Already, Americans economic. You can see this, I think, maybe even in your in your wonderful, wonderful room that you’re all gathered together. So many of my friends, but Americans, the economic confidence is soaring like we haven’t seen in many, many decades, maybe not at all.
Upon my election, it was just announced a small business optimism skyrocketed by 41 points in a single month. That’s the highest ever. There’s never been anything like that. SoftBank has announced between a 100 and 200 billion dollar investment in the US economy because of the election result.
And just two days ago, Oracle, SoftBank and OpenAI announced a 500 billion dollar investment in infrastructure. Other companies likewise have announced billions and billions and billions, adding up to trillions of investment in America, in the United States. And it’s also reported today in the papers that Saudi Arabia will be investing at least 600 billion dollars in America. But I’ll be asking the crown prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around one trillion.
I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them. And I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil. You’ve got to bring it down, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election. That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it.
I was a little surprised by that. If the price came down, the Russia Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You’ve got to bring down the oil price.
You’re going to end that war. They should have done it long ago. They’re very responsible, actually, to a certain extent for what’s taking place. Millions of lives are being lost. With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over. The progress that you’re seeing is happening because of our historic victory in a recent presidential election.
One that has become quite well known throughout the world. I think a lot of things are happening to a lot of countries. They say that there’s light shining all over the world since the election. And even countries that we aren’t particularly friendly with are happy because they understand what there is a future and how great the future will be.
Under our leadership, America is back and open for business. And this week, I’m also taking swift action to stop the invasion at our southern border. They allowed people to come in at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. It was ridiculous.
I decided and declared to do. And very, very importantly, a national emergency on our border immediately halted all entry of illegal border crossers, of which there were many, and began promptly returning the illegal trespassers back to the place from which they came. That action, as you’ve probably seen, has already started very strongly. I’ve deployed active duty U.S. military and National Guard troops to the border to assist in repelling the invasion. It was really an invasion. We will not allow our territory to be violated.
After four long years, the United States is strong and sovereign and a beautiful nation once again. It’s a strong, sovereign nation. In addition, I’m pleased to report that America is also a free nation once again. On day one, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship.
No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas and, frankly, progress. We have saved free speech in America and we’ve saved it strongly with another historic executive order this week. I also ended the weaponization of law enforcement against the American people and, frankly, against politicians and restored the fair, equal and impartial rule of law. My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense.
And these are policies that were absolute nonsense throughout the government and the private sector. With the recent yet somewhat unexpected great Supreme Court decision just made, America will once again become a merit based country. You have to hear that word merit based country. And I’ve made it official and official policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female.
And we will have no men participating in women’s sports and transgender operations, which became the rage, will occur very rarely. Finally, as we restore common sense in America, we’re moving quickly to bring back strength and peace and stability abroad. I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago. It was only at 2 percent.
And most nations didn’t pay until I came along. I insisted that they pay and they did because the United States was really paying the difference at that time. And it was unfair to the United States. But many, many things have been unfair for many years to the United States.
Before even taking office, my team negotiated a ceasefire agreement in the Middle East, which wouldn’t have happened without us. As I think most of the people in the room know, earlier this week, the hostages began to return to their families. They are returning and it’s a beautiful sight. And they’ll be coming in more and more.
They started coming back on Sunday. Our efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully underway. It’s so important to get that done. That is an absolute killing field. Millions of soldiers are being killed. Nobody’s seen anything like it since World War Two. They’re laying dead all over the flat fields. It’s a flat field farmland.
And there’s millions of Russians and millions of Ukrainians. Nobody’s seen anything like it since World War Two. It’s time to end it. And here in America, we have big events coming up.
Next year, we have the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. I’m so honored to be president during that. That’s been a big event. They’ve been talking about it for 10 years. We also have the World Cup. And I understand Gianni — Gianni is in the room, Infantino. He was very instrumental in helping us get it. He’s there with you someplace, I think. And I want to thank him for that.
And then we have the Olympics coming up, which I was instrumental in getting also in my first term. And who would have known that by skipping a term, I would get the Olympics? I was upset. I said, you know, I got the Olympics to come and I won’t be president. But it turned out through a stroke of luck or whatever you might call it, that I’m going to be president during the World Cup and the Olympics and the 250th anniversary. So that’s going to be three big events. And we’ve accomplished more in less than four days.
We have really been working four days than other administrations have accomplished in four years. And we’re just getting started. It’s really an amazing thing to see. And the spirit and the light over our country has been incredible. Under the last administration, our nation has suffered greatly, but we’re going to bring it back and make it greater, bigger, stronger, better than ever before. I want to thank everybody for being with you. I would have been there myself, except the inauguration was two days ago. I thought it might be a little bit quick to make it the first stop.
But we’ll get there one day. We hope to get there. But I do appreciate. I heard the audience is fantastic and many of my friends are in the audience. And I will be taking questions now from some very distinguished people. Thank you all very much. Thank you.
Q&A SESSION
KLAUS SCHWAB: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for that very powerful speech. And I think you could hear the applause all the way from Davos to the White House. But next year it will be even better because then you can get the applause here in Davos. So we wish you welcome to our village next year. We hope to see you.
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much.
KLAUS SCHWAB: So we also know, Mr. President, that you opened up for interaction here. We have a great panel with some of the most distinguished business people in the world. Let me start with someone that you know really well that I think is almost a neighbor of you in Florida, Mr. Steve Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Blackstone Group. So, Steve, the floor is yours.
Steve Schwarzman Asks About Regulations
STEVE SCHWARZMAN: Mr. President, I’m sure the crown prince of Saudi Arabia will be really glad you gave this speech today.
DONALD TRUMP: I hope so.
STEVE SCHWARZMAN: You’ve had the busiest four days that anybody can imagine. And congratulations for that. And my question is about some of the things I’ve observed here at Davos. It’s a terrific forum. I’ve met lots of people, as usual. I think I’ve been here 30 years. And a lot of the European business people have expressed enormous frustration with the regulatory regime in the EU. And they attribute slower growth rates here because of the numerous factors, but especially because of regulations. And you’ve taken a completely different approach in this area.
And if you could explain the theory of what you’re doing, how you’re going to do it, and what you expect the outcome to be, I’d appreciate it.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, thank you very much. And congratulations, Steve. You’re a friend of mine. But on a great career, you have had an amazing career, and it continues. I just want to congratulate you. You’re very inspirational to a lot of people.
I want to talk about the EU, because you mentioned specifically that I’ve also had a lot of friends and leaders of countries. I got to know them all my first term and a little bit during this period of four years, and know them well, like them a lot. But they’re very frustrated because of the time everything seems to take to get approved, environmental impact statements for things that you shouldn’t even have to do that, and many, many other ways that it takes. And I’m going to give you a quick little example.
In the private life, my beautiful private life, before I had all these things happening, the world is a little different. I had a nice, simple life. You knew that. But when I had that simple life, I did projects, and I had a big project in Ireland, and it had to get approval on something that would have made it even better. And I got the approval from Ireland in a period of a week, and it was a very, very, very efficient, good approval.
And they informed me, though, the problem is you’re going to have to get it from the EU, and we think that’ll take five to six years. And I said, you have to be kidding. And this was before politics. And I said, wait a minute, it’s not that important. I don’t want to go five or six years, but it would have been a big investment. It would have been nice, and it would have been good for the project. And I sent the people to the EU to see if they could speed it up. And basically, it was a five or six-year wait just to get a simple approval that Ireland gave me in a period of literally not much more than a week.
And I realized right then that was the first time I really was involved with the EU. But I realized right then that’s a problem, and I didn’t even bother applying to do it. And or if I did, I pulled it very quickly. I have to be very accurate because I don’t want to be criticized.
He did apply, actually. Now I want to be very accurate. So I don’t think I did. But if I did, I pulled it very quickly. It was just something you couldn’t wait five years or six years to get an approval. So a lot of in a very big business sense, a lot of people are claiming that’s the problem. From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly. They have a large tax that we know about and a VAT tax.
And it’s a very substantial one. They don’t take our — essentially don’t take our farm products and they don’t take our cars. Yet they send cars to us by the millions. They put tariffs on things that we want to do. Like, for instance, I think they actually in terms of these are non-economic or non-monetary tariffs. And those are very bad and they make it very difficult to bring products into Europe. And yet they expect to be selling and they do sell their products in the United States.
So we have, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits with the EU and nobody’s happy with it. And we’re going to do something about it. But nobody’s happy with it. So I think the EU has to speed up their process. Friends of mine that are in some of the nations within the EU, great people, they want to be able to compete better. And you can’t compete when you can’t get go through the approval process fast. There’s no reason why it can’t go faster.
So, you know, I’m trying to be constructive because I love Europe. I love the countries of Europe. But the process is a very cumbersome one. And they do treat the United States of America very, very unfairly with the VAT taxes and all of the other taxes they impose.
One other just to finish up, I got a call from the head of a major airline, one of the biggest airlines in the world. And he said, sir, could you help us? What landing in Europe is brutal. They charge us fees for everything. And it’s so unfair. I said, how does it compare to China? He said, it’s much worse. And the other thing, as you know, they took court cases with Apple and they supposedly won a case that most people didn’t think was much of a case. They won 15 or 16 billion from Apple. They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions. These are American companies. Whether you like them or not, they’re American companies and they shouldn’t be doing that. And that’s as far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation.
So we have some very big complaints with the EU. Thank you.
Patrick Pouyanne Asks About LNG Exports
KLAUS SCHWAB: Thank you very much, Mr. President. We’ll now go to one of your friends in the EU, Patrick Pouyanne. He’s the chairman CEO of TotalEnergies. I guess you have a question ready, Patrick, for the president.
PATRICK POUYANNE: Mr. President, as we understand, energy is at the top of your agenda. And it’s an honor for me to represent the energy industry tonight in this panel.
TotalEnergies is indeed the fourth largest oil and gas and electricity company in the world. I will not ask you a question about the oil price. It’s quite clear what you expect from us. I will go to gas more. And our company is the largest number one exporter LNG from the U.S. company. We are a strong contributor and we invest in a mammoth LNG project in Texas, $20 billion. It’s far from $200 billion, but it’s $20 billion. And we contribute with that to security of supply to Europe as we export this LNG to Europe.
Some experts fear that if there are too many projects developed in the U.S. on LNG, this could have an inflationary impact on the U.S. domestic gas price. And they recommend a pause on these projects. I would ask you the following question. What are your views about such a pause on investments on LNG in the U.S.? What would happen if you would observe an increased domestic gas price because of these exports? And final question, which is important for Europe, would you agree to guarantee security of supplies of U.S. LNG to Europe?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, on the last part of your question, yes, I would. I would make sure that you get it. If we make a deal, we make a deal. You’ll get it because a lot of people do have that problem. They make a deal and then it can’t get supplied because of war type problems and other problems. So we would absolutely do that.
LNG is very interesting because when I took office for the first time, one of the first things I looked at was to there were two very massive plants in Louisiana, a state that has been very good to me, wanted by many, many points. And I felt strongly indebted to it, actually.
And they said there are two plants that have been under environmental consideration for more than 10 years. And they were costing, as you say, you know how expensive those plants are, but they were costing like 12 billion and I think 14 or 15 billion. But they couldn’t get their permits. It was they were in review for years, many, many years, like a decade or more. And I said, so ridiculous. I know so much about that because in the construction industry, I had to go through it, too. But I got good at it after a while.
But I went I saw the projects and you’re talking about a total investment of twenty five to thirty billion dollars. And it looked like it was going to end. They couldn’t get their permits. And I got them done in less than a week. It was done, completed.
In fact, when they called them to announce that it was done, the countries, largely countries, Japan was involved and another country and some very big investors. They couldn’t believe it. They actually couldn’t believe it. And I said, just do yourself one favor. Don’t pay any consultants because the only one that got it done was me. I got it done because it was the right thing to do for the U.S. and for the world. But the consultants had nothing to do with it. You know, the consultants go in and they say, give us millions of dollars because Trump did it. Nobody called me about it.
I just heard it was a problem for years. And I got it done because it was the right thing to do for the U.S. and the right thing to do for beyond. It had to do with energy. Very important.
So I think it’s very important. I think, you know, I disagree with one. I think the more that you do, the lower the price is going to go. And what I’d like to see is rapid approvals. We’re going to get very rapid approvals in the United States, like with the A.I. plans. Talking to many people want to build them. That’s going to be a very big thing. We’re going to build electric generating facilities.
They are going to build. I’m going to get them the approval under emergency declaration. I can get the approvals done myself without having to go through years of waiting. And the big problem is we need double the energy we currently have in the United States.
Energy and Infrastructure
DONALD TRUMP: Can you imagine for A.I. to really be as big as we want to have it? Because it’s a very competitive — it’ll be very competitive with China and others.
So I’m going to give emergency declarations so that they can start building them almost immediately. And I’m — I think it was largely my idea because nobody thought this was possible. It wasn’t that they were not smart because they’re the smartest. But I told them that what I want you to do is build your electric generating plant right next to your plant as a separate building connected.
And they said, wow, you’re kidding. And I said, no, no, I’m not kidding. You don’t have to hook into the grid, which is old and, you know, could be taken out. If it’s taken out, they wouldn’t have any way to get any electricity. So we are going to allow them to go on a very rapid basis to build their plant, build the electric generating plant. They can fuel it with anything they want. And they may have coal as a backup. Good, clean coal.
You know, if there were a problem with a pipe coming in, as an example, you’re going with gas, oil and gas and a pipe gets blown up or for some reason doesn’t work. There are some companies in the U.S. that have coal sitting right by the plant. So that if there’s an emergency, they can go to that short term basis and use our very clean coal. So that’s something else that a lot of people didn’t even know about. But nothing can destroy coal, not the weather, not a bomb, nothing. It might make it a little smaller, might make it a little different shape.
But coal is very strong as a backup. It’s a great backup to have that facility. And it wouldn’t cost much more, more money. And we have more coal than anybody. We also have more oil and gas than anybody. So we’re going to make it so that the plants will have their own electric generating facilities attached right to their plant. They don’t have to worry about a utility. They don’t have to worry about anything. And we’re going to get very rapid approvals.
Brian Moynihan Asks About Executive Orders
BRIAN MOYNIHAN: Good afternoon, Mr. President, and congratulations and obviously a beneficial week for you and your family.
If you remember five years ago, you came here and we walked among 150 CEOs from all over the world, and you engaged with them about your policies and your procedures. This year you’re not here, and yet this week was eventful from the orders that you mentioned earlier, literally a wave of orders coming out on immigration, on trade, and many other matters. And so as a representative of the United States here, we got a lot of questions about what does all this mean and how would the president square this with his clear focus on growth, prosperity, stock market growth, a good bond market, and bringing down prices.
So how do you think about the impact of all these orders and how fast they come out and how you’re going to balance them with that scorecard of being successful in both continuing GDP growth, bringing down inflation, and also having a good stock price appreciation for the American citizen?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think it’s going to actually bring down inflation. It’s going to bring up jobs. We’re going to have a lot of jobs. We’re going to have a lot of companies moving.
And you know, Brian, we’re at 21 percent. It was at 40 percent, and I got it down to 21 percent, the corporate tax. And it was actually, if you look at state and city, it was in many cases much higher than 40 percent. I got it down to 21 percent, and now we’re going to bring it down from 21 to 15 percent, if there’s a big if, if you make your product in the U.S.
So we’re going to have the lowest, just about the lowest rate. It’ll be the 21 is on the low side worldwide. The 15 is about as low as it gets and by far the lowest of a large country, a large, you know, rich, powerful country by far, not even a contest.
So we’re going to bring it down to 15 percent if you make your product in the U.S.A. So that’s going to create a tremendous buzz. We’re also probably going back to the one-year deduction where we deduct, you know, we did that originally, and that was amazing what the impact that that had, the one-year deduction, which built up over a period of time, and then it expires.
But we’re going to go back to that when we do the renewal of the Trump tax plan. We have to get Democrats to approve it. But, you know, if the Democrats didn’t approve it, I don’t know how they can survive with about a 45 percent tax increase because that’s what it would be. And so I think they’re going to do it.
We’ve been working along with them pretty well. I think it’s very hard for a political group to say let’s charge people 45 percent more. So I think we’re in good shape, but we’re actually doing a reduction for business and small businesses where you’re going to bring it down to 15 percent, which is really something.
And by the way, speaking of you, and you’ve done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America. They don’t take conservative business. And I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.
BRIAN MOYNIHAN: Mr. President, I will say that your friend Gianni said hello, told me to tell you hello, and we look forward to sponsoring the World Cup when it comes both this summer for the club and next year, so thank you for getting that for the United States.
Ana Botín Asks About Deregulation
ANA BOTÍN: Mr. President, congratulations on a historic victory.
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you.
ANA BOTÍN: I believe you don’t know me as well as my fellow panelists, so a few words. Santander is one of the largest banks in the world by number of customers, 170 million. That’s more than my friend Brian or my friend Jamie have.
DONALD TRUMP: Wow.
ANA BOTÍN: And those… They fixed the regulations. That’s coming, that’s coming. That was cheeky. We are a big investor in the United States. We have many million customers, 12,000 employees. We’re one of the largest auto lenders, and we recently launched a fully digital bank called OpenBank. We strongly believe banks have a pivotal role in the economy, and we can accelerate growth and help many more customers. That’s what we’re doing in the United States.
So, as Brian pointed out, we very much welcome your focus on deregulation and reducing bureaucracy. My question is, what are your priorities in this regard, and how fast is this going to happen?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think it’s going to – thank you and congratulations. I know very much about your bank, and you’ve done a fantastic job. Congratulations.
We are going to move very quickly. We’ve moved very quickly. We’ve done things in the last three days that nobody thought were possible to do in years. And it’s all taking effect. It’s going to have a huge impact on the economy, a huge positive impact. Money was being wasted on crazy things.
I mean, the Green New Deal was such a total disgrace, how that was perpetrated. And it was conceived of by people that were average students – less than average students, I might add – and never even took a course in energy or the environment. It was just a game. Remember the world was going to end in 12 years? Remember that? Well, the 12 years is come and gone. It was going to end. It was going to all foam into Earth. But, you know, the time has come.
These people – and they really scared the Democrats large. I can’t say the Republicans. The Republicans maybe could have fought harder to stop it. But it’s been a tremendous waste of – a tremendous waste of money.
During my four years, we had the cleanest air, we had the cleanest water, and yet we had the most productive economy in the history of our country. We had the most productive economy. Until COVID came, we had the most productive in the history of our country by far. And actually, you can look worldwide.
We were beating everybody from China to everybody else. And we think we really now, with what we have learned and all of the other things that have taken place, we think we can even far surpass that – actually far, far surpass it.
But we do – one thing we’re going to be demanding is we’re going to be demanding respect from other nations. Canada, we have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that anymore. We can’t do it. I don’t know if it’s good for them. As you probably know, I say you can always become a state.
And if you’re a state, we won’t have a deficit, we won’t have to tariff you, et cetera, et cetera. But Canada has been very tough to deal with over the years, and it’s not fair that we should have a $200 billion or $250 billion deficit. We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests, et cetera, et cetera.
We don’t need their oil and gas. We have our – we have more than anybody. So, you know, just as an example, with Mexico, we’re dealing with Mexico, I think, very well. And we’re just – you know, we just want to be treated fairly with other nations because there’s hardly a nation in the world – and I blame this on us, and I blame it on politicians that for some reason – probably mostly it’s stupidity, but you could also say other reasons – but mostly stupidity.
They’ve allowed other nations to take advantage of the U.S., and we can’t allow that to happen anymore. You know, we have debt. It’s a very small debt when you compare it to value, the value of the assets that we have. But we don’t want to do that. We want to just have debt be obliterated, and we’ll be able to do that fairly rapidly. And a lot of good things are going to happen.
And honestly, good things are going to happen for the world, and good things are going to happen for the people that are dealing with us. Allies and beyond allies.
One thing very important – I really would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon and get that war ended, and that’s not from the standpoint of economy or anything else. It’s from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted.
Relations with Russia and China
DONALD TRUMP: Beautiful young people are being shot in the battlefield. You know, the bullet – a very flat land, as I said, and the bullet goes – there’s no hiding. And the bullet – the only thing going to stop the bullet is a human body. And you have to see – I’ve seen pictures of what’s taken place.
It’s a carnage, and we really have to stop that war. That war is horrible. And I’m not talking economy. I’m not talking economics. I’m not talking about natural resources. I’m just talking about there’s so many young people being killed in this war, and that’s not including the people that have been killed as the cities are being, you know, knocked down building by building. We really should get that stopped.
Likewise, in the Middle East, I think we’ve made a lot of progress in the Middle East, and I think that’s going to come along pretty well. Thank you very much.
KLAUS SCHWAB: Thank you, Mr. President. We know that the most consequential relationship in the world is between the U.S. and China. U.S., 28 percent of the global economy, China close to 20. That’s almost half of the global GDP. And we know that you called President Xi Jinping last Friday. We heard that you had a good discussion. How do you see the relationship between the U.S. and China in the next four years under your leadership?
DONALD TRUMP: He called me, but I see it very good. I think that we’re going to have a very good relationship. All we want is fairness. We just want a level playing field. We don’t want to take advantage.
We’ve been having massive deficits with China. Biden allowed it to get out of hand. He’s $1.1 trillion deficit. It’s ridiculous. And it’s just an unfair relationship. And we have to make it just fair. We don’t have to make it phenomenal. We have to make it a fair relationship. Right now, it’s not a fair relationship. The deficit is massive, as it is with other countries, a lot of Asian countries, actually. But we have deficits that are very big. And we can’t keep doing that.
So we’re not going to keep doing that. But I like President Xi very much. I’ve always liked him. We always had a very good relationship. It was very strained with COVID coming out of Wuhan. Obviously, that strained it. I’m sure it strained it with a lot of people. But that strained our relationship.
But we always had a great relationship, I would say. And we look forward to doing very well with China and getting along with China. Hopefully, China can help us stop the war with, in particular, Russia, Ukraine. They have a great deal of power over that situation. And we’ll work with them. And I mentioned that during our phone conversation with President Xi. And hopefully, we could work together and get that stopped. We’d like to see denuclearization.
In fact, with President Putin, prior to an election result, which was, frankly, ridiculous, we were talking about denuclearization of our two countries. And China would have come along. China has a much smaller, right now, nuclear armament than us or field than us. But they’re going to be catching it at some point over the next four or five years.
And I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear. And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow. And China would have come along, too. China also liked it. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear. And the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today because you don’t want to hear it. It’s too depressing. So we want to see if we can denuclearize.
And I think that’s very possible. And I can tell you that President Putin wanted to do it. He and I wanted to do it. We had a good conversation with China. They would have been involved. And that would have been an unbelievable thing for the planet. And I hope it could be started in the future.
Prospects for Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal
KLAUS SCHWAB: Mr. President, when you’re back here in Davos next year, will there be then a peace agreement with Ukraine and Russia by then?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, you’re going to have to ask Russia. Ukraine is ready to make a deal. Just so you understand, this is a war that should have never started. If I were president, it would never have started. This is a war that should have never, ever been started. And it wasn’t started during my – there was never even talk about it.
I knew that it was the apple of President Putin’s eye, but I also knew that there was no way he was going in and he wasn’t going to go in. And then when I was out, bad things happened. Bad things were said. A lot of stupidity all around, and you end up with what you have.
Now you have all these bombed-out cities that look like demolition sites with many people killed. I think the thing that you’ll see about Ukraine is that far more people have died than is being reported, and I’ve seen that. But far, far more people have died. When you look at a city that’s become a demolition site where big buildings have been collapsed by missiles hitting them and everything else, and they say one person was slightly injured.
No, no, many people were killed. Those are big buildings. I was surprised at how – that was my business. These are buildings that go two and three blocks long. They’re 20 stories high. They’re big, powerful buildings, and they were knocked down, and there were a lot of people in those buildings. They announced that two people were injured. That’s not true.
So I think you’re going to find that there were many more people killed in Ukraine in the Ukraine war than anybody has any idea. But if you look now, so many of the people being killed are soldiers just facing each other with guns, rifles, and drones, the new form of warfare drones, and it’s a very sad thing to see. And when you see pictures of the fields that I see, nobody wants to see it. You’ll never be the same.
Closing Remarks
KLAUS SCHWAB: Thank you very much, Mr. President, on behalf of all the 3,000 participants here in Davos. We really, really underline that joining us the third day in your presidency, live taking questions here is so appreciated, and we are already ready for receiving you next year in person. Thank you very much, and all the best from Davos.
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much.
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