TSA with the Transportation Secretary & the EU-U.S. Relationship 3/19/26

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0:57Bring in show music, please. This is Squawk Pod, and I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. On today's episode, a new phase of the Iran war. CNBC's Dan Murphy reports on Israel's strike on the world's largest natural gas field in Iran and Iran's retaliatory strikes at Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Analysts telling me today that even if the war stops right now, the damage to these facilities could take months to repair, likely keeping prices higher for longer. The war has brought our ally relationships to the fore. Former EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager on partnership and respect between the US and Europe.

1:45I think the relationship has been changing for a very long time, and it sort of encourages European leaders to be more and more independent from the U.S. Plus, the Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy addresses the funding shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. TSA agents across the country are quitting as airports strain. But the Secretary is also concerned about national security. We're in a conflict with Iran. There is a heightened risk. And can bad things happen if you don't find homeland security? They can. It's Thursday, March 19, 2026, and SquawkPod begins right now.

2:28Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to SquawkBox right here on CNBC. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Andrew is at Bruin Capital's Nexus event in South Florida. He's going to be bringing us a great lineup of guests throughout the show. And, Andrew, good morning. It's good to see you. Joe, welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. Looking cash. Andrew, it's a good look for you, I think. I like the pocket square. The pocket square, yeah. Well, you know, when in Boca, as they say. We're big in Boca, by the way, guys. I don't know if you know that.

3:06What kind of shoes does Boca mean? Yeah, what kind of shoes does that mean? Are they just normal ones? Or you could go with... I'm guessing no socks. No socks? Oh, I'm wearing socks. I'm doing my... I don't know. What are these shoes? You know, I got the fancy ones. The Xenia sneakers. Fancy sneakers. The Xenia sneakers. Oh, my God. Yeah, we talked about those. Those are pricey. Pricey, Andrew. Was I reading this or you're reading it? No, I am actually. We digress once again. We do. We're all trying to figure out what's happening in the Middle East. We're going to get an update right now on the strikes around the Middle East that are driving energy prices higher on this 20th day now of the Iran war.

3:49CNBC's Dan Murphy joins us now from Dubai. Good morning to you. Andrew, good morning. Well, the primary focus today is the new strikes on energy infrastructure, and the markets are reacting to that. We are seeing oil and gas prices surging again today as the war enters what's being called a new phase. It was Israel that struck first, hitting Iran's South Pars gas field, the world's largest natural gas field. And Iran's retaliation was really swift as well. Qatar's Raslefan facility, which is one of the world's largest LNG export hubs, sustained extensive damage after an Iranian missile strike.

4:26Qatar Energy said emergency teams were deployed to contain the resulting fires. And here in the UAE, the Habshan gas facility and the BAB oil field also had to suspend operations after a series of missile attacks. Iran also firing missiles and launching drones on Saudi Arabia and a refinery in Kuwait as well that was hit by a drone attack too. And with Ras Lafhan offline and the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed, 20 % of global oil and gas supply remain offline. Analysts telling me today that even if the war stops right now, the damage to these facilities could take months to repair, likely keeping prices higher for longer.

5:07At the same time as well, President Donald Trump seeking to distance the United States from Israel's strike and also warning that if Iran attacks Qatar again, and I quote here, the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Park's gas field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before. So it is now day 20 of this war. The strikes really angering America's Gulf allies as well. And of course, a big question mark over exactly where this goes next. Andrew? This is a conversation, guys.

5:44As Joe, we've been talking about this obviously ongoing here, right here at this event. Tony Blair was here last evening and we spoke with him about where this could all go and and what could happen. And I think there's there's no sense, unfortunately, that this is going to end, I think, as soon as I think a lot of people would hope. And we'll just nobody knows. And if you if you have an insight into how President Trump thinks or how things are going to play out, then maybe you can come up with it. And you've got the there's a lot of pressure from from one group that says, finish this job. You know, I've seen the journal write pieces on that urging states don't want to be left, finish this job.

6:31And others saying, if you don't, you know, you know how much Trump hates the taco acronym, whatever it is. And I've seen it It's spelled out in the last couple of days. People will say if it if you were to say, oh, look at what's happening with the stock market or look at what's happening with whatever, whatever pressure is brought to bear based on, you know, near term concerns. Do not do not do the taco. Do not fold too early. So that could mean one of this. It may be one of those situations where once you're in this, once you're in it, you're in it and you have to be in it to the end. What does that mean?

7:11I assume the end is regime change. Does that mean boots on the ground to get to the uranium? Boots on the ground to get to the uranium? I mean, I don't know. The Iranians have threatened that the Strait of Hormuz, they are not okay with going back to business as usual, assuming that that's going to be safe passage. And that's obviously not something that the rest of the globe can live with. So that complicates the matter completely. Also seeing that the rest of the world, some are paying$150. We luckily are in a different position than we were when Ukraine started in 2022. And we've got a lot more for ourselves that we can, you know, we're self-sufficient in a lot of ways.

7:49We still import, obviously, but we do. We're much more self-sufficient. And the rest of the world is, I mean, China's got a lot more to lose if the straits stays closed, too. China, India, Japan, you can run through the list of nations. European nations, by the way, if you look at that European natural gas, huge run-up, like we mentioned, 140 % since the beginning of the year. That's actually, believe it or not, not as big of a run-up as they dealt with at the beginning of the Ukrainian invasion by Russia. But again, just shows you how reliant they are on other places for their energy needs. And yes, you're right.

8:24We're very lucky to be in a position where we are not as reliant, where we are self-sufficient. You know, Ray, Becky, I was just going to say, you know, Ray, I think we talked about it earlier in the week, maybe. Ray Dalio has made this point that whoever controls the Strait of Hormuz long term is either the winner or the loser of the war. That that that is how we will ultimately judge what's ultimately happened here. And the question is, can you control that straight without boots on the ground? What does it look like to to literally control that? And that's a very hard thing to think about controlling it for a very long time.

9:01He also made the point that any agreement that might be made is ultimately worthless, meaning that if you were to make an agreement so that you could you could say you're stepping away and stepping away in success, that, you know, you'll be back later on. Interestingly, you made the point about China, though. The good news is China China's oil. Those boats, I think, are making it through the strait right now. So maybe they have less of an incentive to jump into this, which is probably a good thing, given all things considered. Right. To control the strait means that you're just going to kind of terrorize anybody else who comes through while allowing your own ship's passage, which is what they've done to this point.

9:39Fighting terrorism is pretty difficult. Yeah. Controlling the strait is difficult to get your arms around that, I suppose. The Fed holding interest rates steady in a range of three and a half to three and a quarter percent. That was as expected. The latest so-called dot plot of Fed members rate projections, indicating that the central bank could cut rates once this year and once next year by 25 basis points each time. Officials see a slightly faster pace of GDP growth this year than they previously did, but they also see higher inflation. Growth in 2027 projected at 2.3 percent. That's higher than the previous 2 % forecast.

10:19Fed Chair Jay Powell saying that it's too soon to know how the war in Iran will impact the U.S. economy. On the question of his future at the Fed and the criminal investigation initiated by the Trump administration, here's what Chairman Powell had to say. I have no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality. On the question of whether I will then continue to serve as a governor after my term ends and after the investigation is over, I have not made that decision yet. Powell saying that if his successor is not confirmed by the end of his term, he would serve as chair pro tem until someone is confirmed.

11:00Shares of computer memory maker Micron falling despite much better than expected results powered by AI related demand. Revenue for the company nearly tripling from a year ago. Third quarter revenue guidance of$33.5 billion was close to 40 percent above what the street was expecting. Earnings per share guidance was even better. It came in close to 60 % above the street's expectations, but the stock is off by about 5.3%. That speaks to the expectations surrounding companies that are critical to the AI build out. Very strong numbers, but really the whisper number on the street always kind of getting to those points too, and very high expectations.

11:40Look at the stock over the last three years. It's up 672%. It tripled last year, and it was up more than 60 % this year before last night's earnings. In addition, Micron is planning a big ramp up in CapEx. Management also explicitly excluding any tariff or geopolitical impacts from the company's guidance. So maybe that factors into the streets' reaction to all of this, too. It's one of those things where, like when Bezos said, it's going to be horizontal. It's going to be like electricity. Told Andrew that. It's going to be like electricity. This was some silly, not silly, but it was a boring DRAM commodity memory chip maker.

12:22And we used to watch it boom and bust, boom and bust, talk about the Lord of the Fries and J.R. Simplot and everything. And AI, everything changed the way that memory is used. And it became much more. I mean, I look at it, it's mind boggling. Five hundred, five hundred billion dollars, half a trillion dollar company. Remember, it used to be that with AMD, too. It was always the second, always run by Intel to the chips, where it was going to happen. But you're right, the commoditized businesses that now can put in, if you are AI ready to go, no longer a commodity, or at least a very expensive one.

13:00Andrew, do you remember that conversation you had with Bezos? Because I watched it again. I do. When you were listening to him, your eyes did not gloss over completely, did they? But he's very smart. He's very, very smart. He's one of the smartest. And I'm still trying to get my arms around exactly. I mean, AI is like electricity. Think about how electricity, not one thing was the same after electricity. And this is going to be the same. And you didn't have just electric companies. You have utilities, but electricity is everywhere, just like AI will be everywhere. There aren't AI companies. There won't be technology companies.

13:41It just exists in every single. Andrew, and you told me about Waymo. I didn't believe you, though. It's awesome. Did you like it? Did you take a Waymo? I didn't take one, but it's everywhere. And I still can't get used to driving by with no one sitting there. Pulling up to somebody with nobody in the car. It's amazing. And as it was driving by, beyond it on the sidewalk, I saw a little thing bringing coffee to someone. I mean, it's messed up. Yep. Messed up for a guy. The West Coast is pretty cool for that stuff, I have to say. Messed up for a guy like me. You don't see any of that stuff here.

14:15The Waymo stuff, the Waymo is great. It's coming soon. It's coming soon. To a street near you. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, regional airports face closures as the funding shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security weighs on TSA agents nationwide. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on the gridlock that could worsen heading into next week. You're going to see small airports, I believe, shut down. You're going to see extensive lines and air travel is going to almost come to a grid halt. Stop.

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16:25Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick. Over 360 TSA agents have quit their jobs in the midst of the continued partial government shutdown. The airport security shortages are causing massive delays and are a potential threat to smaller airports potentially being closed completely. That's according to the TSA. Joining us right now is Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. And Secretary Duffy, thank you for being with us today. You know, there are so many questions about what's happening, but as this drags out, I think the number one question is, are people who are flying today safe, or have we reached a point where there's actually a security threat?

17:07Well, the reasons why we have such long lines is when we have, you know, more TSA agents that call out than previous. It takes longer to get through TSA. So what that means is they're doing their job, right? They're screening all the necessary people, but it's just taking a longer period of time. So yes, it's safe. But when you're going to travel by yourself is one thing. But if you're traveling with kids, it just becomes very laborious. I mean, in places like Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, lines that are two, three, four hours long make travel just grinding. Yeah. I heard that over the weekend we hit call outs north of 10 percent, maybe 10.9 percent or something, the highest we've seen.

17:50That's on the national level. Some places like Houston saw call outs of over 50 percent. Is that the latest update you have or do you have anything else you can fill us in on that front? Yeah. So right now, on average, we're rolling about 10 percent, which is five times the normal call out rate. But last weekend, on average, it was only double the average call-out rate. So what I'm seeing is it's getting worse day by day. And we have to think about the TSA worker. But these are not highly paid individuals. They start off at about, you know,$45 ,000 to$55 ,000. But living in, you know, D.C. and Atlanta and New York, they live in very expensive communities.

18:28So it's really challenging for them. And so I saw this with the FAA and our air traffic controllers. The TSA agents missed a partial payment. Last Friday, they missed a full payment. As we get into next week, Becky, and they're about to miss another payment, this is going to look like child's play, what's happening right now. You're going to see small airports, I believe, shut down. You're going to see extensive lines. And air travel is going to almost come to a grid halt, stop. And so, listen, the point is we don't have to live this. Let's not use the American people as a political tool to get your will.

19:04We had a race in the last election about Joe Biden letting in 10, 12, 15 million people. Donald Trump ran and said, we're going to get those bad hombres out of the country. Democrats lost on that. Donald Trump's doing it. And Democrats are trying to redo the election and use the same policies that they lost on. Listen, let's actually get the bad out. Let's homeland security. If there's a time to actually have homeland security up and operational, it would be a time like now when we're in a conflict with Iran, we've let, again, the 15 million people into the country that weren't vetted by Joe Biden.

19:39And it's an incredible, it can be an incredible risk because we don't know who's here. We need homeland security now more than ever. Democrats should fund it and then say, hey, we want to have some modifications. By the way, the White House, Donald Trump, has been willing to work with Democrats, but just not give them everything they're asking for. But the president will make some concessions. He's a negotiator. And he's had that conversation. It just seems like they're in a place where They don't want to get to yes because their base, their radical base, doesn't want to fund homeland security, doesn't want to fund ICE.

20:07They want to keep all these individuals in the country. But we know it's already funded until 2029. And I don't know where the messaging is being lost for Republicans. The messaging is being lost somehow because it's very clear this isn't that different than the last government shutdown. You know, when you lose an election, you know, when you have some type of leverage, even if even if the Democrats would pillory the Republicans, if they tried to pull the same thing, if when they were on the outs, they'd pillory. I just don't understand how it isn't clear that this is fully in the Democrats lap right now.

20:52These lines, TSA people not getting paid, everything. It should be very, very clear. I don't know why it's not hitting home where they're not saying, OK, you're right, uncle, we cannot let this happen to the TSA and to all these travelers. We'll work on the DHS in the way that it's supposed to be done at some at some future point. But this is unacceptable. And why can't Republicans just spell that out? Well, I think I think there's a lot of a lot of mouthpieces in the media that will tell a different story. right? And it's hard to push back against that narrative. But if we're honest, what's really happening?

21:30Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House. But Democrats in the Senate have the ability to shut down Republican movements because of the filibuster rule, right? You need 60 votes to pass a bill. And because Democrats don't get to yes, that bill won't pass, right? If we get into the weeds of how politics works, but then Democrats sit back and go, listen, we're not the majority. We can't do anything about this. It's Republicans' fault. Well, then that begs the question, do we get rid of the filibuster rule so we can pass good legislation? Because to your point, Joe, every single Republican is voting to fund homeland security, make sure these TSA lines go away.

22:06And every Democrat is voting to keep it shut down and make sure you have mass chaos in your airport. So it's very simple. And how anyone in the media could say something different about what's happening, I think, is frustrating. but Republicans have to be better and I think continue to message why this is happening and that Democrats are using the American people and inflicting pain on the American people for what they think is a political benefit. And I think the way this ends is people get hurt, right? Which is horrible. You don't want, your job is to protect the American people. I'm sorry, Secretary, you're talking about the TSA agents who aren't getting paid.

22:41Not TSA agents. Or you mean, I think you think that there's going to be a security accident, threat, risk that takes place as a result. So Senator Slotkin in Michigan was voting to not fund Homeland Security until there was an attack on a synagogue. And little children almost lost their lives because a radical wanted to come in and shoot them because they were Jewish. And after that happened, she decided, oh, maybe I do not want to fund TSA and Homeland Security. So that's what I mean. when we don't know 15 million people who are in the country, we haven't vetted them, and we're in a conflict with Iran, there is a heightened risk.

23:19And can bad things happen if you don't fund homeland security? They can. I think every single American would say, let's make sure the American people are safe. That's more important than your political fight in Washington, whether it's Senator Slocken in Michigan or any other Democrat across the country. So I'm not saying TSA or air travel. I'm saying radical elements that have been led into this country by Joe Biden that Donald Trump wants to get out. That is my concern right now. Just cutting through the politics here. We had Jay Johnson on with us last week. He was in charge of the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama.

23:56He came on to talk about how neither side should be allowed to hijack this. Same concerns, same issues, worries about security. Is there a bipartisan solution that gets to the heart of this not being the tool that the Democrats right now are using that the Republicans have used in the past when they were the minority party? Is there a way to say, we're not going to play that game? This is not going to be a tool that anybody can use when they throw a political temper tantrum. Yeah, that's, I mean, Congress likes using whatever tools they have in the toolkit to get leverage. But, you know, Jay Johnson should recognize the importance of Homeland Security and the fact that we should not take that away from the American people.

24:37Yeah, he did. I thought he did. He did. That is what he said. Yeah. And but but then he should also then go the next step to even say, well, Democrats should then fund it. Right. He did. He basically came out and said that this should never happen, no matter who's in charge and no matter who's in the minority party. That's what I mean. Is there a way to say that we should not be? This is what the third time that TSA agents have been asked to go without pay in the last year. That's right. Well, I think the real issue here is that was but but Democrats, what they really want is they want TSA agents to take their masks off.