Fmr. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin on Biden's Policies, Deficits, Dollar

So you obviously worked for President Trump. President Biden’s a different man, different economic policy. Is there anything you see in the Biden of a policy that you approve of? Do you think they’ve done a good job with? Look, I think there’s certain things that they’ve done that have been OK, but I think there’s been a very different economic agenda. And prior to COVID, we saw the Trump tax cuts were really working. I think to the extent that we hadn’t had COVID, we were seeing an increase in the economy and the cuts would have paid for themselves and we were seeing very robust economic activity. Now obviously in COVID, we had to spend a lot of money. I think had we not spent the 1st $2 trillion, we would have had a worldwide depression, not recession. But I think in hindsight, we went on to spend too much money. And I think when the Biden administration came in, they continued to spend too much money. I’m not sure that either of the candidates, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, is making a big deal out of cutting the deficit. But what can be done, What should be done to actually improve this issue of debt and the deficit? Well, obviously it’s a very difficult political issue. I don’t expect that either one of them are going to talk about this before the election. I do hope whoever is the next president, and if it’s President Trump, that he does address the deficit. I think there are entitlement issues that need to be dealt with. The Social Security trust fund is going to run out of money and we need to address that and we need to start addressing that now. People have relied upon Social Security and the current beneficiary should be assured that they will continue to get Social Security. But we need to deal with this on an ongoing basis for future generations. We have a very strong U.S. dollar. Is that a good thing for the economy over time? This is something we can’t be reliant upon. I think with the dollar will continue to be the reserve currency before the foreseeable future. Can that be done other than through some sort of a presidential Commission, a Commission that we’re looking at the way we’ve done, for example, base Closings or Social Security in the past? I think it has to be done on a bipartisan basis. It’s going to obviously have to be something that goes through the House and the Senate, and this needs to have the leadership of the president. But yes, my recommendation would be to establish a bipartisan Commission and start reviewing this now. One of the issues that’s pending right now are the Russian assets, central bank assets that have been seized in Europe and the United States. What should be done, if anything, with those? Do you have a view about whether we actually should be taking those assets and basically giving them to Ukraine for rebuilding Ukraine? It’s a major foreign policy tool that the US has, and I’ve always said because we are the reserve currency, we need to be careful about how we use it. So the first part of this is making sure we put in place sanctions and we enforce them. I’m very concerned that the Russian oil sanctions and the Iran oil sanctions are not being enforced. We’re seeing flagrant violations of those and I think that has to be enforced now in regards to what you do with the money. The money needs to go through either a legal process or a legislative process.