Here is the transcript of the exclusive CNBC “Squawk Box” interview of Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, selected by President-elect Donald Trump respectively for Treasury and Commerce secretaries.

Joe Kernen: I don’t think the appointments are actually official yet, but can you gentlemen confirm this has happened?

Steven Mnuchin: We can, indeed. We’re thrilled to be here and we’re thrilled to work for the president-elect and honored to have these positions.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: Congratulations.

Kernen: Let’s start with this. It’s a two-prong question. Number one, because we talk about it all the time. What is the potential GDP growth for this U.S. economy, number one? What do you guys see it as that we can average?

Mnuchin: It’s seasonally adjusted this quarter but I believe we can have sustained growth at that level. And to get there our number one priority is tax reform. This will be the largest tax change since Reagan. We’ve talked about this during the campaign.Wilbur and I have worked very closely together on the campaign. We’re going to cut corporate taxes, which will bring huge amounts of jobs back to the United States.

Kernen: Where do you think you can get to on that?

Mnuchin: Fifteen percent and bring a lot of cashback into the U.S.

Kernen: Is it possible, Andrew, to get to 15 percent?

Sorkin: It may be. We had a couple of different guests on —

Kernen: You think 25 percent.

Sorkin: We had a guest on earlier in the morning, a Washington analyst who was suggesting they thought that the conversation would start at 15 percent and potentially could creep up.

Mnuchin: I would first just say that corporate taxes are one component of revenues to the government. OK? And the main component is obviously personal income and personal taxes. So we’ll think by cutting corporate taxes will create huge economic growth. And we’ll have huge personal income. So the revenues will be offset on the other side. We’ll have a big middle income tax cut. That’s another big part of this in simplifying taxes. Taxes are way too complicated and people spend way too much time worrying about ways to get them lower.

Kernen: Is dynamic scoring going to come back into people believing it? Because people — we’ve had people on that just flat out on the left say there is no proof that it ever works. I don’t see how they can come up with that. You get more taxes. Do you not?

Mnuchin: Of course it works and of course you have to have dynamic scoring. It would make no sense otherwise. And we’re going to work with Congress. I think they understand that.

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera: Dynamic scoring means that when you cut taxes, some people believe that that changes behavior which leads to more revenue. Left has argued that there’s no proof of that, supposedly.

Wilbur Ross: Well, this administration will prove it.

Kernen: The last administration kind of proved it in the converse I would say. The wrap is going to be the lion’s share of the tax cuts go to the wealthy. Not just the amount, but also the percentage cuts.

Mnuchin: It’s not the case at all. Any reductions we have in upper income taxes will be offset by less deductions. … There will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class, but any tax cuts we have for the upper class will be offset by less deductions that pay for it.

Kernen: Should I donate to charity then this year?

Mnuchin: There’ll be other deductions that are absolutely limited.

Caruso-Cabrera: How about mortgage debt?

Mnuchin: Again,we’ll allow — we’ll cap mortgage interest, but allow some deductibility.

Sorkin: Some of the analysis that suggested the middle class — that certain people, especially I think single family — single household — single parents, they may ultimately pay more. Have you seen those?

Mnuchin: We don’t believe in that analysis. When we work with Congress and go through this, it will be very clear. This is a middle income tax cut and the child care credit is a big aspect of this. This is something we’ve worked on in the campaign and one of the benefits of this is Wilbur and I have worked throughout the campaign with the president-elect and the policy team. So this will be an integrated approach across Commerce and Treasury. So another big area is going to be trade reform where again it cuts across both Commerce and Treasury. We believe in fair trade and we believe that’s going to be a big boon to the economy.

Sorkin: Can you tell us about the situation with Carrier which [we] will learn about later.

Ross: Here we have a trade victory before we’ve even come into office.

Sorkin: Do you think a large part of your roles are going to be negotiating with American companies to keep them in the United States and how are they going to be one-off deals? What does the Carrier deal actually look like? I think there’s still questions about what —

Caruso-Cabrera: What were they offered to stay?

Mnuchin: First thing I would say is it started with an attitude. Of this administration, this president, this vice president-elect is going to have open communications with business leaders. You can see this started because the president-elect called up United Technologies and said it’s important to keep jobs here. And Wilbur and I will continue that. And again as he said, this is a great first win without us even having to take the job.

Caruso-Cabrera: But the reason those jobs were going to go to Mexico is because they were cheaper. It would help the company stay more competitive. How do you address the underlying issues of why companies want to leave the United States?

Ross: Well, first of all, it’s more complicated than that. Mexico has 44 treaties with other countries that make it very advantageous to do international shipping from Mexico rather than from the United States. Believe it or not, Mexico has better treaties with the rest of the world than the United States does. We’re going to fix that.

Caruso-Cabrera: So that would help address — the initial problem is why do they want to go anyways?

Ross: On a typical car, they save twice as much on tariffs going into Europe out of Mexico as they do going into Mexico to save labor.

Kernen: We say where are you in the world a lot of times and you might be in the U.K. or you might be — you’re all over. If anyone has benefited from free trade, it might be Wilbur Ross and your company. You saw the rhetoric during the campaign. A lot of people said it’s going to pull off a surprise win because we’re going to be a protectionist company not interested in free trade. How do you square that up with your whole career?

Ross: First of all, protectionism is a pejorative term. It’s not really something that’s meaningful. There’s trade, sensible trade, and dumb trade. We’ve been doing a lot of dumb trade. That’s the part that’s going to get fixed.

Kernen: What if we put tariffs on Chinese goods? If we put tariffs on Chinese …

Ross: Everybody talks about tariffs as the first thing. Tariffs are the last thing. Tariffs are part of the negotiation. The real trick is going to be increase American exports. Get rid of some of the tariff and non-tariff barriers to American exports.

Kernen: Isn’t some of [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] — isn’t that what it did? Got rid of a lot of tariffs?

Ross: No. Not at all. For one thing, TPP had terrible rules of origin. Rules of origin means can stuff come in from outside the boundaries of the treaty countries? In automotive, the majority of a car could come from outside TPP. Namely could come from China and still get all the benefits of TPP and if it came in from Mexico, all …

Kernen: Is that a bad deal?

Mnuchin: Absolutely. Absolutely, and we believe in bilateral negotiations. Have very good deals with lots of countries.

Caruso-Cabrera: Interesting. So this huge regional approach to trade you think is a bad idea. Country to country to country.

Mnuchin: Absolutely.

Ross:The problem with regional trade agreements is you get picked apart by the first country. Then you negotiate [with] we the second country. You get picked apart. And you go with the third one. You get picked apart again. What has to be put into perspective, we are the big market. We are the world’s biggest importer. We need to treat the other countries as good suppliers. Not as determining the whole show.

Kernen: Well get — we’ve got so much to do, so little time. Can you guys stay until 9? I’m kidding, but we’ll keep you as long as we can. I just want to get to Dodd-Frank quickly. A lot of people were hoping [Republican Rep. Jeb] Hensarling. Both those gentlemen probably have much more strident views about Dodd-Frank about what we keep and don’t keep there. Does your nomination make it less likely that that entire bill is gone or will you go softer on reform of Dodd-Frank than those other guys?

Mnuchin: We look forward to working with Hensarling and the other people in Congress on this. One of the good things about Wilbur and I, we have actually been bankers. We were the only two people during the financial crisis that were issued licenses …

Kernen: You’re supposed to whisper that for the last eight years, aren’t you?

Caruso-Cabrera: Badge of honor, you think it is.

Mnuchin: We’ve been in the business of regional banking and we understand what it is to make loans. That’s the engine of growth to small and medium-sized businesses. The number one problem with Dodd-Frank is its way too complicated and cuts back lending. So we want to strip back parts of Dodd-Frank, that will be the number one priority on the regulatory side.

Caruso-Cabrera: What about the Volcker Rule?

Ross: Many of the smaller banks have had to get to the point where they now have more compliance people than they have lending offices. That’s crazy.

Sorkin: What about the Volcker Rule and the consumer protection bureau?

Mnuchin: We’re going to look at all these things, but the number one problem with the Volcker Rule is it’s too complicated and people don’t know how to interpret it. So we’re going to look at what to do with it, as we are with all of Dodd-Frank. The number one priority is going to be make sure that banks lend.

Sorkin: Steven, this is one of the first opportunities people are going get to know you publicly. You have not been as much of a public face as Wilbur has historically. I talked to Hank Paulson, who you work[ed with], … last night on the phone. He said he is very talented, has a deep understanding of finance and markets, he knows how to bring people together to get things done. Importantly, he has a working relationship with and the confidence of the president-elect. This was a big gamble for you. A lot of your colleagues and peers raised questions about doing it. Did you think of this as a true idea of getting into the administration early on?

Mnuchin: Let me first say and I’ve heard a lot of people say this was a gamble. This was never a gamble from my perspective. I’ve known the president-elect for over 15 years. I believed in his policies. And I thought he would win, but I did this because I believed in it. Despite the fact there were a lot of people in California and New York that wanted to stop being friends. They’ve all come back.

Caruso-Cabrera: So Joe has brought up that you’ve donated money to Barack Obama and to Hillary Clinton in the past. Why?

Mnuchin: Like the president-elect, I lived in New York and gave money to certain Democrats. The most substantial gift was to Mitt Romney last time, OK? And I have been a Republican.

Caruso-Cabrera: So transactional, not convictional.

Kernen: My question was going to be you gave money to the current president, obviously, and you’re going to try to reverse, I would hope, a lot of the economic — people argue about whether there has been a great economy or bad economy. I argue we are well below our potential for eight solid years. Tepid at best. You backed him over the Republican candidate. You were with Hillary before that.

Mnuchin: Let me just say I didn’t back them. I said I gave money to them. But I agree with you completely. The problem has been for the last eight years, there’s been no economic growth. What we saw from traveling with the president-elect all these rallies is for the average American worker they’ve gone nowhere. Our job is to make sure the average American worker has wage increases and have good jobs. That’s the priority of this administration.

Kernen: It’s nice at 4.9 percent, though, to start there because you may not need minimum wage work. This should happen. You guys could be coming in at a really opportune time.

Mnuchin: It should happen and we cut corporate taxes. That’s going to create a huge opportunity for more jobs.

Kernen: How will you do that and satisfy everyone involved? That says no jobs are creating, just goes to shareholders or dividends.

Ross: Just not true. And it’s also not true that all jobs are created equal. A guy who used to work in a steel mill now flipping hamburgers, he knows it’s not the same. So it’s the quality of jobs as well as the quantity, and one of the problems with the recovery is when the newly created jobs are not nearly as remunerative as the jobs that were lost. That’s a structural problem.

Sorkin: Democrats are already out in force. Let me ask you two of the questions I know you’re going to be asked about … [OneWest Bank].This is going to be a question that I know is going to get asked over and over again.

Mnuchin: Let me tell you one of the most proud aspects of my career was buying IndyMac during the financial crisis. We bought it from the government in a six-month auction. And we saved a lot of jobs and created a lot of opportunities for corporate loans. One aspect to that is we bought the worst mortgage portfolio … in the history of time. All the loans we had to foreclose on, we didn’t originate those. And it was the first bank deal to be approved over $50 billion. We went through a one-year comment period with the OCC and the Fed. The same community groups protested against the deal. The regulators looked at the deal and thought it made sense.

Sorkin: There’s one other that’s the sort of at the top of that list, if you will. New York Department of Financial Services found the top 10 banks identified for paying out insurance claims to Hurricane Sandy victims that OneWest withheld most of their insurance funds.

Mnuchin: Again, you’re talking about certain specific things where let me just show you the facts. We bought $150 billion servicing mortgage portfolio from the government that we took as part of the deal. Mostly all third party loans, for the entire period under our ownership and were proud of that.

Caruso-Cabrera: Both of you guys understand interest rates and the bond market. Very well. I mean, you were in charge of trading mortgage backed securities, etc., right?

Mnuchin: Everything.

Caruso-Cabrera: What do you think happened to interest rates since the election and where are they going to go?

Mnuchin: I think interest rates are going to stay relatively low for the next couple of years. We’re in a period of low interest rates. I think we’ll stay there. They’ve come up a little bit which I think makes sense. I think we’re going to be looking at the Treasury all different types of opportunities. We will look at potentially extending the maturity of the debt because eventually we are going to have higher interest rates.

Caruso-Cabrera: How long, 50 years?

Mnuchin: I think we’ll look at everything see what makes sense.

Caruso-Cabrera: What do you think, Wilbur?

Ross: I think the Fed’s going raise in December. That will have nothing to do with us.

Caruso-Cabrera: That’s not why the 10-year’s rising since the election?

Ross: Everything affects everything.

Kernen: No government experience. It’s like music — I’m not going to say it and I look at Jack Lew. All he had was bureaucratic experience. You know this stuff inside out. It might work. Let me ask you this. Every Treasury secretary in history has said [a] strong dollar is in the interest of the United States but then I see that sometimes I see that the Federal Reserve or even sometimes Treasury — everybody likes a cheaper currency for exports. What do we really want in this country? What will you press for? Strong dollar or capital comes in? Or every time we do that corporations squawk about currency headwinds.

Mnuchin: First of all, I think the United States is the greatest country in the world to invest in. and we see that. And we see that money is pouring into the United States for those reasons. So I think we’re really going to be focused on economic growth and creating jobs. And that’s really going to be the priority.

Sorkin: China currency. Trumps wanted to call a manipulator. Is that something you want to do?

Mnuchin: One of the things, Wilbur and I are going to work closely together. As you look at both of us in the U.S. Trade Representative [Office], this will be a coordinated aspect. There are aspects that are in Commerce and … in Treasury. So if we determine that we need to label them as a currency manipulator, that’s something the Treasury would do. And –

Kernen: Are you a fan of Janet Yellen, Steven?

Mnuchin: You know, look. I think she’s done a good job at the Fed.

Kernen: She should continue and serve out her term?

Mnuchin: I’m not going to comment if she should or shouldn’t.

Kernen: You a fan?

Ross: I think that she dealt with a very difficult situation and did a reasonably good job.

Kernen: Will she be re-nominated?

Ross: That’s a question for her and the president, not a question for us.

Mnuchin: But I will say we do have two [Fed] governor spots to fill and that will be high on the list.

Sorkin: Are you both going to get active Twitter accounts?

Mnuchin: The answer is I do now have an active Twitter account only because there was a fake Twitter account so I had to have a real one. I used to have a pseudonym for Twitter and I’m trying to get my check to verify me. Hopefully now they will give it to me.

Kernen: Congrats on the appointments and good luck.

Sorkin: Good luck.

Kernen: I don’t think it’s going to be –

Michelle: Did you ever think, Wilbur Ross that you were going to work for the government?

Ross: I didn’t think I would ever have a boss again.

Kernen: You’re going to get through this easily. Just with your breadth of knowledge on this. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Sorkin: Thank you. Look forward to seeing you many more times.

Kernen: Welcome any time.

Caruso-Cabrera: Of course they announced it here on CNBC.

Kernen: Here on “Squawk Box.”

Caruso-Cabrera: On “Squawk Box,” right.

Kernen: That’s hard for her to say. She’s on “Power Lunch.”