Transcript: President Trump’s Remarks At APEC Summit in South Korea

Marco, you’re around here someplace. Where’s Marco? Marco, thank you. Man who’s doing a fantastic job who understands the markets maybe better than anybody. Our Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. Scott, thank you very much.

And somebody that you’re dealing with who you made a very good deal with because you have very good negotiators, but he’s pretty good too. Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce. Thank you, Howard. U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer is a fantastic person. And your careers Minister of Trade, Industry and Resources, Mr. Jung Kwon Kim, who’s an incredible man actually. My people say he’s very tough however. We wish we had somebody of a little bit lesser caliber, but they decided not to do that. And so many other distinguished guests are here.

So I just want to thank you very much. It’s an incredible room. It’s a beautiful room by the way. All those beautiful people up there so high up. This place is packed. Thank you. Look at them waving. Thank you very much.

Record-Breaking Economic Performance

But as you know, APEC unites specific nations around our growing economies of promoting our shared interests. And today I come with exciting news from one of the largest Pacific nations. We’ll call ourselves a Pacific nation, but one of the largest of them all, the United States of America.

I’m pleased to report to you that this afternoon after four years of weakness, disaster really decline, America is back and is back stronger than ever before. We’re doing numbers that nobody’s ever seen before. We’re the hottest country in the world actually. And I say that with other countries representative and they admit it. But I do say it very proudly.

One year ago, our country was in very, very serious trouble. Some people thought our country was dead. Now we’re literally the sort of an inspiration to a lot of other countries. We are indeed, I use the term hottest country, but we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world by far.

The United States is blessed with the right now, the strongest economy, the strongest borders. This all happened over the last nine months, the strongest military, the strongest friendships and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth. This is a golden age in a short period of time. I knew we could do it. I didn’t know we were going to do it this quickly. It’s a little bit more than nine months.

Investment and Growth Milestones

So in less than one year, we’ve secured commitments for over $18 trillion of new investments. As an example, the previous administration in four years, they did less than $1 trillion I think much less actually, and hurt our country very badly, who would have known. But we’re going to be $18 trillion. So I figured that we’ll probably be at $20 trillion or $21 trillion maybe even $22 trillion of investments coming into our country by the end of the first year of my second term.

And we had a tremendously successful first term. We had the strongest economy in history for our country, strongest we ever had. But this is, I think blowing it away. We have great policy. We have some very good things happening.

The stock market, as you know, is set 45 all time highs since in a period of it’s pretty good in a period of nine months breaking new records week after week, including one just yesterday. We set the record GDP growth in the second quarter. And that’s with all of the things that we’re doing when they are built in a year and two years, we’re going to go through the roof.

I mean, we’re going to see numbers that I don’t think I’ve ever been seen before. But even during this period of a little bit of a period of transition, you could go up because I think we’re in an economic revolution in America. We went at 3.8 percent, we’re up 3.8 percent GDP triple and even quadruple the rate that a lot of people thought would be. They thought that during this period that we’d be at a much lower rate. Some people predicted 1 percent, 1.5 percent and we’re going to be very close to 4 percent.

The next quarter, we’re expected to be at about 4 percent growth. And after that, I mean, can’t even predict because when all of these factories that are moving in, the car plants are moving in. Yesterday, I was with Mr. Toyota in Japan and he’s just announced he’s going to spend they are going to spend $10 billion and they’re going to build new car plants and they’re going to build them in numerous states, about six or seven different states. And we’re bringing our car industry back. We’re bringing AI. We’re leading everybody in AI. We’re leading every nation in AI by actually by a lot.

Economic Indicators and Policy Changes

In nine months, we’ve lifted over 600,000 Americans off food stamps. Wages for workers are rising at the fastest pace in more than 60 years. And meanwhile, energy prices are down, gasoline prices are down, grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down despite the fact that we have an incompetent head of the Fed. He’s incompetent. I call him Jerome too late. He’s always too late. Jerome too late Powell, but he’s out of there in another couple of months. We’ll be very happy about that. We’ll appoint somebody that we all like because we should have the lowest interest rates of any country because without us, there are no other countries really. I mean, the whole thing falls apart.

America always had the lowest interest rates and now we don’t do that. We’re like 28th. It’s ridiculous. We have we’re a much different country than we were two years ago or a year ago even. But what’s the crazy thing is in the old days, I go up the old days. I’m a little bit older. I’m looking at all these young brilliant faces. I’m a slight couple of years older than you, just a couple of years.

But in the old days, when you announced good news, the stock market went up. You announced good news, the stock market would go up. Now when you announce good news, the stock market goes down because people say, “Oh, that’s terrible. You’re doing well. That’s terrible. Interest rates will go up.” So they think because of that interest rates will go up because that it’s inverse to what it should be.

We’re going to go back to the way it used to be. When we announced good news, the stock markets are going to go up and that’s the way it should be. And we’re going to really ride that very hard. And when we announce good news, we’re not going have a Fed that’s going to raise interest rates because they’re worried about inflation in three years from now or something. When we announce good news, we want the stock market to go up, not to go down.

Inflation and Manufacturing Growth

And the scourge of inflation we inherited, we inherited the worst inflation ever that we’ve ever had. I inherited from incompetent people. And now we’re down to a very low rate of inflation, 2.7 percent. And it’s going to be a little bit lower than that. It’s almost a perfect number. Believe it or not, you don’t want to have zero, you want to have like 1 percent to 2 percent and we’re very close to that number. But we had inflation the worst in the history of our country.

But factories are booming in the USA and manufacturing productivity is rising five times faster than it was just one year ago. Think of that steel production is way up by 155,000 tons a week. Oil production is through the roof by half a million barrels a day and mining of clean beautiful coal. I call it clean beautiful coal is up by 2.6 million tons every single month. And we brought coal back into the picture. What you can do with coal today is incredible.

So I call it clean beautiful. I don’t use the word coal, I’d say because it’s got a little bit of a problem public relations wise the word. So we call it clean beautiful. My administration is not allowed to use the word coal. They have to say Clean Beautiful coal. We’ve given it a new name. It’s a three name deal.

Semiconductor and Technology Leadership

Even semiconductor manufacturing is rapidly returning to the United States. Nvidia and TSMC have just produced the first state of the art Blackwell chip that was 100 percent made in the USA. In fact, Jensen, who’s an incredible guy, might be here. Don’t even know. Is Jensen here? I think he’s around. Somebody said he’s here. How is he? Pretty good, right? Got chip that’s ten years advanced, but he’s great.

And they’re all building now. They’re building tremendous plants in the United States, Arizona, Texas, all over. We’re going to have a big portion of the chip market just in a very short period of time.

Job Creation and Employment

But these tremendous strides are also creating great jobs for our citizens. 1.9 million more American born workers are employed today than when I took office nine months ago. Think of that, almost 2 million people more American workers. Nobody’s ever had numbers like that. And those numbers are going to get much bigger, much better than that when we open these plants that are being built all over the AI plants.

I’ve never seen plants this big. I built shopping centers. I built a lot of things. But if you spend $250 million, $300 million you can build a big shopping center. These people are spending $50 billion to build a building. And I say, “What’s your product information?” I said, “Well, good luck. That’s a lot of information you’re going to have to have.” But they’re the smartest people in the world are doing it and they all think it’s great. All I can do is make it easy for them.

Revolutionary Energy Solutions for AI

And what I’ve done, one of the things that I’m most proud of because thought of it like every country, our electricity production, our energy production is not nobody ever thought, nobody ever saw this kind of a revolution with the AI and what they need more than anything is electricity. So if a country was able to do that, it would be pretty unusual, be very hard, maybe you could say impossible.

So I came up with a concept when they build this massive plant, sometimes the size of Manhattan. Think of that, the size of Manhattan, these plants are the biggest I’ve never seen anything like it actually, nobody has. There’s never been anything like it. But I let them build their own electricity generating plants with it. So they’re building their own electric. They’re sort of becoming an electric producing company in addition to all of the other things that they produce, including information.

And what they’re able to do is start immediately. We’re giving them very fast permits. We’re no longer having them wait for 10 years, 12 years, 15 years prior to rejection. They’d go 15 years and then they’d get a vote, a rejection. And by that time, their concepts were old and obsolete anyway. So, it’s terrible.

And we’re getting it done rapidly, literally rapidly. And they’re coming up with electric generating plants, the likes of which nobody has seen. The companies are standard companies that do electricity and create power, power companies. They’ve never seen anything like it because we have a level of genius, a level of people that are designing things that nobody’s ever seen before that produces vast amounts of electricity for their plant. And if they have extra electricity, they sell it back into the grid.

So they really I mean, it’s really been amazing and it allows people to start building immediately and they can’t blame the government. They won’t blame me because I didn’t produce enough out of the grid that’s 200 years old.

Historic Employment Levels and U.S.-Korea Partnership

So we have more people now working than at any time in the history of our country. And we’ve sort of just begun. It’s hard to believe actually, if you knew where we were two years ago. All of this is incredible news for Americans and for nations around the globe and it is for South Korea because we’re partners. We’re serious partners. We’re really we’re wedded and we have a very special relationship, a special bond.

In fact, we’re working with you on shipbuilding where you’re going to come in. We were the number one in the world during World War II.

Revitalizing American Shipbuilding

We produced a ship a day. Can you believe it? Tankers and freighters and this ship a day. And today we’re not really building ships and we’re going to start and we’re going to have a very thriving, very thriving shipbuilding industry and we’re working it with South Korea very much so. In fact, some of the people in this room, they bought the Philadelphia shipyard.

I think it’s going to be one of the most successful yards in the world anywhere in the world. It’s great. Known for incredible production years ago and sort of through bad management or bad thinking by people that were prior to me. I mean, you have to blame the President. You can give the President credit or blame the President.

But I blame the President and say allowed the shipbuilding industry to go away essentially in our country. We’re going to bring it back very, very powerfully. When America thrives, our partners thrive and our alliances thrive with all of the countries. The Indo Pacific thrives and that’s good for all of us and the entire world becomes safer and wealthy and greater than ever before. We get along with a lot of countries.

We solved a lot of wars and a lot of problems and that’s all good for all of us.

A Landslide Victory

The extraordinary American turnaround that I’ve just described has been achieved not by just continuing business as usual back in Washington. If I didn’t win the election and we won it in a landslide, we won by tremendous numbers. I had a whole thing too big. You have to say “too big to rig.”

We didn’t want any rigging. We had these great polls going in. I said, “Don’t believe the polls, pretend we’re one point down. Always assume we’re one point down” and everybody voted. We won in a landslide.

We won all seven swing states. You have to win the swing states and we won all seven, which is something that rarely happens. But to win the popular vote by millions, won everything you can win, the Electoral College by tremendous amount. We won in counties, they have counties, of counties and we were two thousand seven hundred compared to five hundred, five twenty five actually. So think of that, we were two thousand seven hundred and fifty compared to five twenty five.

And that’s why the red map shows all red, red being Republican, not something else, red being Republican. Only a few people understand that one.

Rejecting Failed Government Models

My administration has rejected the old model of incompetent government that punished success and rewarded failure and made building anything almost impossible. When you come into our country, many of you are doing that. But when you come into America, you’re going to get service like you’ve never seen before, quick permits.

And we want safety, we want great environmental, we want everything good, but it’s going to go quickly. We’re rewarding those who build and create and hire and invest in the USA and we’re making America the best place on earth to do business. And that’s what it’s become very quickly. We have some wonderful people, Lee Zeldin at environmentally is incredible. He gets the right results quickly and he makes sure that people do the right thing.

But we will have the best tax rates, the lowest energy costs. We have the lowest energy. We have tremendous amounts of energy more than anybody else. We have the most oil and gas and coal more than any other nation on earth. So that’s a big advantage that we have over others.

We have the lowest regulatory burden. Cut in my first term, we cut more regulations than any other administration in history and we’re going to do about the same level right now or more if we can, the most advanced technology and the fairest trade deals anywhere in the world.

Saying Yes to Bold Ideas

And for decades before I took office, our country was run by legions of bureaucrats who were always looking for a reason to say no. Why? How can we say no? They want to say no. They thought that was their job and it’s really just the opposite. We work to say yes.

So now we have a president of the White House who cuts through the red tape and excuses. We don’t stand for excuses and says yes to big ideas and bold initiatives and grand ambitions so that America can have great industries, great dreams and to be the greatest nation on earth, which is where we are now actually in a very short period of time.

We’re rebuilding things that are incredible. We have the strongest military in the world. We have the best equipment. We have the best manufacturers of equipment. And South Korea is buying a lot of our weapons.

We make the best. We have the planes and just about everything other than ships that will be there very shortly with ships too. But the only reason it’s not ships because I don’t know, for some reason they stopped doing that. I guess they went on to other businesses, but there’s some basics in life. And one of the things you need is ships.

Rebuilding Essential Industries

I always say you need steel, you need aluminum, you need this certain there are things you don’t need. A lot of things that are a country doesn’t need them, but things you need, you need steel, got to have steel and we’re redoing our steel and some of the people in this room are very involved in that. We’re redoing our industry. We’re starting to produce large amounts of steel, massive amounts of steel will be right at the top in a very short period of time. Mills are opening again and they’re opening up big.

And again, it’s national security just because of tariffs. We’re reclaiming our heritage as a nation of builders and doers and we’re pioneers in a sense, but we’re really doing it again, but we’re doing it even better than we did the first time, which is the first couple of hundred years. And we’re pursuing this vision with unrelenting drive and really unprecedented success.

Historic Tax Cuts

In July, proudly sounded, well, it was very important. I went into the archives. We looked at every possible thing you could look at and I signed into law the largest tax cuts in American history. And as you remember, my first term, we signed, we cut taxes from thirty nine percent down to twenty one percent. And now we’ve done even better than that, putting more money in the pockets of American families that make up the largest consumer market on earth for businesses and manufacturers like those in this room.

Our tax law includes one hundred percent expensing for all new factories, plants and equipment. So that means you can write everything off in the first year. So that’s like we had in the first, except this goes for a period of ten years, whereas the other was over a much shorter period of time. And I actually think that we had such tremendous success. I always said that was the single most important thing, the expensing, the one year expensing.

Slashing Regulations

Upon taking office, I signed executive orders that require that for every one new regulation, ten old regulations have to be eliminated. I did that in the first term too and it worked. So if you want a new regulation, you have to get rid of ten and already we’re exceeding that limit reaching closer to thirty to one. Our people have done that, our great secretaries and other people in the administration.

So we’ve been actually at a level where we sign in a new regulation to get rid of thirty older. We’re sort of cleaning up the books because many of these regulations are obsolete, they don’t belong and some were so horrible, they were obsolete, but they really stopped projects from being built and we’re getting rid of all of them. We’ve pretty much done that.

Streamlined Permitting

We have streamlined permitting for all new energy and mining projects. It used to take decades for an administration to get something approved and now it’s a process that will take generally speaking less than twenty eight days. In addition, across government, we’re guaranteeing a rapid and expedited regulatory review for all new projects in the United States. And that’s worth billions and billions of dollars to industry. You spent more money on trying to get something approved than you do in building the plant itself.

In Louisiana, my first term, there were two plants and one was financed by a tremendous group of Japanese investors and it was about sixteen billion dollars LNG plants. Another one was financed by people from South Korea and others. LNG both have a massive LNG. They were in the review process. One was fifteen years, one was sixteen or seventeen years and they were then told forget it, we’re not going to get it approved.

So I came into government, I heard about it and I love Louisiana. We did very well there. We did well in just about all the states, but we did really well in Louisiana. And so I got involved the one plant that was in for almost fifteen years. Got it improved in one day, one day.

In fact, when we called the people to say that they got approved, they didn’t know what the hell we were talking about. They said, “You got it approved. We sort of gave up on it.” I said, “No, you don’t have to give up. We got it approved.”

The other one took me a little bit longer. I didn’t do as good a job. It took me one week and they got approved and they got built their massive plants and they’re doing unbelievably. They’re setting records LNG, big it’s like the Empire State Building lying on its side. And all I know is I looked at it. I said, “What kind of a building is that? All it’s got is pipes going back and forth.” I never saw anything like it, but whatever it is, it works.

And they’ve been very, very successful. But think of it, fourteen and fifteen years and I got one approved in one day and one approved in one week and they’ve been doing great and they’ve been good for the environment.

Shrinking Government, Growing the Private Sector

I’ve shrunk the size of government for the first time in many years since January. One hundred thousand bureaucrats have left in the federal payroll. You’ve probably seen that. So we’re creating real jobs. We’re getting rid of wasteful jobs.

Government spending is down two point five percent this quarter compared to one year ago. It was going through the roof in the previous administration and in stark contrast to four years ago. I mean, if you look one hundred percent of all new jobs created in America under my administration have been created by the private sector. Think of that, the government created no new jobs. The private sector created the record number of jobs that we’re talking about.

That’s a country that’s really a success. It’s easy to create government jobs. I could say add a lot of people to your payrolls. I can take up the numbers if I want, but that’s the way that’s not the way you build a great country. You don’t do that here.

And that’s not the way but it’s a good way to show good numbers. I’ll tell you, you just tell everybody hire a lot of people. That’s what they used to do under the Biden administration, under Barack Hussein Obama, you had they’d say hire, hire a lot of people so we can make our numbers look that I do the opposite. Have real numbers. These are real numbers.

Massive Investment Surge

This truly no better time to invest in the USA. The results speak for themselves. Since the election, TSMC has pledged to invest one hundred billion dollars in the United States. So they’re coming in from Taiwan. We have tremendous numbers of companies coming from Taiwan and building in the US.

Apple six hundred billion dollars investment, Hyundai twenty six billion dollars, Micron two hundred billion dollars, SoftBank OpenAI and Oracle over five hundred billion dollars, Amazon thirty five billion dollars, Pfizer seventy billion dollars, JERA two hundred billion dollars, Google twenty five billion dollars, Nvidia five hundred billion dollars, Genentech fifty billion dollars, Johnson and Johnson fifty seven billion.

We’re bringing back all of our Pharmaceutical business. IBM one hundred and fifty billion, AstraZeneca fifty billion among many others, many, many others too many to talk about.

Economic Security is National Security

But one of the most significant factors in this remarkable surge of new investment has been my transformation of trade policy. Eight years ago, I came to this very summit. I was here. Does anybody remember? I don’t know, I remember. Does anybody remember what I said? Yeah, there’s a few hands up there. It must have been a great speech, three people, it’s not too many people.

But there’s no reason to because you saw whatever I said I did. And for the first time I laid out the principle that economic security is national security. Economic security, that’s for South Korea, that’s for any country. But economic security is in fact national security. I made the case that the global trading system was broken and an urgent need of reform had to be fixed.

The system had been exploited by countries that broke the rules at the expense of countries that followed the rules to a T and asked the nations of APEC to be our partners in making the system fair and more sustainable for all of us. And we all work work together, the APEC nations.

Vision Becomes Reality

Eight years later, as I’m back here in Asia, and I’m pleased to say that the positive vision for revolutionary reform I laid out, it seems like a long time ago is now a reality. What really seems amazing is that we did all these things. We stopped a lot of wars. We did so many different things, made our country strong. Thank you. Thank you.

And the campaign seemed like so long ago and I was reading something today in one of the journals. And they said, “Can you believe it? One year ago, I was campaigning to win.” Think of that. It was about a week in a week, it’ll be November fifth. And November fifth was the election. I said, “Can you imagine that? Here I am, President.”

We’ve done so many different things economically, militarily, peace wise, peace through strength. And yet one year ago, it’s not long ago, was campaigning. I was campaigning. We didn’t win. We were campaigning and then we had the election and we had a great election and the spirit in our country is incredible.

Strengthening Global Partnerships Through Trade

If you compare that, we lost a lot of spirit in our country. Our country is depressed and they had a right to be. But around the world, we’re signing one trade deal after another to balance our relationships on the basis of reciprocity, very important word.

On this trip alone, I’ve signed groundbreaking agreements with Malaysia, Cambodia, Japan. Our deal with the Republic of Korea will be finalized very soon, moments or very shortly thereafter.

These agreements will be incredible victories for all of us because everyone is better off when we have stable partnerships not plagued by chronic problems and imbalances. Probably that the President of China is coming tomorrow here and we’re going to be, I hope, making a deal. I think we’re going to have a deal. I think it’ll be a good deal for both. And that’s really a great result.

That’s better than fighting and going through all sorts of problems and no reason for it. I think it’s going to be a great deal for both. So I’ll be meeting him tomorrow. A lot of people are interested. They’re also interested in what we’re doing, but they’re interested in that.

I can tell you a lot of the world is watching. And I think we’ll have something that’s very exciting for everybody. And that’s also good for South Korea. That’s good for all nations. We’re ending gaping trade deficits, unfair trade barriers to market access, insecure supply chains, weak pathetic supply chains and much, much more.

It’s such bad supply chains under the last administration. It was embarrassing. And we’re entering a new era of trade that truly works for both sides. It’s got to work for everybody. Deals have to be good for everybody. I’ve heard that all the time.

The Philosophy of Fair Deals

And I never really believed it, I’ll be honest. I said, if you make a great deal, the best deals are deals that work for everybody, especially when you’re talking about nations. When you’re talking about nations, it really is a little bit different than you’re doing a business deal and you want to just rip their hearts out, right? These guys know what I mean. They’ve ripped out so many hearts.

But when you have nations, it’s a little bit different. It’s got to get it all balanced out a little bit. When I announced reciprocal tariffs last April, some people thought it was wonderful and others really weren’t so sure. They weren’t sure they didn’t understand tariffs because tariffs were used against us. We didn’t use tariffs stupidly.

And we do now. National security this week, we proved once and for all that few critics, few critics, there were no critics left. People, the only critics are people that took advantage of us for many years and now they’re not able to do that. The deals we’re signing with our friends and partners are making our alliances closer and stronger than ever before and they respect us because it was so foolish. The people that ran our country were so foolish.

Economic and National Security Partnerships

With these agreements, our nations will extend our vital security alliances into the realm of economic security for the first time ever. We’re forging new partnerships on strategically important industries like ship building, energy, semiconductors, critical minerals, and very important pharmaceuticals. We learned that during COVID, we had to rely on other countries to give us pharmaceuticals. You can’t do that. You have to, certain industries you want to have there.

You want to have your medicines made ideally in your own country. Many of our agreements also include deepening collaboration of industries of the future such as nuclear, quantum, artificial intelligence where America is number one by a lot. Actually, we’re really number one by a lot. We’re number one in military and military consequence. We’re number one in military and the quality of the weapons.

That’s why everyone wants to buy from us. I’ll tell you what we have a long lead on is submarines, nuclear submarines. We are so far advanced that by perhaps twenty, twenty-five years, we’re twenty-five years ahead of any competition. And not only are the tariffs strengthening our alliances, they’re also bringing peace to the world.

The Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords

On Sunday in Malaysia, we signed the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords ending forever the war between Cambodia and Thailand. Thank you. Thank you. It’s interesting. We were making trade deals with Cambodia and with Thailand and I sort of watch what I do. I don’t go to the beach and sleep all day.

I watch. And I see Cambodia, Thailand among many other nations. And this is true for numerous other deals too. But I see Cambodia, Thailand and I read a front page story about the fact that there were thousands of dead people along the border. And they fought for a long time.

And I said, “Wait a minute, we’re making deals and they’re starting a war.” They were just starting and it was vicious. Thousands of people were killed along the border, their two borders. And I said, “Let’s call the head.” I didn’t know the heads of either one.

I called them. They were both great people and sort of reasonable. I said, “Listen, you want to trade there? We’re not going to make a deal with you if you’re going be in war.” Then I called Cambodia, I called Thailand, I called Cambodia back and forth.

And after about two days, we ended up with the help of Malaysia. Malaysia was like a mediator. We used a beautiful facility in Malaysia because it was too hot. And I don’t mean hot weather wise, I mean it was hot. It was too hot with bullets flying all over the place.

And Malaysia was fantastic and they helped implement it. The Prime Minister was great, great guy, just left him. And within two days we signed a deal and the two people came in. They were like best friends. It was a beautiful thing to see.

We saved probably millions of lives. They’ve had a tempestuous relationship for, I said, “For how many years?” Five hundred years. I said, “That’s a long time. That’s a long time.” But we think this is going to be hopefully, I used the word everlasting, same thing in the Middle East.

We hope it’s going to be everlasting peace. Never had peace. They’ve three thousand years and we signed in the Middle East. But I’ve ended eight wars in eight months and in many instances, trade has played a big part in getting those wars ended.

Economic Impact of Tariffs

On top of it, all tariffs now projected to reduce our deficit by four trillion dollars over the next ten years. And I think actually much more than that. That’s national security because you can’t have deficits and you can’t have debt all over the place and stops inflation and strengthening the dollar and ultimately balancing our federal budget, which I think we’re going to do very quickly only because of our policy of fair tariffs.

And for any company that does not wish to pay the tariff, I say, “You could build your factory in America. If you build your factory in America, there is zero tariffs.”

Preventing War Between India and Pakistan

But again, going back to the wars, it’s so important. If you look at India and Pakistan, so I’m doing a trade deal with India and I have great respect and love, as you know, for Prime Minister Modi. We have a great relationship. Likewise, the Prime Minister of Pakistan is a great guy and the field marshal. They have a field marshal. You know why he’s a field marshal? He’s a great fighter. He really is. He’s a great guy too.

And so I know them all. And I’m reading that seven planes were shot down. They’re going at it and they’re really starting to go and this is a big thing. These are two nuclear nations and they’re really going at it. And I called Prime Minister Modi. I said, “We can’t make a trade deal with you.”

“No, no, we must make a trade.”

I said, “No, we can’t. You’re starting a war with Pakistan. We’re not going to do it.” And then I called Pakistan. I said, “We’re not going to do trade with you because you’re fighting with India.”

And two nuclear nations and they said, “No, no, no, you should let us fight.” They both said that. They’re warring, they’re strong people. I’ll tell you what, Prime Minister Modi is the nicest looking guy. He says, and he looks like you’d like to have your father like, he’s a killer. He’s tough as hell.

“No, we will fight.”

I said, “Woah, this is the same man that I know.” But after a little while, and they’re good people. And after literally two days, they called up and they said, “We understand” and they stopped fighting. How is that? Isn’t that amazing?

Now, you think Biden would have done that? I don’t think so. Most people wouldn’t have thought of it, but you know, they wouldn’t have thought of it. No, but here we are, we’re doing deals. So you add an extra sentence and you say you have to stop shooting at each other. Seven planes were shot down. You have to stop the war. And they stopped the war.

And if it weren’t for the tariffs, I said I was going to put two hundred and fifty percent tariffs on each country, which means that you’ll never do business. So there’s just nothing you can sell for two hundred and fifty percent. That means that’s a nice way of saying we don’t want to do business with you. You don’t have to say that because that’s a nasty, “We don’t want to do business.” No, you say we’re going to put two hundred and fifty percent tariffs if you don’t stop the war. And they understood that.

And within forty-eight hours, we had no war, no people killed. I mean, it makes me feel so good. We saved millions and millions of lives with all of them. If you look at just take a look at that one. Was going on for, I think thirty-eight years, right?

Historic Peace Achievements

And President Putin called me, he said, “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. We couldn’t get that war stopped.” Thirty-eight years that went on, millions of people killed and we got it done. And the two countries came in and they were in the White House and they started off here. And they got closer, closer, closer, closer. After an hour, they were hugging each other in peace. It was amazing.

Actually, it’s beautiful to see two very good countries, two very good leaders. One was there for twenty-two years, one was there for seven. And they both said my entire political life, all I did was shoot people on the other side. And we got it. We got it closed up. And we did that eight times.

The only one I didn’t do is Russia, Ukraine, but that’ll get done too. That’ll get done. I thought that was going to be an easy one because of my relationship with President Putin. He turned out to be a little different, but I think it’ll get done. It would have never started if our President, that war would have never ever started.

So we’ve used trade to create peace in a lot of different locations. We also solved the war in Africa, Congo, Republic of Congo and Rwanda. That was much smaller to do with trade, more to do with common sense. They were fighting for years, ten million people were dead and we got that one done too. So we did a lot of them. We did eight in eight months.

And I think the other one’s going to come along. I really think so. I thought that would have been one of the easier. Who would have thought we created peace in the Middle East, but didn’t get Russia and Ukraine? Because peace in the Middle East was undoable. They’re looking, they’re shaking their heads. It was undoable.

We got it done, three thousand years. Okay? They never had peace. They never had anything like it. We have all countries signed up and the level of spirit and everything. It’s going to, I think it’s going to hold for a long time, hopefully forever. Hopefully, that’s an everlasting one too.

Proving the Doubters Wrong

So in conclusion, at some point in your careers, every great business person and CEO in this room today has faced critics who said reform, innovation and bold action would only lead to a total disaster. But none of us would be here if we had listened to the small minds with no vision. These are small minds with no vision. They had no understanding of success. They had no understanding of life and death.

True success comes from having the confidence and the courage to prove the doubters wrong. And oftentimes you’ll go the opposite way of almost everybody and you’ll be the one that’s right and the others will be the one that’s wrong. And that’s where you have your greatest successes. And that’s what America and our Indo Pacific partners really are doing this week and what our businesses and entrepreneurs do each and every day. That’s what you do, successful people in the world.

Together, we’re solving the challenges that no one before us has ever been able to solve and we’re forging a free and open Indo Pacific and for all of the people, we’re creating a future of dignity and security, prosperity and pride.

A Vision for the Future

From the rolling hills of San Francisco to the gleaming streets of Seoul, from the bustling factories of Toledo, Ohio, to the bright lights of Tokyo, from Pittsburgh to Palawan, from Boston to Bangkok, from Detroit to Da Nang, and from Cleveland to right here in Kyungjoo. Nice place. Did I do good with that one? Did I do okay? Kyungjoo. Good, beautiful place, by the way.

We’re strengthening old friendships, forging new bonds, building new factories, pioneering new industries and creating a dramatically better world for our children and for generations to come. Together, we will build a future of strong independent nations on both sides of the vast ocean joined by our common interests, united by common values and reaching constantly toward a richer, safer and more peaceful Pacific.

With fairness, persistence and common sense, such important two words, we will build together, we will trade together, we will prosper together, we will thrive together and above all, will win, win, win together like never before. We’re going to have an incredible relationship together for generations to come.

And I just want to thank everybody in the room. I know so many of you, you’re incredible people. God bless you. God bless the nations of this great region and God bless America. Thank you very much everybody.

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