Texas Senator Ted Cruz Talks Canada Trade

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Joe Mathieu** (0:07)
Joining us now is Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. He is the chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and also author of the new book, Going Further, The Incomparable Clarence Thomas. Senator Cruz, welcome back to Bloomberg TV and radio, and we are excited to discuss your book with you, but could I first ask your reaction to what we heard from Premier Ford? Canada clearly does not feel like it wants to accept a bad deal from the United States, and yet the US still seems like it's ready and willing to wage this trade war. Is this exactly what the United States doesn't need right now? Is another trade war higher tariffs and potentially higher prices?

**Ted Cruz** (0:45)
Look, I think we'll get this resolved. I was encouraged listening to the Premier say at the end there, let's make a deal, let's make a deal.
Listen, Donald Trump has demonstrated that the threat of tariffs is an incredible incentive to bring our trading partners to the table, to incentivize them to open up their markets, to lower their own tariffs, to remove non-tariff barriers. I think that is a very positive thing.
There are two camps within the Trump administration. There's one camp that wants the threat of tariffs to be used in that direction, to lower tariffs, to expand trade. I'm emphatically in that camp. There is a second camp in the administration that just wants high tariffs and perpetuity. I think that camp is misguided. So what I'm hopeful is the resolution here will be that Canada will come to the table and will end up with more trade with Canada, our farmers exporting more beef, more corn, more soybeans, more American goods, more American booze. All of that I'd like to see happen. And I think this is part of the back and forth, hopefully to get to that point.

**Kailey Leinz** (1:54)
Well, that's a really interesting answer, Senator, and we really appreciate you're listening to the interview before you joined us today. Clearly you did, because look, the options sometimes are limited. If you're not buying potash from Canada, your option is to go buy it from Russia. So a deal, it seems, might help ranchers in Texas just as much as farmers in the Midwest.

**Ted Cruz** (2:15)
Well, and Canada is an enormous energy producer. You look at Calgary and Alberta, they have massive oil and gas reserves.
Their oil and gas producers work very closely with Texas refineries. So all of that, our economies are interconnected. And my hope is that the end result of all of this back and forth is we end up with an agreement that has more trade all around. If that's the case, that's good for Texas, and it's good for Americans.

**Joe Mathieu** (2:45)
Senator, I'd like to ask you about whether another question is good for Americans, and that's data center development. This is a hot issue across the country, especially so in Texas, where both now the man running to be your colleague in the Senate, Ken Paxton and Governor Abbott seem to have turned against data centers. Is that the only way to win in your state or across the country in this midterm cycle, be anti-data center?

**Ted Cruz** (3:08)
Well, listen, I think it is critical that America win the race for AI, but I also think the concerns being raised about data centers are real and reasonable, and they need to be addressed, and they need to be addressed head on. It's worth noting that this anti-data center movement is not entirely organic, that China is putting real money into funding this movement. You've got this guy, Neville Roy Singham, who is a Marxist. He's a Communist American billionaire who lives in China, who is funding much of this.
And from China's perspective, they want us to never build another data center and basically cede all of AI to them. That would be a bad outcome. Now, what are real concerns?

**Joe Mathieu** (3:49)
Is Ken Paxton or Governor Abbott falling for Chinese propaganda?

**Ted Cruz** (3:53)
No, because if you look at what they're saying, I agree with what they're saying, the concerns the voters have are twofold on data centers. Number one, water. Number two, power. Water is a very real concern. Here's the good news.
Virtually all new data centers being built use what's called closed loop cooling, which means they use the same water and just circulate it over and over and over again. So their water consumption is very, very low.
I agree with Governor Abbott, who's putting rules in place that say, if you're going to build a data center, you have to minimize your water consumption so you don't consume too much of the water from the community. That makes sense.