period of the post-pandemic period, inflation expectations remained under control. The belief both on Wall Street and, by the way, in the general public, that prices would be kept under control remain there.

19:56But you think that the problem that Wall Street thinks about Hassett versus Warsh is that they think that Hassett is more loyal or too loyal to the president and that Warsh will be his own man? Yes. But if you're the president, you may not want somebody who's their own man. But you also don't want to get calls from your Wall Street buddies that say, don't put this guy in. I think you want to have a little bit of approval. A Republican health care proposal is on thin ice in the House ahead of the coming holiday recess. Join us right now with the latest House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise. Good morning to you.

20:38Help us understand where you think this is. I don't know if you think our description of thin ice is right, but what you think the chances are that something gets done as open enrollment is literally happening around the country. Well, thanks. Good morning. Thank you for having me. We've been working for a long time to lower premiums for all Americans, 100 percent of families across America. Democrats, as you know, have only been focused on trying to give big bailouts to insurance companies dealing with 7 percent of Americans. So big difference between the two sides. What we're going to be bringing to the House floor tomorrow, on the floor on Wednesday, is the Lower Premiums Act.

21:16This is a bill to lower health care premiums for all Americans. It's going to be focused on things like association health plans, the Choice Act, which is a way to use health savings accounts so that employers can work with their employees and give them better options for lower premium health care plans. We do what's called cost share reductions. And it's basically a term up here in Washington, two lower premiums for everybody in Obamacare. So if you want to stay in Obamacare, a lot of people probably don't. But for those people, that would be a 12 percent reduction. Let's just take this down to a very base case.

21:51I'm a family of five. Tell me, and let's say I want to get on this program. How is it going to work? Tell me what the program is that I'm currently on and what you think the new program looks like. Like, what's my deductibility look like? What do my premiums look like? Just walk us, sort of a basic American who's thinking about what to do here, how it's going to impact them. Yeah, it seems like all the attention's been focused on Obamacare, which, you know, is a lot of people, but it's a small percentage of Americans. But 80 % premium increases just for people in Obamacare. We want to help lower their premiums.

22:27But right now, nobody has options. It's really not a competitive marketplace. So if you don't like the plan that you have, it's really hard to shop it around. Like, for example, car insurance, your homeowner's insurance. I mean, you turn on the TV, there are commercials with lizards and all kind of other animals that are selling you options to get lower insurance. You don't really have that in health insurance. So we want to open up the marketplace because right now, if you don't have any choices, you're going to pay more. So we're going to give people the options to buy different kinds of plans that are better for them, lower costs, better coverage for their families, lower deductibles for their families.

23:04And then also, you know, when you open up health savings accounts, you think about some of the abilities you have to work with your employer to get better options through your company if that's the route you go. Obviously, if you're already on Medicare and Medicaid, that's a different set of families. families. But if you're either in the private market or Obamacare, you have literally no options. We want to give people choices to get to get lower premiums. Leader Scalise, to get to Andrew's question, though, how does how does an average American think about what their health care spend will look like under the plan that you put forth?

23:40You mentioned lower premiums, lower premiums. But how will this actually work compared to what is already being paid? Because that that is the bottom line that people care about. But when you just say, Well, let's say, look, a lot of Americans. It doesn't mean anything. Right. A lot of the press only focuses on Obamacare. A lot of Americans still get their insurance through their employer. Well, right now, if your employer offers a plan, you pretty much have a take it or leave it. You know, they're going to cover a portion, maybe a lot of that copay. And then that's the only choice you have. Otherwise, you're going to be out trying to buy insurance at 100 percent on your own.

24:16Nobody can do that. So what we do is set up what's called, in this case, the choice account. So it's a health savings account where if you can find a better plan for your family outside of your employer, you can use the employer money that right now is spending on your higher cost plan and go buy a lower cost plan using the employer's existing money. Right now, that's not allowed in law. We open that up. So those are different choices that we're making available to people so that you will see a marketplace for insurance, for health insurance, just like you see it for car insurance and homeowners insurance, which, by the way, is a very robust marketplace.

24:53You know, pick up the phone, you could save$500,$700. You don't have that in health insurance. Wouldn't it be great if you actually had the ability to shop around policies? And so that's what we're working towards. Leader, quickly, how quickly, to the extent this gets passed, and I know that's a big if, how quickly do you think this filters out into the marketplace in terms of cost to the American public come 2026? Well, we're going to pass this bill Wednesday, so it'll be over in the Senate. If it passes the Senate this week, you know, a month from now, I can't predict the Senate schedule. But I think Americans, once they see this, are going to call their United States senator, Republican and Democrat, because it will take 60 votes.