Source: YouTube, CNBC; Compiled by Tong Deng, Jinse Finance
President Donald Trump delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, his first international appearance since returning to the White House earlier this week.
In his 45-minute speech, Trump criticized European regulators for being too harsh on American tech companies, oil producers for keeping prices too high, and large banks for refusing to serve conservatives.
He also called on countries around the world to invest in the United States, promising low tax rates and a more relaxed regulatory structure.
Domestically, Trump expressed pressure on the Federal Reserve on interest rates.
"I will be asking for a immediate reduction in rates," Trump said. "Also, the world should lower rates. Rates should follow us down."
It is widely seen as the opening salvo of Trump's upcoming lobbying campaign against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Jinse Finance has compiled the full text of Trump's speech as follows:
Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum:
Mr. President, welcome back to the Davos family. It's a great honor and pleasure to welcome you back. You've been in office for only four days, and we are very grateful that you are here today. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors. The global challenges we face today are enormous, and American leadership and your personal leadership in this regard are crucial. We are here to hear your vision and policies for reviving the economy and addressing global challenges. As you would expect, Mr. President, the policies you will be introducing now that you are back in office have been the focus of our discussions this week. That's why 3,000 political and business leaders from over 130 countries have gathered in Davos, and we look forward to hearing from you first.
Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum
Trump:
Thank you very much, Claus, beautiful Davos!
US President Trump
Hello everyone, this has been a truly historic week for America, just 3 days ago I was sworn in, and we have launched the golden age of America. In the recent presidential election, I won by millions of votes, and swept all seven states, this was a massive mandate from the American people, something we haven't seen in decades. Even some political pundits, even some of my so-called enemies, have said this was the most important election victory in 129 years.
What the world has witnessed in the past 72 hours is nothing short of a common sense revolution. Our country will soon be stronger, richer, and more united than ever before, and the entire globe will be more peaceful and prosperous, as a result of this incredible momentum.
My administration is taking action at a pace that has never been seen before, to solve the disasters we inherited from a group of totally incompetent people. First, we must confront the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the previous administration over the past four years. Our government has wasted $80 trillion in deficit spending, and implemented destructive energy restrictions, onerous regulations, and hidden taxes that have resulted in the worst modern hyperinflation crisis in our history. Interest rates for our citizens, and the entire world, are at shockingly high levels, food prices and virtually everything else people need have skyrocketed, and President Biden has completely lost control of what is happening in our high-inflation economy and at our borders.
Due to these destructive policies, this year's total government spending is $1.5 trillion higher than I projected when I left office in 2020, and the cost of servicing our debt is over 230% higher than the 2020 projections, with inflation still running 50% above historical targets, which may be the highest in our country's history. That's why from my very first day in office, I have taken swift action to reverse every single radical left-wing policy that caused this disaster, especially on immigration crime and inflation. On day one, I signed an executive order directing every single member of my cabinet to use every power at their disposal to defeat inflation and lower the cost of everyday life. I implemented a federal hiring freeze, a federal regulatory freeze, and a freeze on foreign aid. I created a new government efficiency department, and terminated ridiculous and unbelievable waste.
The Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Hoax, I withdrew from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord, and ended the crazy and expensive electric vehicle mandates, we will let people buy the cars they want to buy. I declared a national energy emergency, which is so important, to unleash the liquid gold beneath our feet and pave the way for rapid approval of new energy infrastructure. America has more oil and natural gas than anywhere on Earth, and we will use it, not only to dramatically lower the cost of virtually every product and service, but to make America the manufacturing superpower and the AI and cryptocurrency capital of the world.
My administration has also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding my record-setting efforts in my previous term. The Biden administration added $50,000 in new regulatory costs to the average American household over the past four years. I have pledged to repeal 10 old regulations for every new one we add, which will quickly put thousands of dollars back in the pockets of American families and further unleash our economy.
We will pass the largest tax cut in American history, including massive tax cuts for workers and their families, as well as huge reductions for domestic producers and manufacturers. We are working with the Democrats to extend the original tax cut policies, and as you may have read in any newspaper, the message I am sending to every business in the world is simple: come produce your products in America, we will give you the lowest tax rates of any country in the world. We are slashing tax rates even lower than the original tax cut plan, but if you don't produce your products in America, that's your privilege, then it's very simple, you will have to pay different levels of tariffs, but the tariffs will guide trillions of dollars, even tens of trillions of dollars, into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down our debt.
Under the Trump administration, there is no better place on Earth to create jobs, build factories, or grow your company than the United States of America. The American economy is already seeing this, American economic confidence is soaring. Small business optimism just announced a 41 percentage point surge in one month, the highest ever, nothing like this has ever happened before. SoftBank has announced $100 to $200 billion in investment into the American economy, because of the election results, just two days ago, Oracle, SoftBank, and OpenAI announced $500 billion in investment into AI infrastructure, and other companies have announced tens of billions, hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars in investment into America,
Here is the English translation of the text, with the specified terms translated as instructed:Today's newspaper also reported that Saudi Arabia will invest at least $600 billion in the United States, but I will ask the Crown Prince to round the figure up to around $1 trillion. He is a great person, and I think they will do that because we have been very good to them. I will also ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower the cost of oil, you must bring the prices down. If oil prices go down, the Russia-Ukraine war will end immediately. Oil prices are already high enough, the war will continue. You must lower oil prices, you must end the war. They are actually quite responsible for what is happening to a certain extent.
Everything you see is because we have just achieved a historic victory in the presidential election, a victory that is widely known around the world, and I think many countries have experienced a lot of things. They say that since the election, the whole world has been shining, even those countries that we are not particularly friendly with are very happy, because they understand what the future will be like, and under our leadership, the future will be so much better. America is back, open for business.
This week, I also took swift action to stop illegal immigration at the southern border. I have decided to declare a national emergency at our border, and immediately stop all illegal crossings. We will begin rapidly deporting all illegal border crossers back to where they came from. You may have already seen, this action has begun, very powerfully, with active U.S. military and National Guard deployed to the border to help repel the invaders, this is a real invasion, and we will not allow our territory to be violated after four long years. America is a strong, sovereign and beautiful country, and it is once again becoming a strong, sovereign country.
Additionally, I am pleased to announce that America is also a free country. On day one, I signed an executive order to end all government censorship, our government will no longer label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who want to prevent the free exchange of ideas and honest progress, we have saved America's free speech, and we powerfully saved it this week with another historic executive order.
I have also officially declared that the official policy of America is that there are only two genders, male and female, and we will not have biological males participating in women's sports, the once-popular transgender movement will also become very rare.
Finally, as we restore common sense to America, we will quickly take action to restore power, peace and stability abroad, I will also demand that all NATO countries increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP, which should have been achieved years ago when it was only 2%. Most countries did not pay these military fees before I took office, I insisted that they pay, and they did pay, because the U.S. was actually paying the difference at the time. This was unfair to the U.S., but many things have been unfair to the U.S. for many years. Even before I took office, my team was negotiating a ceasefire agreement in the Middle East, and without us, this agreement would not have been realized. Earlier this week, hostages started returning to their families, they are coming back, it is a beautiful place, and they will keep coming back more and more.
Our efforts to ensure a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully underway, and completing this work is absolutely critical. This is an absolute killing field, with millions of soldiers killed, something no one has seen since World War II, their bodies strewn across the flat fields, these are flat farmlands, with millions of Russians and millions of Ukrainians, something no one has seen since World War II, it is time to end it.
In America, we have major events next year, as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, and I am honored to be the President, this is a big event they have been talking about for 10 years. We also have the World Cup, and then we are hosting the Olympics, which will also be a key role in my first term, who knows I may skip a term and get the Olympics. I will be President during the World Cup, Olympics and 250th anniversary, so this will be three major events, and we have accomplished more in less than four days than other administrations have in four years.
Here is the English translation:If I do this, I will withdraw very quickly because you cannot wait five or six years to get approval. So many people from a very big business perspective are claiming that this is an American problem, the EU is very unfair to us, very bad, they have a huge tax system that we know of, and they levy a value-added tax, which is a very substantial tax. They do not accept our agricultural products, they do not accept our cars, but they send millions of cars to us, they impose tariffs on what we want to do. They want to sell their products in the United States, so we have a trade deficit of trillions of dollars with the EU, no one is satisfied with this, and we will do something about it.
I believe the EU must accelerate their approval process, some of my friends in some EU countries, they are all great people, they want to be able to compete better. If you can't get through the approval process quickly, you can't compete. They levy a value-added tax and all other taxes on the US, it's very, very unfair, we have some very big complaints about the EU.
Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies
Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies: I am honored to represent the energy industry in this panel discussion tonight, TotalEnergies is indeed the world's fourth largest natural gas power company, I won't ask you about oil prices. We are US LNG exporters, we are a strong contributor to the Mamu energy project in Texas, we have invested $20 billion, although far below $220 billion, but still $20 billion. Through these investments, we have contributed to Europe's supply security, as we export these energies to Europe, some experts are concerned that if the US develops too many LNG projects, it may have an inflationary impact on US domestic natural gas prices, they suggest taking a position on this project. I would like to ask you the following questions, what is your view on this stance on US energy investment, and what would happen if you find that domestic natural gas prices are rising due to exports? The last question is very important for Europe, do you agree to ensure the security of US energy supply to Europe?
Trump: For your last question, yes, I will ensure security, we will reach an agreement. LNG is very interesting, because when I took office in my first term, the first thing I considered was two, Louisiana has two very large plants, which was very beneficial to me. I actually appreciate it very much, they said there were two plants that had been under environmental consideration for over 10 years, and their costs are as you said, you know how expensive these plants are, but their costs are around $12 billion, I think it's $14 billion or $15 billion, but they couldn't get permits, they had been reviewed for many years, probably 10 years or more. I said this is ridiculous. The total investment amount you mentioned is $25-30 billion, it seems to be coming to an end, they can't get permits, I got it done in less than a week.
What I hope to see is that we will quickly approve these reviews in the US, just like the AI program, many people want to build them, it will be a big deal, we will build power plants, I will get approval for them under an emergency declaration. I can get approval myself without having to wait for years, the biggest problem is, we need to double the current energy in the US, can you imagine AI being as great as we want it to be, because its competitiveness is very strong, it will compete with China and other countries.
In an emergency, coal as a backup power is very strong, having that facility is a good backup, it won't cost too much, we have more coal than anyone, we also have more oil and gas than anyone, so we will have these power plants have their own power generation facilities, directly connected to their plants, they don't have to worry about utilities, they don't have to worry about anything, we will approve very quickly.
(Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America)
Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America: Good afternoon, Mr. President, congratulations, it's obviously been a busy week for you and your family, if you remember 5 years ago when you came here, we had a dialogue with 50 CEOs from around the world, you discussed your policies and procedures with them. As you mentioned earlier, a series of orders have been issued one after another on issues such as immigration, trade and many others, so as a representative of America, we have received a lot of questions. The President's focus is on growth, prosperity, market growth, stock market growth, good bond markets and lowering prices, so how do you see the impact of these orders? How fast are they being issued? How will you balance them? While maintaining sustained GDP growth, lowering the inflation rate, while maintaining good stock prices, reducing corporate taxes to 21%?
Trump: In fact, if you look at states and cities, in many cases, corporate taxes are well above 40%, I will reduce it to 21%, now we will reduce it from 21% to 15%. If you produce products in the US, then you will have the lowest tax rate, almost the lowest rate, and the lowest among the major countries. You know, a wealthy, powerful country, hasn't had competition so far, so we'll bring it down to 15%.
We are actually cutting taxes for businesses and small businesses, we will bring it down to 15%. This is really a great thing. By the way, speaking of you, you've done a great job, but I hope you start opening up your banks to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that banks don't allow them to do business within the banks, including a place called Bank of America.
(Ana Botín, Executive Chairman of Santander Bank)
Ana Botín, Executive Chairman of Santander Bank: Mr. President, congratulations on our historic victory, I believe you don't know me as well as my colleagues, so let me introduce myself a bit. Santander Bank is one of the largest banks in the world by number of customers, with 170 million, which is more than my friends Brian or Jamie have. They are working to fix the impending regulation, which is tricky, we are a major investor in the US, we have millions of customers, 12,000 employees, we are one of the largest auto lenders, we recently launched a fully digital bank called Open Bank, we firmly believe that banks play a key role in the economy, we can accelerate growth and help more customers, that's what we're doing in the US. So as Brian pointed out, we very much welcome your focus on deregulation and reducing bureaucracy. So my question is, what are your priorities in this regard? How quickly will this happen?
Trump: Thank you very much! I'm very familiar with your bank, you've done a great job. We will take action quickly, we are moving very quickly, in the last three days we have done some things that no one thought possible for years, everything is taking effect. This will have a huge impact on the economy, a huge positive impact, money has been wasted on crazy things, I mean the Green New Deal is a complete disgrace. I have to add, they haven't even taken an energy or environmental course, it's just a game.
Here is the English translation:You know, in my four years in office, our air was the cleanest, our water was the cleanest, but our economy was the most productive in history. In fact, you can look all over the world, we beat every country. One thing we have to do is, we have to demand respect from other countries. For example, Canada, we have a massive trade deficit with Canada, we're not going to do that anymore. For years, Canada's been very tough to deal with, we have a $200 billion, $250 billion trade deficit, it's not fair. We don't need them to make our cars, we don't need their timber, we don't need their oil and gas.
We're dealing with Mexico, and I think it's good, we just want to be treated fairly like other countries. The politicians have allowed other countries to take advantage of us, we can't let that happen anymore, you know we have debt, it's a very small debt. We just want to get rid of the debt, we'll be able to do it fairly quickly, a lot of good things are going to happen, honestly, the world is going to be a better place, the people that we deal with are going to be a lot better off.
I really would like to meet with President Putin as soon as possible and end this war, not from an economic standpoint or any other standpoint, but from the standpoint of millions of lives being wasted. Young people being gunned down on the battlefield, you know the bullets are going straight through very flat land, as I said, the bullets have no place to hide, the only thing that can stop the bullets is the human body, you have to see, this is a massive massacre, we really have to stop this war. Not to mention the buildings in the cities being destroyed one by one with people dying, so we really should stop this.
The Middle East is the same way, I think we've made tremendous progress in the Middle East, I think it's going to be very good.
Borge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum
Borge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum: Thank you, Mr. President, we know the most important relationship in the world is the one between the United States and China, we account for 28% of the global economy, China is close to 20%, almost half of global GDP. How do you see the relationship between the US and China over the next four years under your leadership?
I think we're going to have a very good relationship, what we want is fairness, we just want a level playing field, we don't want to take advantage. Biden's $1.1 trillion deficit is ridiculous, it's just an unfair relationship, we have to make it fair.
In fact, many Asian countries, our deficits are very large, we can't continue to do that. We've had a very good relationship with China, and we look forward to maintaining a good relationship with China, and we hope China can help us stop the war between Russia and Ukraine. They have a lot of influence on the situation, we will work with them. We hope to achieve denuclearization with President Putin before the election results are announced.
Borge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum: Mr. President, will Ukraine and Russia reach a peace agreement?
Trump: If I were the President of Ukraine, this war should never have started. There was no war during my tenure, I never even talked about it. But when I left office, bad things happened. The end result is these cities that are now bombed out, they look like demolition sites, many people have died, and I think you'll find the death toll in Ukraine is far higher than reported. I've seen it, when you see a city turned into a demolition site, buildings destroyed by missiles, many people killed, I'm surprised how that has anything to do with me. I think you'll find the death toll in the Ukraine war is much higher than anyone imagines, but if you look now, many of the killed are soldiers, they have guns, rifles and drones, new forms of drone warfare... it's a very sad thing.
