Speaker 1 (00:00):
… States.
Donald Trump (00:08):
Well, thank you very much. Please, sit down please. Thank you. We have a lot of great political leaders and the biggest political leaders around, I guess you could say, but by far much bigger are the business leaders. It's not even close. I say that to my friends, the politicians. You have the greatest business leaders in the world here. So it's an honor. And this week we're celebrating the most successful first 100 days of any administration in American history. We're thrilled to welcome to the White House, dozens of the world top leaders of all kinds, but in particular business leaders. And since the election, the companies represented in this room have collectively announced more than $2 trillion in new investments. And we have a total of close to eight trillion dollars all told. And there's never been anything like that in this country. We've never had anything close. I would say if you looked at the last administration, probably for four years, they did maybe less than one. And we've done almost eight. I would say we'll be above eight in a period of two months. So something happened.
(01:43)
I think two things happened. November 5th happened, and November 5th gave you tariffs, intelligently used tariffs in various other forms of incentive, but it's really amazing. There's never been, I don't think there's ever been anything like this anywhere in the world. Together we're going to bring back the most beautiful words I always say, made in the USA. The most beautiful words, we're going to have made in the USA like we haven't had before in a long time. In addition to the business leaders whose companies I will mention in just a moment, we have some great people, great senators. Marsha. Marsha, where are you? Where are you? Martha? Marsha, you very much. Marsha Blackburn. Bill Cassidy. Bill, thank you, Bill. Ashley Moody. Ashley, thank you. And John, you said John, thank you very much. And representatives, Byron Donalds, Buddy Carter, Rob Whitman, Mark Alford, Mike Rogers, Richard Hudson, and Abe Hamadei, thank you all very much.
(02:53)
We have Mike Kehoe, governors, Jim Pellin, Kevin Stitt, Mike Dunleavy, along with numerous other members of my Cabinet. And I want to thank you all for being here. How come my Cabinet has such good locations? You should have given them up to the business leaders. We want their money. They have their very good locations. I'm not surprised. 100 days ago this week we inherited the wreckage of four years of economic disaster under the previous administration. It was an economic disaster. It was a disaster at the border like nobody had ever seen before. And you probably see we've closed up the border, 99.999%, meaning three people got in, three, as opposed to hundreds of thousands of people coming in on a monthly basis, millions of people of actually, that periods where we had millions and millions of people pouring in on a monthly basis. We had three people.
(03:58)
They buried companies in crippling regulations, waged war on American energy, pushed massive tax hikes and gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country. In Biden's final year, the United States had the worst trade deficit ever recorded and we lost 106,000 manufacturing jobs. Other than that, he's done a fantastic job. But now, all that is changing and all that's changing very fast, because we finally have the president who wants to put our country first. You have a president who believes in America first. In the first quarter, GDP numbers just out today, core GDP. Now where we're removing distortions from imports, inventories and government spending was up plus three percent. But this is Biden's economy, because we took over on January 20th and I think you have to get us a little bit of time to get moving, but this is the Biden economy. But we still had a, and we've had a lot of things happen since November 5th that helped this economy, because it was indicating a strong private sector growth.
(05:09)
And it only started after November 5th. The private sector started really heating up after the election. Even though I wasn't there, people knew what we were going to be doing and the private sector growth was actually very good. Very importantly, gross domestic investment was up an incredible, 22%, which they had never seen before. Every new investment, every new factory and every new job created is a sign of strength in American economy and a declaration of confidence in America's future. We really do. We've never seen anything like this, even Samsung, which whose name isn't mentioned here, but I heard that they announced this morning that they're going to be building a very big plant, because they want to be able to beat the tariffs. That's the only way to beat them. The entire Trump economic agenda is about making it easier to do business in America, to create jobs in America, to hire American workers and to build your factories here in America, not in China or any other country.
(06:10)
And we're dealing with many, many countries right now, I will say. And I think I can say for Scott and for Howard and for some of the people that are dealing, there are too many to handle. I mean, to be honest with you, I'd have to hire about, I'd love to hire some of the people running these companies. Boy, would you do a good job. I could have Jensen negotiate. He'd blow my people away, wouldn't you? I think even Howard would say that. Howard would say, we'll take them. He'd blow them away. It would make deals. One deal would be the end. That would be it. But we've terminated the [inaudible 00:06:49] scam. It was a scam and halted tens of billions of dollars of money, wasteful, deficit spending. It was like throwing money right out the window. And in the coming weeks we'll pass the largest tax cuts in American history and I think even more so, we'll be doing things for business like you've never seen before.
(07:09)
You saw it in a little smaller version at the beginning of our last term. We had the most successful four years that any president has ever had. The stock market was up 88%. The other markets were up almost a 100%. And that's despite COVID, and all the crazy things happening. But we had a tremendous four years. We've given credit for that actually. But our big beautiful bill, as I call it, our big beautiful bill, we may name it that actually, will include 100% expensing retroactive to January 20th. So that's all the way back to just about the beginning of the year. So expensing, one year, you take a deduction one year, so you can build your factories right now essentially almost tax free if you think about it. Nobody's ever been given that. And we're going to make that expensing for a four-year period at a full 100%.
(08:07)
So last time we made it one year, and you had the deductions from a 100% to 80, to 60, to 40, to 20, to zip-o. And now what we're going to do is we're going to keep it at that level and we're going to have it for four years. So I believe that was one of the reasons that we had such unbelievable growth. Also, we allowed you to bring money back from outside of the country. It was impossible. You had to have 15 different law firms representing you, it was so complicated. And worse was that the tax rate was 65%. I lowered the rate substantially, but still a lot. We shouldn't take your money just to hold you hostage, right? So we lowered it to a reasonable amount and we took in trillions of dollars, came back. Apple brought in a tremendous amount of money. A lot of the companies here brought in a lot of money.
(08:56)
And the businesses represented today, clearly understand that if you build your factory in the United States, your tariff rate is zero, zero. And you have other advantages too, and not the least of which is what I just said, having to do with the bill. Now we have to get that bill approved. So call your local representative, please, and make sure that we get it approved. Because I don't want to talk too early, but we're doing well with the Republican Congress. We have the Senate is doing great and the house is doing great. John Thune has been spectacular. Mike Johnson has been, speaker, has been spectacular.
(09:33)
Marcia, you're in there working very hard and doing well. What do you think? Are we going to get it passed? We have to. Marcia, we don't get it passed, I'm blaming you. We have to. We have to get it passed. We will. I think we will, but I don't think we'll have any Democrat votes. If we don't get it passed, what would happen is your taxes go up 68%, think of that. And we may not get one vote, because they just vote against. It's Trump derangement syndrome. Or maybe it's just they hate Republicans or they hate what we're doing, because they've lost their confidence. They've totally lost their confidence. They don't know what the hell is going on. And we are going to get it done. It's probably going to be fully Republican. Fortunately, we have the house, we have the Senate, and we may or may not have a couple of grandstanders, I don't know.
(10:27)
But if we do, it would be good if you could work on anybody. I mean, if I were a Democrat, I'd be voting for it, a 100%. Because I think it's very dangerous politically not to vote for. Think of it, your taxes go up almost 68%. But it looks like we're in good shape, I think. And hopefully we'll get it approved. It'll be the biggest bill ever approved in the history of our country. And it'll be the biggest tax cut ever approved in the history of our country. And in addition to that, regulations, which I'm doing in and outside of the bill
Donald Trump (11:00):
… will be as big or bigger than we did last time. We have the record for regulation cuts in the four years. We cut four times higher than any other president in a four-year period, and we're talking about eight years and two-term presidents. We're four times higher than any other president in terms of regulation cuts. And I went to a friend of mine who happens to be in the room, one of the biggest business leaders. I won't mention him because I don't know, maybe he'll like it, maybe he won't. I said to him, "Have you had your choice between the big tax cut last time and the big regulation cuts?" Which were the biggest, again, the biggest we've ever done. I would've said taxes, but he would've said regulation. I said, "Which was more important to you?" Then he said, "If I could only have one?" "Yeah, if you could only have one." He said, "Most important would've been regulation." The regulation was more important than the tax cut.
(11:56)
And we cut your taxes from almost 40% down to 21%. Now we're bringing your taxes down from 21% to 15%, if you build your product, make your product in the USA. If you make it in the USA, those chips, those beautiful chips, we'll make those suckers in the USA and you're going to be all the way down to 15%. And I think there's never been anything like it, so now we're at the lowest scale for a large country, by far the lowest scale. Our pro jobs, pro-American economic policies are major reason that businesses around the world have announced $5 trillion of investment since November 5th, and now we think it's up to plus eight trillion. And they're really coming in. They're really coming in fast. Some of them don't bother calling us. Some of them don't even want meetings. They just start their plants and start their factories. I want to express my tremendous appreciation to the business leaders here. You are really an amazing group. This is a who's who.
(13:03)
I don't want to say, there's an expression, if something ever went off, the entire industry would be wiped out, but I won't say that. I want to think very positively, and that could never happen here, could it? But I want to congratulate you all on your incredible success and accomplishments. You've been amazing. You're the biggest and the best. I'd like to introduce some of you, president and CEO of Hyundai, Jose Munoz. Jose, thank you very much, you're fantastic. Jose is investing 21 billion, including 5.8 billion for a new steel plant in Louisiana, which is a beauty. I saw a picture of it, which is going to create at least 1500 jobs, just to plant alone. Thank you very much, Jose. Beautiful. Chairman and CEO of global shipping giant CMA CGM, Rodolphe Saadé. Thank you, Rodolphe. Thank you very much. Fantastic. Investing $20 billion in creating 10,000 new jobs at least. Thank you very much. That's fantastic. You'd be very happy. President and CEO of Toyota, North America, Ted Ogawa, investing 88 million. Where's Ted? That's fantastic. Thank you, Ted. That's fantastic.
(14:24)
Ted's investing 88 million for car production at its West Virginia factory, which is a beauty. I've seen it actually. Congratulations. Thank you very much for being here, Ted. Co-founder and CEO of Anduril, Brian Schimpf. Brian, thank you, Brian. He's investing one billion for a new manufacturing facility in Ohio. And displayed next to me is their 125-pound Roadrunner drone. Where is that little sucker? Where is it? Which is that? Whoa, that's a nasty-looking thing. That's that nasty… I look up there when I'm having dinner outside. I used to look up and see the moon, this is beautiful. Now you see the moon, but you see drones all over the place and they say, let's get the hell out of here. That's a good one, isn't it? Huh? I can see it. CEO of Worldwide Amazon stores, Doug Herrington. Thank you very much. Thank you, Doug, very much. Investing $4 billion this year alone, and I know they said they're going to be investing a lot over the next two years. We appreciate it very much. Thank you. And say hello to everybody.
(15:42)
CEO of Venture Global, Mike Sabel. Mike, thank you very much, Mike. Investing $18 billion in liquefied natural gas expansion in Louisiana. That's going to work out good. Thank you very much. President and CEO of Siemens USA, a big company, Barbara Humpton. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you very much. Investing $285 million. Executive global chairman of Pratt Industries, friend of mine, Anthony Pratt. He's investing $5 billion. Thank you. Thank you, Anthony. I read a report today, he's the richest man in Australia, but who the hell knows? Do you think you're the richest man in Australia? Close. I don't like to put you on the spot like that, Anthony, but that's pretty good. Thank you very much. That's great, $5 billion. Founder and CEO, Chobani Hamdi Ulukaya, where are you? Thank you very much. Investing 1.2 billion. Thank you very much. CEO of Bel Brands USA, Ivan Giraud. Ivan, thank you very much. Thank you very much, $350 million. President of Schneider Electric North America, Aamir Paul. Aamir, thank you very much. Investing 700 million for energy infrastructure and its largest investment in its 135-year history.
(17:18)
Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson. Oh, I know, I've heard of that company, huh? My hair looks so beautiful because of your product. Joaquin Duato, $ 55 billion manufacturing plant and research and development and technology. Thank you very much. 55 billion, that's a lot. But you got to catch up with Apple and some of the others. We got to get you to make a little… You're one of the few companies that could do that. Chair and CEO of Eli Lilly a great guy. Every time I talk to him about drug prices, he sweet talks me. He tells me about the middleman. The middleman, he keeps telling me about the middleman. By the time I leave the meetings, I was telling my people I say, "Gee, he's giving us a great bargain." But David, you have done some job. David Ricks, you have done some job. I'll see you later too. $27 billion, doubling its manufacturing investment in the US. And he's got a very hot topic right now going, don't you? This stuff is doing really well, isn't it? Really hot company. Thank you very much, David.
(18:27)
CEO of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, and that's $23 billion, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vas. CEO of Genentech, Ashley Magargee, 50 billion. Wow, that's a lot of money. Good. Thank you, Ashley. That's a big one. CEO of AbbVie, Rob Michael, $10 billion. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good company. President and CEO of ThermoFisher, Marc Casper, $2 billion. Thank you, Marc, very much. Chairman and CEO of Merck, great company, Rob Davis, $9 billion. Thank you very much, Rob. Chairman and CEO of Abbott, Robert Ford, $500 million. Thank you, Robert. Chairman and CEO of a company called IBM, Arvind, where are you? Where are you? Thank you very much. That's fantastic, 150 billion. That's all? That's great. Thank you very much. You've done a great job. You've done a great job with that company too. I'll tell you. Chairman and CEO of GE Aerospace, Larry Culp. Larry, thank you very much Larry. And Larry's investing one billion in manufacturing of across 16 states and with us as we have the model of their F110 engine, which I hear is like… I must tell you, I hear it's the hottest engine there is.
(20:07)
You've got a gold mine over there, Larry, which powers our nation's finest fighter jets and other jets. And your big engine is really something that I hear is beyond anything that has been produced yet, so good luck with it. And Larry, I think we're going to ask you to say a few words actually, so come on up. Thank you.
Larry Culp (20:26):
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. It's an honor to be here representing all of my colleagues at GE Aerospace. We are today 125 years old, but we are inventing the future of flight. Today we power three-quarters of the world's commercial airlines and nearly two-thirds of the US military combat jets and helicopters. What you see here with the F110, powers 70% of the newest Air Force F-15s and the F-16s. And I know you were in Michigan just yesterday. This is the engine that will be under wing on the F-15EX Eagle II that the Michigan Air National Guard will soon be flying. We're excited about what's happening at our company. We're investing a billion dollars this year, as the President said, across 16 states, not only in our manufacturing footprint, but with so many of the small and mid-sized businesses that constitute our supply chain. There's a lot happening. We're excited about it. Mr. President, thank you for what you're doing. Not only to revitalize US manufacturing, but helping ensure that the US aerospace industry, one of our biggest net exporters, continues to lead the world in innovation. Thank you.
Donald Trump (21:49):
Thank you.
Larry Culp (21:51):
Thank you.
Donald Trump (21:54):
Great job. And he has done a really great job. You took over a slightly troubled company and now you've
Donald Trump (22:00):
… made it hot as a pistol. So that's really an amazing job you've done in a short period of time. Also with us is Chairman and CEO of SoftBank, Masa. Where's Masa? Masa? Come on up here, Masa. Masa has pledged $200 billion plus another $500 billion with Oracle and OpenAI for a total of 700 billion. Thank you, Masa. Come on up, please.
Masayoshi Son (22:32):
Well, first time of Trump administration, we made an commitment, $50 billion. We delivered $70 billion over four years last. Time this time I tried to commit $100 billion and President Trump said, "Oh, Masa, go for more." So we did that $200 billion commitment, and then right after that, we SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX together, we announced $500 billion investment.
(23:13)
This is the largest investment for infrastructure in the United States investment. And I think this is more than the scale. The importance is this is the largest infrastructure for the AI, which is the future of mankind I believe. It's going to change every industry, every way of mankind's lifestyle of the future. I am committed. US is the center of innovation. US must continue the leadership of AI. Thank you very much.
Donald Trump (23:51):
Thank you. Thank you. A great honor. Thank you very much, Masa. Been a friend of mine for a long time. This guy's a mover. We got to say. You are really something. It's great. We appreciate it too. It's a great spirit. Great genius.
(24:11)
Tim Cook from Apple is pledging, not only pledging, is committed to $500 billion, they're going to build plants all over the country, seven or eight different states. They've already started. And so I want to thank Tim. That's such a big investment for somebody that had them pretty much in one location, as you know. Now they're coming into the United States, I believe, because of the spirit and the tariffs and the incentives. So that's Apple for $500 billion.
(24:46)
And one of the most brilliant men that you'll ever meet, a man that's done in a short period of time, something that is incredible. He's the founder, CEO, and president of NVIDIA, Jensen Wong. He's producing up to 500 billion over the next four years to manufacture the most powerful AI chips entirely in the USA for the first time ever. Jensen, would you come up and say a few words? This is a smart cookie.
(25:14)
Thank you.
Jensen Wong (25:15):
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. It's a great honor to be here. NVIDIA reinvented computing for the first time after 60 years. In fact, everyone at IBM knows quite well that the computer has largely been the same since the sixties. The IBM System 360 described really quite perfectly the computer that we use today. Central processing units, operating systems, the separation of hardware and software, IO subsystems, multitasking, all of the words that we used to describe computers today were really invented in 1964, the year after my birth.
(25:56)
Well, after all this time, we've reinvented computers again. This is what a processor looks like. It's on the right there. People say it's a GPU. That's one GPU unit, and it's 70 pounds, 60,000 parts, 10,000 watts. In order to manufacture, it requires probably a couple of hundred companies in the supply chain. It is so heavy that it requires robotics to do. It's so precise. And just to test a supercomputer requires a supercomputer, and we're going to build NVIDIA's technology, the next generation of that all here in the United States. Without the president's leadership, his policies, his support, and very importantly, his strong encouragement, and I mean his strong encouragement, frankly, manufacturing United States wouldn't have accelerated through this pace.
(26:58)
Manufacturing isn't about low-cost labor anymore. Manufacturing is about technology. And most of the factories that build these systems today are the most advanced factories in the future. And we're going to use artificial intelligence and robotics and omniverse digital twin technology to make it possible for us to create the factories of the future. And we ought to build it right here.
(27:24)
The real amazing thing is that this computer is the engine of a whole new industry. And this new industry is called artificial intelligence. And this new industry is a manufacturing industry in itself. That's a factory machine. Just as several hundred years ago, the DYNAMO was invented, water would come in and electricity would come out. Now electricity goes into this machine and incredible tokens come out. Artificial intelligence. In order for this industry to thrive, we need to build these of course, but we also need a progressive growth and industry-oriented energy policy, which this president has really put his weight behind. I really appreciate that. Without energy, we can't possibly have new growth industries. And we now have the backing of the administration, the backing of President Trump to support the creation of a whole new industry.
(28:22)
This industry is going to enable a whole bunch of other industries. What we now call the AI infrastructure is going to revolutionize every industry that we know. All of the many CEOs in the room today are great partners of ours, for that reason. We're working on artificial intelligence for many industries, from healthcare to drug discovery, to life sciences, financial services, education, so many different industries. And that's going to be possible because we have the fundamental infrastructure here in the United States.
(28:50)
And so I want to thank you, sir, for everything that you've done and the strong encouragement and the great policies that make it possible for us. Thank you, sir.
Donald Trump (28:58):
Thank very much. Thanks. Another brilliant man. We have brilliant people here and we like brilliant people actually. But we have a lot of brilliant people in this group and it's an honor to be with you. Past 100 days I've been fighting to reclaim our jobs and bring our country back to a level that it's never seen before, and again, renew the American dream, which is what we're doing. We have tremendous spirit. I don't know if you've heard, but it's become really quite a story. I see Pete's writer over here, Secretary of Defense. We have the largest number of new enlistees or people enlisting in the military forces that we've ever had. And if you remember six months ago, we couldn't get anybody to sign up. That's a big turn in a very short period of time. And November 5th had a lot to do with that. And our Secretary of Defense and a lot of the people that you see sitting here really had a lot to do with that. There's great spirit.
(30:09)
I can say that also with the police forces throughout the country, we were having a hard time filling them up. It's a dangerous job. But now we have waiting lists at almost every place. And that's an amazing accomplishment when you think. It's amazing.
(30:25)
And when I first came here, you remember just three months ago, I came in and they started screaming, the fake news was screaming. They were going crazy about eggs. I don't know about eggs. What's with eggs? Tell me? They said, "Their cost is up 50% and you won't have them for Easter." I said, "Well, I'll have to get onto it. But this isn't my problem. This is Biden's problem. I've only been here for four days." They're screaming at me about eggs like it was my fault. I just got here. Didn't know anything about it. We got it taken care of. And eggs dropped 87% in the last short period of time. And everybody had eggs for Easter. In fact, we had a big Easter egg hunt on the lawns. We had 48,000 people actually came. We had a lot of eggs. I don't know how many, but there were a lot.
(31:19)
We didn't use plastic. They said, "Could you use plastic eggs?" This is in early January, and I see our Secretary of Agriculture is here. Would you stand up? You did a great job. You got me out of a lot of trouble. Brooke Rollins, she got me out of a lot because they were trying to blame me for eggs and I didn't know anything about it yet. Explain it to me. But we had plenty of eggs, Brooke, right, for Easter? There was no dearth.
(31:46)
And we have another man in the audience who's maybe the most important man in the room because he's the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, meaning he's the one that approves all your plants. And when Jensen and some of the others came in about… numerous of the others, especially having to do with AI, they came in. I learned a lot. Number one, I learned we need double the electricity that we have right now for the whole country. And really more than that, two times would be even better. It was like unlimited thirst for electricity. And at first I said, "How's that possible?" But whatever it is, it's possible. That machine that you say you can barely lift, I guess it sucks up a lot of energy. But we need more than double what we have right now.
(32:38)
So you take all of the energy, even the energy in this beautiful, incredible… is just the greatest? I mean, I don't care where you come from with your 50-billion-dollar plant, the White House is the White House, right? You got to see in the Oval Office. If you want to take a trip down to the Oval Office interview, you come down with me, I'll show you a beautiful office. It'll blow your beautiful offices away. They'll stop it.
Donald Trump (33:00):
… They'll say. For a lot of other reasons. But it is, it's a beautiful place. And if you want to, I'm serious, you can do that. But I told Jensen, I told Tim, I told everybody that's building these very big, incredible plants, really plants of the future. They were talking about hooking into the grid. I said, the grid is old and it is subject to mishap. Things can happen, including storms and much worse than storms. And if you want, I'll let you build your own utility plant, your own electric plant, along with your building. You can build it inside of the plant or you can build it outside of the plant. And I went to Lee Zeldin right here and I said, Lee, we got to get fast approvals for these people. They're going to do the best job. They're going to have the best engineers, the best everything, would like to have them build their electric for them.
(33:53)
They don't have to go outside. You become a utility. You become a great producer of electric, and if you have any extra, you put it back into the grid if you want or you sell it back in, but you're going to be able to build, so this way we don't have to worry about do we have enough? Because if you look at California, they have brownouts, blackouts and everything else. They don't know what the hell they're doing. Governor doesn't have a clue. But the last thing you want to do is be hooking up to the California grid, so that we can go in and you'll say, gee, we have to close down the factory for a couple of days. We have a little brownout going on. You're going to be able to build your own plant, then produce as much electric as your beautiful heart's desire.
(34:36)
And that'll be something that nobody's done before. And we're going to ask Lee to get those approved very quickly and he'll get it approved before you can even imagine. He's great. He's great. He knows the difference. You can take years to get those approved. I would say, previous to us, it would be years and years, or you could take weeks to get them approved and it'll be just as good. But they don't play games and they're going to get it done and they'll get it done very quickly. That's going to be a big help because you're going to have unlimited energy, unlimited electricity, and I think it's going to… Really, we want to stay number one. We are number one right now by a lot. I will say this. If I didn't get elected, I would say get out of the AI business fast.
(35:22)
Get out of all business fast, probably. Maybe get out of the country fast, because this country was heading in the wrong direction. But now it's heading in the right direction. I think it's the most consequential 100 days in the history of our country in certain ways. We had an editorial from a group that normally wouldn't give good editorials to people like me. And they said he's the most consequential President because of what he's doing with all of these policies that you're reading about, long beyond the electricity and the plants. Having to do with many other things, like secure borders and all of the many, many things. I could go down and name them. We're going to be getting tremendous amounts of drug and pharmaceutical companies, going to be pouring into the country. They're going to have to. They're going to have to and we're going to give them a lot of time to do it.
(36:15)
But after that, there's going to be a tariff wall put up and they won't be happy about it. But they'll be happy if they start building right now. Right now, it's going to be billed and, after a certain period of time, it's going to get tougher, tougher, tougher. And then it's going to be real hard to do business in this country. For the pharmaceutical companies, chip companies, a lot of different companies, we're all set to really grow. Groceries are down. The grocery prices are down. Gasoline prices are down. We had some gasoline selling for $1 and 98 cents a gallon just recently, in three different states, over the last two days. It was at $4 and it was higher than that in some place. It was over $5. We have it way down. Energy prices are down all over the country. Mortgage rates are actually down slightly, even though I have a guy in the Fed that I'm not a huge fan of.
(37:14)
But that's all right. These are minor details. Don't tell him I said that, please. As the cameras rock and roll back there. No, I'm just… He should reduce interest rates. I think I understand interest a lot better than him because I've had to really use interest rates. But we should have interest rates go down. It would be positive, but it's not going to matter that much because, ultimately, what we're creating has much more to do with other things than it does just pure interest rates. But it would be nice for people wanting to buy homes and things.
(37:49)
The prescription drug prices just saw the largest monthly decline ever recorded, so David, I'm having a little bit of an impact, at least on you, as I just browbeat… I browbeat this guy. He's got the nicest… He looks like he's 25 years old. He has this massive company, Eli Lilly, and it has no impact on them whatsoever. But I just see this number just came out. It's the largest monthly decline ever recorded. Yeah, but it's probably about 2%. They did that to make me feel a little bit better. But I appreciate it.
(38:23)
We have achieved the lowest number of illegal border crossings in US history and we're at a level that nobody thought we could get to in two years, let alone a couple of months. And I think Kristi Noem is here someplace. Where is Kristi? She's here. Stand up, Kristi. And Tom Homan. And I see Linda. Stand up, Linda. You are doing so good. Education. We're bringing education back to the states where it belongs. And she's been incredible. She's very upset with Harvard. They're $53 billion in a fund and yet they want more grants. And it looks like we're not going to be giving them any more grants. Right, Linda? And a grant is at our discretion and they're really not behaving well, so it's too bad.
(39:15)
But our country is roaring like never before. Nobody's ever really seen anything like this. And again, the big thing is whether it's eight trillion or even more than that, by the end of the year, it could be a number that would be… I think it's already… There's never been anything like it, but this is in a period of couple of months. I think by the end of the year, the numbers will be just staggering. It's really going to be something very special. And I'm very honored to be with you. And I'd ask, if anybody has any questions, please, this is your time. This is your time. You'll be live on television. All the fake news back there.
(39:53)
That'll keep them down, right? That's the way to keep them down. Unless they're bad people, in which case… Unless they want to make some news. Would anybody have any questions? Anybody? Business leaders? You want to know anything about depreciation? No? I love it. We've done such a good job. We don't have to take… Howard, would you like to say a couple of words, please?
Howard (40:23):
The President talks about $8 trillion coming into America and there's only one reason it's coming in. It's because he's finally set an industrial policy for the United States of America. We are the greatest economy in the world. We finally have the President who understands that we need to re-industrialize. We need to be made in America, made in the USA. And you feel it. You feel it with these leaders, you feel it across all your peers. Everyone feels it. It's coming back to America and we are going to be rocking, so thank you, sir.
Donald Trump (40:59):
Great job. Great job. Thank you very much everybody. And for the business leaders, if any of you would like to come down to the Oval and say hello, if you've never seen it. If you have seen it, just go home and enjoy your lives. Count your money. But if you'd like to come down, I'm heading down there now and, again, thank you very much everybody. Pam, you're doing a fantastic job. You're doing a fantastic job. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
[inaudible 00:42:41].
