Secretary Wright joins Fox Business's Stuart Varney - April 1st, 2025

Tomorrow is what President Trump calls Liberation Day. Joining me now is Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the program. Good to see you again. If energy prices rise because of these tariffs, do you have a plan to do something about it, to mitigate it? Oh, Stu, I don't think we're gonna see energy prices rise. They've already come down in response to President Trump's actions, just his messaging on marketplaces. What you're gonna see is tariffs on U.S. exports come down across the world. President Trump's message has been free and fair trade, reciprocal trade. I'm talking to foreign leaders all the time, and they want two key things. They wanna buy more American products, I'm talking to them mostly about energy, and they wanna invest more dollars in the United States. You gotta remember, this president was elected to lower energy prices. He's been at work on that every single day, and of course, I'm working together with him on it. I'm actually super optimistic about where we're going. We're gonna have lower energy prices, more investment in this country, more jobs for Americans, and Trump's central premise was that low-cost energy was good for American citizens, it was good for American security, it was good for America standing abroad, and he is full steam ahead on that agenda. Will that bring energy prices down? The president promised to do that in the campaign running up to the election. He said he would get the price of oil cut in half. You still see that happening? Well, we've seen oil prices go down already, we've seen heating prices go down already, lots, we've seen gasoline prices go down, and yes, we will see more of the same. A lot of it, Stu, is gonna be about building infrastructure as well. One of the things the president has pointed out, not only do we want lower American energy prices, but he's called out states that have expensive energy. Hello, California, New York, New England, and increasingly, my home state of Colorado. If your state has expensive energy, it's because of choices made by politicians in those states to virtue signal somehow they're in some global mission, they're gonna solve climate change by making your utility bills more expensive and your businesses wanna relocate out of the states. That's just nonsense. And President Trump has called that out and has been pushing everyday common sense, common sense. Common sense will deliver more investment in our country and lower energy prices. You're pushing a nuclear power renaissance. How far away are we from, I would call it, the widespread use of nuclear power? Is it years away, many years? It is years away. It's been decades since we've built any meaningful nuclear capacity in this country. That's deeply unfortunate. But President Trump as well is committed to getting this nuclear renaissance that's been talked about for years, but actually getting it going. We have a project right now, the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in southwestern Michigan was shut down two and a half years ago, just needlessly retired. That plant will be back online, hopefully by the end of this year, and if not the end of this year, very early next year. So we're gonna see some plant restarts. We're gonna see increased investment. We will see a small modular reactor, hopefully running and definitely several under construction during President Trump's term in office. So nuclear is gonna take hold, but it won't move at the speed of, for example, new natural gas plants. Those are growing like flowers right now. But nuclear is gonna happen. It's gonna come in the next few years, but it's not gonna come tomorrow. I wish it was. Louisiana jurisdiction is suing Chevron for $3 billion in damages because of the allegation is pollution. Experts say that could threaten the future of energy exploration. Can he do anything about this suit? I don't know anything, Stu, about the specifics of that suit, but I'll tell you this president and the whole administration cares about clean air, clean water, beautiful outdoor wilderness. It's not, it's often made as this false trade-off between the environment or energy or affordable energy. That's just complete nonsense. In my whole life, the air in the United States has continued to get cleaner. The waters are much cleaner. I get to see big, beautiful animals in my state of Colorado that I never saw as a kid. So there's, the environmental progress will continue, but what we need to stop and what the president is focused on is this sort of endless litigation that just delays projects, makes it impossible to clear a forest for wildfire prevention or build a pipeline or build a transmission line. So most of the litigation based around environmental stuff, most of it is nonsense. The stuff that's real about clean air and clean water, you'll see no backsliding there. One last one. Your department reinstated the program giving staff the opportunity to resign voluntarily for a payout. Any takers yet? Well, too early to read on that, but I suspect we will, Stuart. The Department of Energy under the Biden administration grew its headcount by 20% and all they did was increase their obstructions of energy production. So it isn't the number of people in the door that decides how productive and how positive the actions of your department are. We're looking at the Department of Energy and we're doing this across the government like a business leader looks at a business. We wanna deliver better output, better products at more efficient costs. Americans are tired of just prices endlessly going, the size of government endlessly growing and the quality of services they get from the government declining. We're gonna see better services, lower costs. That's how you succeed in business. That's how America's gonna succeed. I don't think we've seen an energy secretary quite like you for a very long time. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being with us today. Don't be a stranger, come back soon, please. Thank you, sir.