FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump Remarks At The Economic Club in Detroit

And I really do appreciate you being here. This is very nice. Thank you. It’ll be a day when we’re going to work together. I hope we’re going to be able to work together. That’d be great. Good for everybody.

Saving the U.S. Auto Industry

But I’m here today to talk about a subject that has always been very dear to my heart, saving the U.S. auto industry. That’s what I spoke about in Oakland many years ago. I went, I said, they’re stealing your auto industry. Years ago, they’re stealing your auto industry. You got to stop it. Well, they didn’t exactly listen. But we have to make that industry bigger, better, stronger and more dynamic than ever before. And I’ve been reading about Detroit for so many years that it’s coming around. It’s coming around and never really got there.

Everybody tries so hard. But if you make the auto industry bigger, better, stronger, you don’t have to worry about Detroit. It’ll be very good. It’ll come by its own. That would be non-artificial. That would be the way to do it, right? You make the auto industry thrive, bring it back to where it was 50, 60 years ago. You can do that, too.

And that’s my goal. And I’m laying out a policy that will absolutely do it, in my opinion, absolutely do it. And I’ve been very good at this over my life. So my goal is to see U.S. auto manufacturing even greater than it was in its prime and for Detroit and Michigan to be at the center of the action.

Reminiscing About American Cars

For generations, this city and state were the world capital of automotive production. And American automakers rolled one iconic model off the line after the next, the Mustang, the Corvette, the Pontiac GTO. I had two of them, actually. I had that GTO. Oh, I thought I was the hottest guy around. It was crazy. We didn’t have all of the foreign competition then.

You were so proud to have a Corvette. Oh, if you had a Corvette. I never got a Corvette, I tell you, I feel. I was left behind. But I had my GTO. That was something, man. I’d put that top down. See, in those days, I didn’t mind when the hair waved. I’d go fast, and that hair would be waving, that blonde hair, and I’d say, who the hell can take me? Nobody. Today, I’m a little more careful, I want it to be. I want to cover up that little area up there, just a little bit soft up there. Cover it up.

No, it was great. But you did. You had the greatest product. It was just fantastic. Right here in Detroit, Americans invented the muscle car and the minivan and the family SUV so much. And along the road, you made the American automobile an inseparable part of the, and it was inseparable of the American dream, was part of the American dream.

The Decline of American Manufacturing

But after decades and decades of Michigan autoworkers giving our nation their very best, our leaders in Washington did their very worst for them. They were terrible. You lost nearly four million manufacturing jobs after globalist politicians gave us the twin disasters of NAFTA, which I terminated, and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. That was a very expensive two things.

Nearly a quarter of a million jobs were destroyed here. Right here in Michigan alone, think of it, a quarter of a million, 250,000 jobs, including 40% of all of the auto jobs. And then it got to be much higher than that. Detroit was decimated as if by a foreign army. This was a foreign army invading us. But it was an army of business people, very brilliant business people that took the candy out of our pockets, just like you take it from a baby. That’s how easy it was for them.

Cities were left in ruins, beautiful hotels and theaters crumbled. More than 80,000 homes were abandoned. You see it outside. By the time I came into office after our victory in 2016, the Michigan auto industry was on its knees begging for help, gasping. And really, it was at the last breaths of life. And I had to move quickly. You’re going to not have any auto industry here. It was going, it was all gone. It was just about over. They were going to move so fast.

And I let countries that were stealing our businesses know, you do that, I’m going to do things to you, you’re not going to believe. I’m going to put tariffs. They laid off a lot. They could have taken it. We were at a very vulnerable point. I let certain countries know that if you do that, I’m going to put tariffs on you. And you’re going to get your asses kicked, I’m telling you. And they laid off. They really laid off. They laid off what? We had not very much left.

Trump’s Trade Policies

So just as I promised, I withdrew from the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership in my very first week. And the reason I did is that that would have absolutely destroyed your auto industry. You would have had none left. It would have been, it was a disaster. And if you remember, Hillary Clinton wanted it, and Obama wanted it. And then after she read the facts that when I did it, she came out against it because she said, you know, he’s right. She was totally in favor of it. But when she said she came out actually, and agreed with me, and she said, I’m also against it. But I was there, it’s sort of like, no tax on tips. And then two months later, Kamala came out, no tax on tips. And it didn’t, it didn’t play well for her. Didn’t play well for Hillary either, obviously.

I ended the disaster known as NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made by our country. And replaced it with the brand new USMCA. Bob Lighthizer and his team did a great job. The best trade deal they say ever made. I actually think maybe a deal with China, but I don’t talk about that deal very much because of COVID. But we have a deal with China where they buy $50 billion worth of our product. That was a great deal. We have made a lot of good ones. But with the USMCA, that’s Mexico and Canada. We have massive incentives to make cars in the United States of America.

I renegotiated Obama’s Korea trade deal, which was a disaster, to fully restore the protective tariff on foreign pickup trucks. You know, the auto industry in this country makes most of its money from the pickup truck. Who would think, right? But we do great. If we didn’t have that, you’d have no auto industry. You would, because that subsidizes other things. And the only reason it does is that the tariff on every single one of the big, if you didn’t have the tariffs, if I didn’t put those tariffs, you would be inundated from all over the world and you wouldn’t have it.

Every single one of the big Detroit, the Detroit big three, could right now and would right now guaranteed be out of business. 50% of their US sales are pickup trucks. Think of that. They make all their money with the, almost all their money. I want to be very accurate because you get a lot of fake news back there. I want to be extremely accurate. They came, they came to see you in Detroit. I’ll tell you, that’s a good thing because they’re going to hear some things that I think that are going to be very interesting.

Perhaps most importantly, I imposed a 27.5% tariff on all Chinese automobiles, which largely kept them out of the market, meaning kept them out of the market and kept Detroit in business. In other words, I kept China cars, Chinese cars out of America. And we had to do it because when they come in, they take over everything and you would have had no car manufacturing at all. And it was only me that did it.

I met with a lot of resistance. And remember this, between the lobbyists and everything else, it’s, it’s brutal. It’s brutal. Getting people to go along with you is brutal. Even if it’s the wrong thing, they know it’s the wrong thing, but they get paid a lot of money. So I just want to say, Michigan, you’re welcome because we have a little base to start on. And if you look at Europe, if you look at Europe, Chinese cars have been absolutely drowning Europe, drowning it, it’s killing it. But because of me, they are not drowning America.

You see very few of them because of the tariffs. And when they do come in, they pay a lot of money. The Biden administration is thinking of taking that tax off. And if they take that tax off, you can wave goodbye to your auto industry. And you have the worst union leader probably in the history of, maybe in the history of our country for any business. I don’t know him. John Fain is a disaster. But your industry would be gone very quickly.

Trump’s Economic Achievements

DONALD TRUMP: Under my leadership, we created nearly half a million brand new manufacturing jobs, including 30,000 auto manufacturing jobs right away. We saved it and we got it going. And that was nothing compared to what I’m talking about now. Nothing.

Because we had COVID come in in that final period. And we had to focus on that. The share of cars sold that were domestically produced increased from the first, for the first time in many years, it actually, because it was going down, down, down. And since I left, wait till you hear those numbers.

The U.S. trade deficit in automobiles dropped by $6.8 billion, think of that. And I had to do it on the fly. We had to do it fast because you’re going to have no industry whatsoever, whatever you have now. And it’s a fraction of what you used to have in the glory days. I call them the glory days. That was when we were the greatest in so many ways, U.S. steel, look at it.

U.S. Steel and China

They want to sell U.S. steel to a foreign country. I’m going to not let that happen. I hope the deal doesn’t close before then. I will not let that happen. We need our steel. You know, I imposed a tremendous tariff on China and the steel. They were dumping steel all over the country and our steel mills were going out of business.

And I put a 50 percent tariff on and that largely stopped it. And I think the people that like me the best are the steel people because I saved their end. We wouldn’t have one steel plant in this country if I didn’t do that. There wouldn’t be one.

And I had no wars, but other than I finished off ISIS very quickly, but I had no wars. But whether you have wars or don’t have wars, when you have to make army tanks and when you have to make planes and everything else that you have to do is mostly steel. And we don’t want to be in a position where we have a problem and we need China to help us out with steel. That could that could be a serious problem.

Do you think they’d mind selling us some steels in the middle of a conflict? But I don’t think we’ll have a conflict with China. I think we’ll get along with China and I think we’ll get along with Russia and I think we’ll get along with Ukraine. And I think we’re going to get that one settled. I think we’re not going to have a problem with Israel, like October 7th would never have happened. Russia would have never happened. They would have never gone into Ukraine had I been president.

Manufacturing Recession Under Current Administration

But under Kamala, we are now in a manufacturing recession with manufacturing contracting in 22. Think of this. It got smaller in 22 out of the last 23 months. It got smaller. It loses. Manufacturing jobs every single month. We have lost nearly 50000 manufacturing jobs this year alone. Car sales are down by 38 percent since I left the share of domestically produced cars sold has dropped significantly and the U.S. trade deficit in automobiles has exploded by nearly 50 billion dollars to an all time high.

The worst they’ve ever had it right now. The car industry is going out of business. It’s going out of business. Nothing to do with me. I stopped that. I stopped Mexico, which is becoming the second China. I stopped Mexico from taking your car plants and moving them into Mexico and taking all of the all of that business, making it in Mexico. So we lose all those jobs in Michigan and South Carolina and other places where many Tennessee, we have many places.

But I think in terms of this, because it’s been so badly treated, this this area, this state has been so badly treated by your politicians, your stupid politicians. What they’ve done to this state is incredible. And it would have been easy to stop. But half of them are paid a lot of money by a lot of bad, a lot of people that don’t care about the country. They care about how much money they’re going to make, including lobbyists and others make a lot of money. You ever see the money the lobbyists make? They make a lot, but they give a lot of it away. I wonder who they give it to.

Trump’s Plan for the Auto Industry

But we’re not going to allow this horror to continue. The four year long nightmare for the American autoworker ends. The day I take the oath of office, January 20th, it ends. Yeah, the poll, the poll just came out today. I just, as I was walking on, they said, sir, you’re four points up in Michigan. I said, that’s all? But they say you’re by a poll that they call it a Democrat poll. It’s a poll that would normally be very negative. So if they say four points, that means more. But I think we’re doing well here and I think we’re doing well all over. We’re leading in every single state, every swing state by actually in some cases a lot.

Today I am announcing a detailed plan to save the American auto industry and bring millions and millions of jobs back to our shores and very quickly. If you vote for Trump and you will see a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs, but from Mexico to Michigan, from Shanghai to Sterling Heights and from Beijing to right here in beautiful Detroit. Where do you see Detroit? And they’ll also be going to places like South Carolina, Tennessee and others. We have a lot of car making states, a lot of parts making states too.

And our car industry will have a renaissance, the likes of which we have never seen before in this country. We have never seen since the golden years. It’s my goal to get our country on an automaking path where at some point in the near future it will be bigger and more important than it ever was. And even in its heyday many years ago, it was unbelievable.

I think we can be bigger and more important because we have some very, very great assets and this is very personal for me, personal. One of the reasons is because I’ve been talking about it for 20 years. I can’t believe it happened. That was the, when I was honored, that’s all I talked about.

The Global Auto Industry Challenge

I was watching this happen. It was at that time, Japan, Japan was just taking our cars like we were a bunch of babies. I always say candy from a baby. That’s how easy it was. Now it’s Japan, but it’s China and it’s a lot of countries. This was one of the biggest reasons I ran for president in the first place. You know, it was probably the auto industry that was most abused. You were the most abused.

There are a lot of industries that are abused. We stopped it, but now I could put the brakes on. Not only stop, I now know the game a little better. You know, I had never been a politician before. I got to the White House, I said, yeah, I’ve never done this before, but I had to learn and I had some great people. Bob Lighthizer was great, our trade representative, but we had some people that I didn’t like. I wouldn’t have picked in retrospect, we had some clinkers, but, but you have to understand I just got there.

I was only in Washington 17 times and I never stayed over, so I wasn’t a part of Washington society. I didn’t, it wasn’t my thing. I was a New York person, developer, did great. And I knew New York, but I didn’t know Washington, so I came, I had to rely on people. Sometimes I’d rely on RINOs and that’s what I’d get, I’d get a RINO. And that wasn’t so good, but we had mostly great people, but we had some ones that I would not have again.

And we’re going to finish the job that we really brilliantly started because we had numbers that the ambassador gave you some of them. I don’t want to bore you by going through it, but he gave you some numbers that were unprecedented. I intend for the triumph of the American auto industry to be among my greatest legacies. I want it to be a legacy. I want American companies to not only dominate the American market, but also the foreign markets as well. They buy so many of our cars. It’s so, so horrible, but you know, they only buy them if they’re made in their countries.

Trump’s Relationship with China

China, I don’t object. Look, President Xi was, and I would say is a very good friend. We broke up a little bit, you know, the way friendships break up a thing called the China virus broke us up. I think that’s understandable. It cost the world about $50 trillion and tens of millions of lives all over the world. I think that’s a reason. But now I’ve always had a very good relationship with a very, very strong, smart man. He’s strong and smart, meaning he wants to take your auto industry and so does every other leader of a country.

They want to take your industry, all of our industry, and we’re not going to do that. We won’t, we won’t let them play that game and it’s not even hard. And you’ll understand that in a moment. I want German car companies to become American car companies. I want them to build plants in America. Otherwise, I’d rather not have their cars here. Instead of American workers worrying about losing their jobs to foreign nations, I want foreign nations to be worried about losing their jobs to America. That’s going to happen.

It’s going to happen. And I hope the Democrats will, will go along with us, but we’ll get it done one way or the other. I hope they’re going to go along with us. It’s so good.

Voter ID and Election Integrity

It’s like so many things they don’t like voter ID. Why aren’t they approving voter ID? Democrats don’t want voter ID. You know why? Because they want to cheat. But they don’t want to. I say, oh, they don’t. When I first thought, I thought I was seeing things. I thought I was like, I didn’t hear that when I first started this, I’ll just say the Democrats will not approve voter ID. And it’s only gotten worse.

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, just passed a bill. He signed a bill that you’re not even allowed to ask anybody whether or not they have voter ID. Not only can’t you use it, you can’t even ask. I think it’s a crime or something. I could ask the Secretary of State. No, I think it’s a crime. I think it’s a crime. If you ask somebody, do you have ID, voter ID, let’s lock that guy up. In other words, it’s not a crime to vote illegally, but it’s a crime to ask whether or not. There’s only one reason for that. You know the reason? Cheating. They want to cheat. There’s only one reason.

It’s crazy. No country in the world has a policy like that. Mail-in voting is all gone all over the world. All these things that we still fight over, they’re all gone. So we have to win a big election and we’re going to straighten it out. But we’ve got to straighten it out. Because you have two things. You have borders and you have good elections. You’ve got to have them. And it would be nice to have a free press, which we don’t have at all. We have a terrible press. But those three things we have and we have to straighten them out.

Trump’s Offer to Global Companies

So here is the deal that I will be offering to the world, to companies outside of our world, big companies, powerful companies that have become powerful because we were stupid. We were stupid. We allowed them to come in and raid and rape our country. That’s what they did. Oh, he used the word rape. That’s right. I used the word rape. They raped our country.

The United States will give you the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world. And it’s the best. It’s the best. We have the most and we have the highest quality. We have the lowest regulatory burdens. And they were going to be made. You know, I cut I cut regulations more than any president in history in a four year term.

I cut more than any president by four times, they say four times. I let the country do what they have to do. A lot of those regulations have been put back on by Crooked Joe and by Kamala. And it angers me so much because it’s so bad. People shaking my hand backstage, sir, we had the best four years we’ve ever had. And now they’re dying. I think they’re going to so many people to tell me they’re going out of business and free access to the best and biggest market on the planet.

We’re going to give anybody that comes in free access to the best and biggest market anywhere on the planet. That’s here. But we’ve got to keep it that way, because if we keep going like this, we’re not going to have the best or biggest market for long. But only if you make your products here in America. In other words, you get all of these assets, but you have to make your product here in America and you have to hire American workers.

Trump’s Tax and Tariff Plan

And if these companies don’t take the deal, we’re lowering the taxes way down. Then they’ll have to pay a tax when they or tariff when they send their car or product into the United States. And we will use the hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff dollars to benefit the American citizens and pay down our debt. In short, a period of time, it’s got to be very quick.

Think of it in a short period of time, a deficit of about one point eight trillion dollars. I’ve heard it was two trillion. It’s never been anywhere close to this, by the way. Two trillion dollars a year will be reduced to practically nothing. And eventually our country will be making substantially more money over and above cost. And we will start a massive debt reduction and also further tax cuts.

In other words, what I’m doing is I took it from almost 40 percent your taxes, I reduced them to 21 percent. So that small corporations, everybody, even inheritance tax or a death tax. If you have a small business and you want to pass it on to your son and daughter, if you love them, if you don’t love them, I would say just don’t even bother listening to this part. Is there anybody in the group that does not love their children, where they where you want to raise your hand and say, sir, please don’t waste our time with this.

But on the assumption you want to leave it to your children, then you have no estate tax or death tax. They want to end that immediately. And it really pertained to farms where a farm could be valuable, but they don’t have cash. They have a valuable farm and they love their farm and they want to be farmers. It’s a great way of life. People love it.

Estate Tax and Small Businesses

DONALD TRUMP: They don’t want to do anything else. But they left the farm and then they have to pay a tremendous tax and they borrow the money from the bank. And within two, three years, and many almost, I guess, 62 percent of the time, they say they end up losing their farm to the banks. I got rid of that.

No, there’s no estate or death tax at all for the farmers and small business owners that they want to end. That is a big deal. I brought it down from almost 40 percent to 21 percent and now, and that makes us very competitive in the world. Don’t forget, the world is like states used to be.

The world, people will take their businesses and they’re loyal to their stockholders. And in many cases, the people that run the big businesses are not American. They couldn’t care less for our country. They follow the dollar or they follow, we better keep them following the dollar, by the way.

We’re going to keep them following the dollar. That’ll be another thing, because that’s, we’re losing that fast. We are losing that fast. But we’re going to bring it down and we brought it down to 21. That made us competitive. Not the best at all, but competitive. Now I’m bringing it down to 15 percent. But that’s totally subject to you building your product, making your product in America.

Trump’s Tax Plan

I had calls. So we’re getting it down to 15. And now you’re just about the most competitive, other than certainly for a big country. But you just about the most competitive at 15. That’s the beauty. They’re going to all move back. They’re going to all move back. They’re all coming back.

And then we’re going to protect them so they don’t get hurt with tariffs on people that aren’t building here. And they’re going to come in and they’re going to build here because they don’t want to pay those stiff tariffs. So we will build this policy and it’s called build it in America plan. It’s build it in America because when foreign leaders and CEOs call me up to complain about our tariffs, my answer will be very simple.

Build it in America. You don’t have any tariffs. Build it right here in Detroit. You don’t have any tariffs. Build it in Dearborn or Lansing or Grand Rapids or Flint. You don’t have any taxes. You don’t have any taxes or tariffs or anything. So we’re going to take that. We’re going to take that. Remember, we started at 40. Everyone said you’ll never get it down to 30. I got it down to 21.

And that caused the biggest renaissance in the history of our country. We had the greatest period of success in the history of our country. We did more revenue at 21 percent than we did at close to 40 percent. People were going wild. Businesses were flourishing. Small businesses were going through the roof. Big businesses, I was allowing them to have hundreds of billions of dollars, Apple as an example. They brought in hundreds of billions of dollars.

We had restrictive covenants where they couldn’t bring money back into our country. Two reasons. The tax was too high. It was so ridiculous. Nobody would do it. You had to pay 50, 60 percent tax to bring money. So they said, well, we’ll just leave it there and we’ll develop in Europe or Asia, wherever the money was. But think of this.

We brought in trillions of dollars because I made it possible. I made the tax rate fair, reasonable, like a reasonable person would bring it in for a reasonable tax. And also I made the bureaucracy very easy. They had to hire four different law firms to get their money back if they wanted to bring it back.

Made in America Corporate Tax Rate

So what I’m proposing very simply, then, is a 15 percent made in America corporate tax rate, cutting it from 21 percent all the way down to 15 percent, but only for those who make their product in the U.S.A. It’s very simple and beautiful. And I was. And I was called by a couple of the top people in Wall Street, I sort of know a lot of them. They said, who gave you that idea? It’s so simple. And I said, you know, it’s a great idea. I have another one coming up for you that you’re going to like just as much.

You’re going to love maybe more. Oh, you’ve got a big one coming toward the end. I want to save it for the end. This way you’re going to stay around and you’re going to be so happy. It’s just pins and needles you’re sitting. No, I have I have one coming that I think is just incredible. But this is something that is going to revolutionize our country because it’s not only auto companies, it’s also others. But I think in particular, this is going to be something that is going to really lead to the renaissance in Detroit and in our country.

But in Detroit, this place will be booming. This place is going to be booming. And when you couple that with what I’m going to say in a little while, it’s going to really be booming. So U.S.-based carmakers and manufacturers will also be rewarded with expanded research and development tax credits, very substantial, where they will be able to write off 100 percent of their cost of heavy machinery and other equipment necessary to build a plant in the first year and full expensing for manufacturing investments and all helping to build these sprawling state of the art plants.

The Need for Industrial Superpower

Our country needs to be an industrial superpower in the world. I have a friend who makes plants. He builds plants. That’s what he does better than anybody in the world. And I said to him, he’s a supporter, actually. I said to him, I want to see a plant. I want to see a really great auto plant. Where would we go? Let’s go see one. And he said, well, we’ll have to go to Mexico. I said, what? We have to go to Mexico? I said, I want to see Mexico. I want to see here. He said, well, the big ones are really built in Mexico. They’re building some really big ones right now.

You know, your stupid union leader, Sean Fain or whatever the hell his name is, this stupid, stupid guy, he’s playing around all electric cars, everything else. Did you see your numbers in the last few months? What’s happening? You’re losing your whole business.

They’re building the biggest plants in the entire world. This guy builds them. That’s what he’s good at. If you said build an apartment, he wouldn’t want to do it. He couldn’t do it. But he can build an auto plant. All the top of the line, all automated. You press a button and the plant opens up. Biggest in the world. And you know who’s building them? China. They’re building them at levels that nobody’s ever seen before, right across the border.

And they think they’re going to make cars there. And they’re going to put you all out of business and they’re going to sell them across the border and they’re not going to have a tax. No, they’re wrong. They’re going to pay a 100 percent or maybe even a 200 percent tariff because we’re not going to let them come in to our country and destroy what’s left of our auto industry because it’s a failing industry, just like it’s a failing country right now.

We’re a failing country. You know, we’re a nation in decline. I hope you know that doesn’t make me feel good to say it, but we’re not going to be a nation in decline for very long.

Reciprocity in Trade

Perhaps the most important element of my plan to make America extraordinarily wealthy again has to do with reciprocity. It’s a word that’s very important in my plan because, you know, we generally don’t charge tariffs. I did. I started that process. It was so great with the vans and the small trucks, et cetera, I told you about, but we really don’t charge.

I mean, China will charge us a 200 percent tariff. Brazil is a big charger. The biggest charger of all is India. India is a very big charger. We have a great relationship with India. I did. And with especially the leader, Modi, he’s a great leader, great man, really is a great man. He’s brought it together. He’s done a great job. But they probably charge as much. I mean, I think they probably charge more than in many ways China, but they do it with a smile. You know, they do it sort of a nicer charge.

Thank you so much for purchasing from India. Harley Davidson came to the White House a long time ago during my third year or second year. And I met with them and they were based, I guess, in Wisconsin. And I said, how’s business? Good. Good. What what are the bad countries? Well, India is very tough. And they gave me some others. Why tariffs? I say, why? Why? What are they? And they said, like, one hundred and fifty percent, some massive amount. I said, so do you sell many motorcycles and because you think people want to buy a Harley, right? Anyway, now we sell very few in India, but they want us to go there.

They said, if you go there and build your plant there, we’re not going to charge you anything. I mean, you can do whatever you want. I said, I don’t like that. And lo and behold, I see they went and they built a plant and now they they do their business with India. They probably do it outside of India, too. They built a very big plant. Many countries, they do that. And then all of a sudden you hear that they’re leaving Milwaukee or they’re leaving wherever they may be located. It’s very sad to see it. And it’s so simple.

Space Technology and Biden’s Circles

I mean, you know, this isn’t like Elon with his rocket ships that land within 12 inches on the moon where they wanted to land or he gets the. Engines back. That was the first I realized I said, who the hell did that? I saw engines about three, four years ago. These things were coming, cylinders, no wings, no nothing. And they’re coming down very slowly, landing on a raft in the middle of the ocean someplace with a circle.

Boom. Reminded me of the Biden circles that he used to have. Right. He’d have eight circles and he couldn’t fill them up. But then I heard he beat us with the popular vote. I don’t know. I don’t know. Couldn’t fill up the eight circles. I always loved those circles. It was so beautiful. It was so beautiful to look at. In fact, the person that did that, that was the best thing about his level of that circle was great.

But they couldn’t get people. So they used to have the press stand in those circles because they couldn’t get the people. And I heard we lost. Oh, we lost. No, we’re never going to let that happen again.

Abuse by Other Countries and Politicians

But we’ve been abused by other countries. We’ve been abused by our own politicians really more than other countries. I can’t blame them. We’ve been abused by people that represent us in this country. Some of them stupid, some of them naive, and some of them crooked, frankly. But interestingly, it’s often those allies that we consider to be friends that have been the greatest abusers. We have some great abusers.

I’ll give you an example. The European Union sounds so nice. The European Union of Countries, oh, it’s so nice, they’re brutal. We have a $200 billion deficit with them now higher than that, 250 something. And like I asked at the time, Angela, Angela, how many Chevrolets do we have in the middle of Berlin? Oh, I do not know. Perhaps, perhaps none. You’re right, Angela. You’re right. How about Frankfurt? How many do we have? How many Fords do we have in Frankfurt? Oh, I don’t think any. And yet they send their cars to us like a bunch of dummies we are. BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, by the millions and millions and millions. And we’re not doing that.

Trump’s Stance on International Trade

DONALD TRUMP: We’re not doing that crap anymore, okay? Now they’re going to have to play by our rules. They’re going to have to play by our rules. But China, of course, was the biggest abuser. I mean, they were a professional abuser. They did things to us, and they go down as a developing nation. We are a developing nation, or we’re a developing nation, too. Just take a look at Detroit. Detroit’s a developing, Detroit’s a developing area, a hell of a lot more than most places in China.

So we’re not going to let this happen any longer. And I don’t think it’ll be, I don’t think it’ll be possible for bad politicians to stop it. I don’t think so, because we’ve suffered too long and too hard. And I fixed much of it during my four years, but felt that during the COVID period, it would not be the right time to be going, doing this with countries. I renegotiated with Japan, I renegotiated with South Korea, I renegotiated with many. But you know, with the COVID, everybody was just literally devastated by that scourge. It was devastating, it was not the right time.

Negotiations with Japan

So I had to slow it up a little bit. I was hitting them really hard. Shinzo Abe was great. He was assassinated. What a great man he was. When I went to Shinzo, I said, Shinzo, we have to, I got to know him very well. He was really a friend of mine. He was a great, great man, actually, loved by the Japanese people. He got sick, he had to take a leave of absence for a period of time, but he was going back and he would have gone back and easily gone back. And he was just getting ready to do it. He was, he was much better, I think he was probably cured of what he had. And he was going back.

But I said to him, Shinzo, we have to talk about trade. I’m sorry to bring it up, I’m sorry. This is the most one-sided deal I’ve ever seen. You send millions of cars to us and we can’t send you a car. They didn’t accept any of our cars. You send all of your farm products to us and you don’t want to accept our farm products. I’m sorry, Shinzo, we’re going to have to negotiate something. He looked at me, he goes, I know.

I said, what do you know? He said, well, I know that you were going to be coming back to me. And I know that it hasn’t been fair. I said, well, how did it happen? He said, well, we’d ask for things and the Americans would agree to it. Your representatives, your presidents, Republicans too, by the way, I’m not talking just Democrats. He said, we were friends, he would say this. I probably wouldn’t say it if he were around, because it’s not very nice, but he told the truth.

He said, I said, how did you get these deals? He said, we would ask and they would approve. And we were amazed ourselves, but I knew you’d be coming to see me. And I said, I have to see you, Shinzo. And we made a new deal with Japan. But we were stuck with an old one, so I couldn’t negotiate as good as I normally would. But we made it palatable and we were going to really make it palatable when this one came up. But he was great.

He looked at me, I’ll never forget it quite. He said, he called me Donald, Donald. I knew that you would be coming back, because I knew that you understood it. But he also said that other people didn’t, actually, it was quite sad, actually.

The U.S. Debt and Trade Deficits

And it’s that way. I would look at these deals and say, who negotiated these deals? They were so bad. It’s amazing that we even exist, but we have 36 trillion in debt. We do have 36 trillion, we can’t forget that. So it’s not like, oh, gee, that’s been, we’ve been a little bit unlucky or something. No, we’ve been just, for years and years and years, we’ve been accumulating, we have these deficits that are monstrous. We had five, six, seven, 800 billion deficit with China, just alone with China.

And today it was announced we have the highest deficit we’ve ever had, almost $2 trillion. Think of that. We have almost, and we have the highest deficit we’ve ever had with China. And that won’t last long. It’s not going to last long. We’ll be able to do something about it, because China wants to do business with us, but they think we’re stupid. They think we’re stupid people. And then they see a president, and then they see a person that is representing the Democrat Party and got no votes and was the first one out.

Trump’s Comments on Political Opponents

She was the first one out. Think of it. She was the first one out. She never made it to Iowa. 22 people running, and she was the first one to quit. And now she’s running, and it’s all right, but nobody’s ever had a run against two people before. First, I had a run against him, then we had the debate, and his numbers weren’t good, and it looked like he was going to lose, so they said, you’re going to lose, and we want you out. And eventually, he agreed to go out.

He didn’t want to. He’s a very angry man, by the way, and he hates her. And then it was a question. They have a person in the state who some people talked about. They had a lot of people, but they had about 12 people, and they put her in, 12 people plus her. She was number 13. She was rated number 13. They had 12 people that they wanted more, but they didn’t want to be politically incorrect, and they chose her, and we’re running against her.

But if she gets in, it’ll be a disaster for this country. Basically, if a country or any country is charging us tariffs, very important, reciprocal, if they’re charging us tariffs for a certain product or tariffs at all, if they’re charging us tariffs at all, which almost all of them do, then we will likewise charge them tariffs, and we will quickly reciprocate.

Trump’s Tariff Policy

In other words, we have countries that are charging us 150% tariff, and we charge them 2%. And I actually went to a politician, a senator from the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I’ll figure out, because he wasn’t able to run, because I wouldn’t endorse him, because I called him the anti-tariff person. I thought he was not a bright person. And he was one of the few that said, no, no, we cannot charge tariffs. I said, but they’re charging us 150%.

So can we charge them 100%, sir? No, we can’t. Why? It’s not free trade. I said, really, not free trade? Well, what about them? No, sir, it’s not free trade. Can we charge them 50? They’re charging us 150. Can we charge them 50? He goes, no, sir, it’s not free trade. I said, you’re either the dumbest human being I’ve ever met, or you’re a crook, one or the other.

And he’s no longer a senator. He decided not to run. But I think it was a disgrace. I had a lot of problems with him. But basically, one of two things will happen. They’re going to call us, or I will call them and say, look, we can continue to play this game, or we can save a lot of energy and pain and bookkeeping, and we’ll just all drop the tariffs. Right? We’ll just all drop the tariffs.

Or we can get paid royally every time a shipment of their goods comes to our shores, and we’ll make a lot of money. One way or the other, we win. But its reciprocity will probably, I think, for the most part, they’re going to drop the tariffs. Right now, they’re not going to drop them. We have countries that are charging us 100 percent, 150 percent. Think of it. And we charge them nothing. It’s been a pillaging of our country.

Trump’s Foreign Relations

It’s been a terrible, terrible thing. This has been going on for a long time. I started changing it a lot fast. I changed it with a lot of countries. A lot of countries don’t like me. I get always bad publicity. This one doesn’t like me. Germany doesn’t like me. A lot of countries don’t like me. They say, who do you like better, sleepy Joe Biden or Trump? I like Biden better. Yeah, because he didn’t let them do what they’re doing.

He doesn’t have a clue, the guy. He just goes to sleep at four o’clock every damn day. He doesn’t have a clue. And he’s destroying, you know, they’re destroying our country. You see, that’s the real threat to democracy, stupid people. That’s the threat. Our biggest threat to democracy is stupid people.

Trump’s Plan for Foreign Investment

But there’s a third thing that can happen, and that’s the fact that if they want to avoid this payment, and this is the best thing of all, they can come in and build a plant or a factory in the United States and spend all of their money and build, and I don’t care what country it is, and they’re going to hire American workers, and they’re going to have a factory in the United States. And then you don’t have to pay a tariff. And won’t it be beautiful? We’ll have job numbers like you’ve never had before. And that’s actually, to me, the best of the three things.

So it’s a very simple thing to understand. And they’ve been doing it for years. But they do it very quietly, and they do it intelligently. And a lot of people don’t see what they’re doing. As an example, you want to sell cars in China, they tell you, build your plant in China. If you don’t build a plant in China, we’re going to charge you a tariff. You’re never going to pay it. So a lot of people go over to China and they build their plant.

The only question I have is, where do we stop with reciprocity? Because, frankly, we have much more to offer. And they’ve been screwing us for so many years that we’re allowed to get some of that back. So I say, do we want to stop on an even basis? We won’t do this, we won’t do that. Or do we want to stop on a basis, you don’t do it to us, but we’re going to still do it to you a little bit. And that’s where I am, I think. And in a way, they owe it to us, you know?

In a way, they owe it to us, because they’ve been taking advantage of us for decades. And it’s made us, it’s injured us. We’re injured, we’re an injured country from trade.

Trump’s NATO Policy

And, you know, with NATO, when I got there, 28 countries they had at the time, and only seven were paid. The rest of them weren’t paying, or they were paying a smaller amount than they were supposed to pay, including Germany, by the way. Germany wasn’t paying, can you believe? Because they said, we’re stupid, we’re going to take care of them anyway, why should they pay? A lot of the countries felt that way.

And I made them pay, I said, you got to pay. And one person at a very close meeting, press knew about it a little bit, but they never reported it, because it was a good thing, not a bad thing. So naturally, you don’t hear about that. But it was at a meeting, and he stood up, the head of a country, one of the countries.

He said, so does that mean that if we don’t pay, you will not protect us from Russia? Used to be the Soviet Union, now it’s Russia. Sort of the same thing. I said, that’s what it means, you will not protect us. I said, are you delinquent? Yes, let’s say we’re delinquent. I will not protect you under any form. You will not be protected.

And the following day, we took in billions and billions of dollars. The money came in, and Stoltenberg, the Secretary General, a good man, he said, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Obama would come and make a speech and leave. Bush would come and make a speech and leave. Trump would come and look at the statement and say, be it. Because we were almost paying for all of NATO. So we were getting screwed on NATO and screwed on trade. A double.

Nobody else would have done, this is crazy. So we’re protecting you, and you’re taking advantage of us on trade. I said, sorry, we’re not going to take it anymore. But the money came, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars in NATO. Hundreds of billions. And by the way, they should be paying three to 4%, not 2%, okay? They’re 2%, they should be much higher than that. But that’s up for whoever is going to be the next president.

Trump’s Criticism of Political Opponents

I think Kamala, it’s not going to be high on her list. I don’t think anything that we’re talking about today is high on her list. The whole country is going to be like, you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands. She destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed, along with Newsom, California.

And we’re not going to let her do that to this country. We’re not going to let it happen. So, we are the piggy bank that everyone wants that someday we will continue along the path. We’ve been, really, it’s been an amazing path. It’s been a horrible period of time. But almost the last four years, we will be, I will tell you that if I get elected, we will be a piggy bank stronger than ever before, but we will be a fool no longer. We will, if you get her, lose our wealth. We’re going to lose our power, and we’ll also lose our reserve currency status, which will be like really losing a war.

Trump on the U.S. Dollar and Foreign Relations

If we lose that, it’ll be horrible, but we’re losing it right now. You’re losing your reserve currency, the dollar. The dollar. So many countries aren’t part of this. Look, China wants to take that over. That’s one of the many things that they want to take over. We can deal with China, you know? We can deal with China, and we can deal with Russia, and we can deal with North Korea.

Obama, at our meeting prior to taking over, when I took over, it’s just a ritual. At a meeting, he said, “The biggest problem is North Korea.” And very quickly, it was nasty for a while. Little rocket man, a lot of insults. Remember when he said, “I have a red button on my desk.”

Trump on North Korea

DONALD TRUMP: I said, “I have one too, but mine’s bigger, and mine works.” Remember that? He said that. And a lot of people were saying, this is getting to be very heated. And then he called, and he wanted to meet, and we met, and I got along great with him.

I hate to say it, because the press goes crazy when you say that, but that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. A lot of nuclear weapons. But we got along very well. You had no problem. Nobody was threatened after that. It’s threatened now. You could very well end up in World War III right now.

You’re very close to it. You’re closer than ever. This is the closest we’ve ever come to World War III. You are so close to it, because you have incompetent people in the White House.

Trump on the U.S. Dollar and Trade

So that would reduce us if we lose the dollar. That would reduce us to third world status very quickly. But again, I would come into play, and tariffs would come into play, and I’d call those countries that want to stay away, but they do business. They come in, and they take our money, and they take our jobs just so easily.

And I would call them, and I’d say, if a country, let’s say, ready to go to China with their currency or someplace else, but China’s about 99% of the problem, in all fairness, I would say to them, if you do that, I’m going to hit you with tariffs like you’ve never seen before, or I’m going to not let you trade with the United States, and I’m going to also hit you with tariffs. Double whammy if you get anything through, but you’re not, because we’re not going to do any business with you. And they will then call us, and they will say, sir, we have decided that we love the dollar very much, and we’re going to stay. That’s what they will say every single time.

So tariffs are a very important thing. They need a PR agent to straighten out that word. If I was Mr. Tariff, I would say, please get me a PR agent. I have to straighten out. It’s one of the most beautiful words in the whole world. It’s going to make us wealthy again. The other word is reciprocity is going to make us wealthy again. We’re going to be a very wealthy country very quickly. Very, very quickly.

Trump on Historical U.S. Wealth

You know, our greatest wealth probably proportionately was in the 1880s and 90s and the early 1900s where we had so much cash. They would set up committees. They didn’t know what to do with their wealth. We had such wealth in this country. They didn’t know what to do with their wealth. They had no idea. They would set up, we had so much money, all from tariffs. There was no income tax. And then they went to the income tax stuff, and it was a whole different story.

Then you had the Depression. And a lot of people said, tariffs maybe caused it, but it didn’t, it wasn’t. Tariffs came in in 1932 after the Depression. They tried putting tariffs on to see if they could save. They said, we gotta save this thing. But it was long gone, it was gone.

Trump’s Currency and Trade Policy

I will do this with each and every abandoning country, if they abandon us, meaning they abandon our currency. And our reserve currency will be stronger than ever before. We’ll have everybody in there. Everybody will be happy to be in there, including China. Because they’ll tell China the same thing. If you want to play games with us, we’re not going to trade with you.

They make a trillion dollars a year with us. They built our military. They make so much money. I said, we’re not going to do any business. We’ll go cold turkey. A lot of people would like to do that anyway. But we’re going to go cold turkey, and we’re going to go with 100% and 150% tariffs. So if anything does get through, you’re going to have to pay tariffs.

Trump on Negotiations with China

China’s very smart, I’ll tell you. When I put the tariffs on the steel, they were very unhappy, but they didn’t tell me. They said, it doesn’t matter, we’re China. I said, it doesn’t bother them, so then ask them for more. That was my initial reaction. We started at 25%. I said, they said it doesn’t matter, and I said, all right, so ask them for more. So we asked them for more, 10%, it didn’t bother them.

That’s what they said, but it did bother them. But they’re great players, they’re great poker players. It didn’t bother them. I said, well, ask them for more, ask them for more, more, until it bothers them. And finally, I got a call from President Xi. He said, you’re killing us with the tariffs. And then we got along after that, it’s very strange. But they’re great poker players, they’re great negotiators.

All these countries are great negotiators. The only one that isn’t is the US. We’re the dumb country. We’re like the pot of gold that’s rapidly shrinking.

Trump on Iran and Oil Trade

So very much like I told them that if they buy oil from Iran, I would not be trading with them. Iran was broke when I left office, and I don’t want them to be broke. I want them to be a strong country. I just don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon, it’s very simple. And you protect Israel, and frankly, you protect the Middle East. I want to protect the Middle East, the whole Middle East. And I hate to see this death to everybody. People that have nothing to do with anything are being killed all over the place on both sides.

Nobody wants that, we have to protect everybody. And China didn’t buy any oil. I said, if you buy one barrel of oil from Iran, one barrel, I said, then you’re going to not do any business with the United States. And we’re going to oppose tariffs if you do get something through, very substantial, over 100%.

And they said, we’ll pass. I told this to President Xi, he said, we’ll pass. They didn’t do any business, and Iran was, and I said this to many countries, by the way, not just China. I mean, many countries, China’s worse than China, you want to really know the truth.

But China seems to be the one we talk about. But before I came along, nobody talked about China. If they had a free pass, they were going, run silent, run low, right? You know that expression, submarine, nobody knew. But I woke up our country a little bit, but Iran was broke. They had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah, and I didn’t want to see them broke. I want them to be thriving, but I just had to negotiate.

Trump on Recent Foreign Policy

The only problem was, he was the only problem. The election took place, and it was very shocking to a lot of people. And when they took over, they didn’t do anything. They didn’t do anything. They actually did the opposite. They allowed everybody to go and buy oil. They allowed everybody to do all of those things, and Iran became very wealthy again. They now have $300 billion in cash. They’re very wealthy.

They control Iraq, which was a stupid move, going Iraq. I remember I said, don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. But I said it as a civilian. Then they did it. I said, okay, you’ve done it, keep the oil. But they didn’t do that either. So we go in, we blow up countries, and then we leave. We got nothing except dead people all over the place on both sides.

How stupid are we? That was a Cheney deal and a Bush. How stupid are we? Not just Democrats, it’s both. I’m equally angry at both, because we have humanity to think about also. You do, you have humanity to think about. And all of these things, they should have never happened. Ukraine should have never happened. October 7th should have never happened. If you had smart people at the White House that knew something, a little bit of something, it wouldn’t have happened. Think of the world, how different it would be. You wouldn’t have Ukraine, Russia. You wouldn’t have had October 7th. You wouldn’t have this horrible thing that’s going on. You wouldn’t have had inflation. You wouldn’t have had the worst, most embarrassing day in our history.

Trump on Afghanistan

We were leaving Afghanistan. I’m the one that got him down, but I would have kept Bagram. You know why I would have kept Bagram? It was one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons, one hour away.

So you see, the ideas and the policy are important, but the most important thing of all is the messenger. Because I could give that same message to a stiff, and it wouldn’t resonate at all with the other side. You have to have the right messenger. Somebody said, we love Trump policy, but we don’t like Trump. I think they do. They said that women don’t like me. I think women love me because they want to be safe. And with me, they’re safe. With other people, they’re not safe, it’s true.

Trump’s Tariff and Trade Policy

So remember, I want tariffs. But a very, very big, easy, and uncomplicated part of it is reciprocity, because that comes along with it very simply. And all tariffs against our nation must come off. They have to come off. They gotta come off immediately, because we’re going to meet them with an equal tariff. And they will come off for the most part. But if they don’t, they have to pay a big price.

So next, in addition to this rather easy thing to understand, by the way, does everyone understand this? Does everybody, do you understand? Is there anybody that doesn’t understand it? Would you please raise your hand? Raise your hand. Does anybody not understand it? I’d say, how simple is that? I’d like to see the person. I really don’t, sir. Didn’t they have a front page story? And we had a couple of dummies in the room.

But we will implement further protections for critical industries that are fundamental to our national interests. And those include, above all, steel and the car industry. The car industry is critical to us. We can’t fight a war if we can’t make cars and trucks and engines and transmissions and drivetrains. Surrendering our car industry is not an option. We have to make our car industry brilliant again. We have to make it bigger. I’m going to make it bigger than it was ever before. Now, I’m going to make it real, very quick it’s going to go.

But to bring it to that level, I guess I’ll need a little more time. But I won’t have that time. But I’m going to hand it over to people. We’re going to make this country so strong. And it’s going to be so much easier to run. And I think we’re going to end up actually having a lot of support from the other party. I really believe that. I think it’s too basic, it’s too basic.

Trump on China’s Auto Industry in Mexico

So as I said, China is currently building gigantic auto plants in Mexico. And they think that they’re going to sell all of these cars into the United States, which would destroy Michigan, totally destroy your state. But it’s not going to happen, not gonna happen, not even close. They might as well stop building the damn plants.

They are giants. Sir, you really have to see them. I said, I don’t want to see them. I will impose whatever tariffs are required, 100%, 200%, 1,000%. They’re not going to sell any cars into the United States with those plants. They’re building them close to our border so that they can have easy shipping. Because they’re used to having stupid people to deal with. We’re not going to let it happen. Those jobs are coming back to Michigan, and they’re coming back to other states, and they’re coming back to our country, and they’re going to make America great again, that’s it.

Trump on USMCA Renegotiation

And to that end, I’m announcing today that upon taking office, I will formally notify Mexico and Canada of my intention to invoke the six-year renegotiation provisions of the USMCA that I put in. That was the hardest thing I had to get. They didn’t want that. They wanted to have it long. But I wanted to, because there’s always little tricks they want to play. I said, nope, I want to be able to renegotiate in six years. Otherwise, we’re not making the deal.

And I got it, and it’s coming due very soon. I’m going to have a lot of fun. And that’ll address these concerns. And I’ll also seek strong new protections against trans shipments so that China and other countries cannot smuggle their products and auto parts into the United States tax free through Mexico. To the detriment of our workers and our supply chains. They smuggle this stuff in. They don’t pay anything. We’re going to have very strong language on that.

It’s not hard once you know about it, but nobody, no politician knows about it. And when they signed an after deal, there were some mistakes made, typos, like typos, there were mistakes made. And they were going to take care of it the following day. 30 years later, they said, whatever happened. Like mistakes like on the numbers, which were always against us. Nobody ever did anything about it except me. I terminated NAFTA. That’s a pretty big thing.

A lot of people said it would be impossible to do. I got it done, and we have a great deal now. What we have to do is make it much better even. We’ll be able to do that very shortly.

Trump’s Criticism of Political Opponents

But while I have the build it in America plan, Kamala Harris has the build it in China plans. This is really a build it in China plan. She’s going to destroy our country. Her plan is so stupid. Every policy she has rewards companies for shipping jobs overseas. Most significantly, Kamala is a giant tax hiker. The tax queen, they call her, is demanding a shocking, I don’t even, to be honest with you, after watching her on 60 Minutes, and on watching that horrible statement that she made, they call it a word salad. I don’t really like those words because it was really worse than that.

But after watching that, I don’t think she’s interested in 33. I don’t think she has any idea what’s happening, okay? I think she’s dumber than hell. And we’ve had enough of that for four years. We’re not going to have it any longer. Because we’re not going to be a country if we have it. You will see that. You’ve gotta see. No, you’ve gotta see.

Trump’s Criticism of Media

And to think that a member of the media, under this big press corps, where they get free licensing, they shouldn’t have free licensing when they do that, and they change her answer. They take it out, throw it away, and put in a totally different answer in order to protect her, and they get caught. CBS should lose their license. You know they have a license. They have a license, which is worth billions of dollars, and they pay nothing. All of these networks are all crooked as hell. You saw that with ABC.

They go after me, not her. They go after JD. How good is JD doing? Isn’t he doing good? They go after JD, but not this character. This character that calls himself a knucklehead. I’ve never seen that in a debate, except, well, he’s a knucklehead. I don’t want to say I’m a knucklehead, because then I say, well, I’m quoting him.

Trump’s Response to Critics

DONALD TRUMP: They’ll say, Trump just called himself, that’s how crooked they are. So I say, well, actually, it’s amazing that he calls himself a knucklehead. Normally I’d say, he calls, so I don’t want to do that, because if I say that, they’re going to say, see, Trump called himself a knucklehead. No, I don’t call myself a knucklehead. I call myself somebody that wants to make our country great again, very simple.

Trump’s Criticism of Kamala Harris’s Tax Policies

The tax queen is demanding a shocking 33% tax hike on all domestic production. That means that everybody’s going to leave our country and go to another country where they can pay 15%, 16%, 18%, 19%. It’s very simple. It’s not that complicated. She wants the largest capital gains tax, largest gains tax. Think of this, in the history of our country, she even plans to tax unrealized capital gains. Think of it, unreal, think of what that means.

It’s an unrealized gain, and she wants to tax it. How do you do that, okay? She wants to tax, and a lot of people are rich, but they have no money. They have good land, or they have something, or they put all their money into their business because they want to have a business that’s going to get better and better and grow and grow.

But they’re rich, but they have no cash. Now they’re going to have to go out and borrow a lot of money to pay a tax. They’re going to have to get good appraisers. They’re going to have to get a lot of accountants. The only one that’s going to make money are appraisers and accountants and lawyers. But those people, they’re all going to leave. They’re all going to go to other countries. So if a company succeeds, it must give a lot of its value to the government.

And if it doesn’t succeed, the government doesn’t take any risk. They don’t lose, but they do lose, really, because they lose all those jobs and all that, all of those important things. If the tax queen gets her way, every company in the United States will leave. I mean, they’re going to leave. They’re not staying here. There’s such competition for companies. It’s like a basketball player, a baseball player, a football player. There’s a lot of competition, no different, just bigger numbers.

Altogether, Kamala’s $4.1 trillion tax hike is projected to reduce GDP by 2%, raise the typical family’s taxes by at least $3,000 a year, lower wages by 1.2%, and kill at least a million full-time jobs. Other than that, I think it’s quite a good plan. It’s just crazy. I will not let that happen to our country. I will keep your taxes low and your job numbers high. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have the highest job. We had the highest job numbers in history in my administration. We’re going to make that look like peanuts.

Trump’s Economic Policy

The theft of our companies, factories, jobs, and wealth by foreign countries is over. We are not going to allow it to happen anymore. And many of those who left will be coming back, and they’re going to be coming back fast. They want to come back. They want to come back. I produced that with the money. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars, came back into our shores once I made that change on the tax law, which had to get approved by Congress, believe it or not.

Next, to reduce costs for both manufacturers and consumers, I will remove ten old regulations for every new regulation. Every time we put on a regulation, we cannot put it on unless. And I did that, and that’s what gave us. We had it up very high. We had about seven to one, it turned out. We had it up high. Now we’re going to bring it up to a newer level, a higher level.

Trump’s Stance on Electric Vehicles

And I will start by terminating Kamala’s insane electric vehicle mandate on day one. It’s killing our car industry. Kamala’s EV mandate is killing the US auto industry. It requires that within just a few years, 67% of all new cars and trucks must be electric. And it doesn’t work for trucks at all, because of their weight, their payload, doesn’t work at all, and because they can’t go far.

I was with the truckers recently, because they came to see me because they don’t know what to do. They say they want us to go all electric with trucks. And I was with one man who’s a giant in the industry, older guy, very smart. Just like 29,000 trucks, 29,000. I said, what the hell, 29,000? He said, yes, sir. And I’ve been buying trucks for 50 years. And every single damn year, those trucks got bigger and better and more efficient and more beautiful.

They could carry more payload, they could do every single year. And then we put apartments on those trucks, he called it an apartment. It’s on the cab where they put these things where they can live. He said, and those damn apartments now are so beautiful that you’d love to live in one of them. He said, I don’t know, I’m going to leave Mar-a-Lago and move into the back of a truck, but it’s beautiful. I can think of worse things, to be honest with you, sort of cool, right? Travel all over the country, but he said, they get better.

So then I said, well, what’s wrong with the electric? He said, if we go from New York to Los Angeles, we have to stop six times, and you’ll never find a charger. But assuming you had charges which you won’t have, they built, as you know, big story, eight chargers someplace in the Midwest. They spent $9 billion, this is like a gas pump with electricity in it, right? Boom, they spent $9 billion and three of them don’t work.

Now, if you did the whole country at that rate, it would cost you $10 trillion, $10 trillion. But they said, we have to stop six times, and they’re long stops, much longer than fill it up like a tank. He said, with a big load of diesel, we can get all the way and we can even start coming back without a stop, and the truck gets lighter as you go along. The other thing he said that people don’t know is that an electric truck would be two and a half times heavier, because batteries are very, very heavy.

And that would mean you’d have to rebuild every bridge in the United States of America, because they’re not designed for that kind of a weight. So every bridge in the United States would have to be rebuilt. And also, he said, a couple of other little problems. He said, the battery is so big, it would take a lot of our payload, would lose 40% of our payload, would have to have battery in there instead.

I said, so when you tell them this, if you’re a child and somebody said that, you’d say, okay, let’s think about it in 10 years or 20 years from now, does it work? He said, we tell them, they said, we don’t care, just we want, you’re going to order all electric trucks. This is like a dictatorship. These people are sick, now they want to make our army tanks all electric.

Trump on Military Equipment

I saved the army tanks up in Ohio, where they make them. And because I hated the fact that they were closing it. When I was president elect, I got called from the great Jim Jordan, congressman from Ohio, in Lima. They have a plant that manufactures the army tanks, they were going to close it. And I looked, I went there, the complexity, the talent, the people they had working there was incredible. And I said, we’re not closing this plant, and now it’s the number one producer, it’s incredible. But now they want to make army tanks that are electric, because they want to go into a country and blast the crap out of it in an environmentally friendly way. But these people are crazy.

And the problem is the electric battery is so big and so heavy that it would have to be in like a wagon that a child pulls behind the tank. They’d pull in a battery, and it would have to be, and it doesn’t work. They want to make everything electric, and yet think about it, they want to make everything electric. And I’m a big fan of electric, I think it’s great, there’s certain applications.

Trump on Elon Musk

I mean, Elon Musk endorsed me powerfully, okay, we love him. And his product is incredible. In fact, he’s doing a new product today, it’s got no steering wheel on it. Do you know that? He’s out in some place announcing a new product with no steering, where I said, well, that wouldn’t be for me, but is that really the future? He knows, I’m giving him full credit, I think he’s incredible. He gave me the most powerful endorsement, he was in Butler with us the other day, you probably saw that, and it was great. He said the whole country, he said America will never survive if Trump doesn’t get in because he knows the alternative, it’s two people.

It’s like the alternative is not acceptable. He’s a strong guy, smart guy, brilliant. But among other things, he does the Tesla, and it’s great. But it doesn’t mean that everybody has to have that. And I tell a story about him, I’m very close to him, I have a lot of respect for him, I think he respects me, he gave me the strongest endorsement you could ever get. But he never once came up to me and said, could you stop knocking electric cars? Because I don’t knock them, I think they’re incredible, but it’s for a group of people. I love them, I think they’re great, but it’s for a certain group of people, where they might work even better.

But not everybody, because some people want to go long distances, they will cost more, you have the fact that they probably are going to be made in China, remember this, I said, we have more oil and gas. We have more liquid gold under our feet, so why would we do the batteries? Where China has that, we have liquid gold, so we want gasoline propelled cars.

Trump on Kamala Harris’s Proposed Car Ban

But it’s even worse than that, because Kamala also co-sponsored a bill to impose a 100% ban on the sale of all new gas powered cars and trucks. So she’s going to ban them, which would kill an estimated 200,000 US auto jobs, including almost every job that you have in a place called Michigan. How do you like that idea? She has a ban, she has a ban, we’re not going to allow them to be made. And honestly, for some, like I’m telling you about the army tanks, I’m telling you about trucks, the battery’s not going to work.

It’s not going to work, the electrics are just not going to work. Maybe in 20 years, 30 years, for who knows, but it’s not going to work. What it will do is drive our country into a depression. The entire industry will go to China for the making of these all electric cars and trucks. The auto industry would be non-existent or dead. It will be dead, it will never be able to survive.

Trump’s Support from Labor Unions

This is one of the major reasons why I’ve been overwhelmingly endorsed by the rank and file membership of the Teamsters, including 62% of the Teamsters members right here in Michigan. They rank and file of the Teamsters nationwide, the firemen, the policemen. The policemen, we have 100% of the place. I don’t think it is one police person in the whole country that endorses lunatic. I don’t believe there’s one policeman in the country. We just got a 400,000 group of police.

The fraternal order, it’s the biggest group in the country. But we’ve got just about every sheriff’s group, every law enforcement group is because we’re going to stop crime. She’s not going to stop crime, she wants open borders. She wants people to pour into our country and destroy our country and to move into your little towns and cities, and your big towns and cities too, and destroy our country. She wants open borders. They put a little trap out there a couple of months ago, they made it a little bit tougher. But they didn’t stop airplanes from flying in with hundreds of thousands of people coming into our country. They’re destroying our country, we can’t let it happen.

The rank and file of the UAW members are also with us too. If you go to the UAW, the auto workers, they’re for us also. Sean Fain, who I never met, the head of the United Auto Workers, did a tremendous disservice to the people he represents by allowing the government of the United States to put out an all electric mandate. Because after I terminate the mandate my first day in office, I will terminate it on my first day.

Trump’s Stance on Alternative Fuel Vehicles

We will go back to making electric cars, gasoline propelled cars, hybrids, and anything else that comes along at the time. Probably hydrogen I’ll do without because when they blow up, you’re unrecognizable, I don’t like that. The hydrogen car, they keep talking about hydrogen. The problem is, when it has a problem, it blows up violently.

So the beautiful woman sitting on the fourth row, you’d never recognize her again. And somehow I don’t want to be able to, I’m not going to buy one of those suckers. I don’t care how good they, if they say they’re really working quite well now, that’s not going to be good enough. But they talk about hydrogen, who knows?

Trump on EV Mandates and Subsidies

The EV mandate is also a costly disaster for working families to comply with Kamala’s quotas. Automakers are forced to jack up the cost of gas powered vehicles artificially to push consumers toward the very expensive electric alternative. So they’re going to raise the prices on one to subsidize the other. That’s not a good thing.

So Kamala gives rich people $7,500 tax breaks to buy luxury electric cars. A lot of people don’t know that, yet she makes the working class pay more for a entry level car that’s powered by gasoline, which we have so much of. And I will reverse this also, this injustice on day one. Kamala’s EV mandate is one of the most demented regulations that’s been conceived.

Trump on EV Mandates and Their Impact

DONALD TRUMP: I mean, we have a lot of them, but this is about as bad as it gets. It’ll destroy US auto manufacturing immediately. It’ll destroy our trucking based supply chain. Destroy our electric grid. Destroy our military. Destroy our roads and bridges with vehicles that are far too heavy. Don’t, we can’t even use them. Destroy the state of Michigan. And it’ll totally destroy our middle class.

That’s why I will not only repeal the federal mandate. I will also stop California from imposing any state level mandate to ban gas powered cars and so. And it’s very simple to solve. Vote for Trump and the gasoline engine will be here for a long, long time. They’re going to be here for a long time. And they’ve got it to a point where it gives very little pollution, very little. It’s amazing what they’ve been able to do. But it’s what people want. It’s much less expensive. It’s what people want.

Trump’s Plan for American Manufacturing and Consumers

The next part of our effort to bring back domestic manufacturing will be to restore the power, confidence, and the wealth of the American consumer. We have to let them be wealthy again. We have to let them make money, not give money like they did. That’s also, energy, their stupid energy policies caused inflation, but also the fact that they gave so much money away that was a very bad thing to do. They thought they were going to buy people, so that’s why they’ve already spent that money.

And they paid for it, actually, more so because of the cost of inflation for them. Over the past four years, commonwealth’s inflation catastrophe has cost the typical family $29,000 in price hikes, so inflation has cost them $29,000. New and used car prices are up over 29%. Average interest rates for new cars has doubled and tripled and quadrupled.

Meanwhile, repair and maintenance costs are up 32%, car parts are up 22%. Car insurance premiums, what’s going on with that? Some places it’s up 100%, and the cost of gasoline is up 62%. By driving up prices and interest rates, commonwealth’s inflation disaster sent car payments way up and car sales way down. Your numbers are terrible, by the way. For the first time ever, the all-in cost of car ownership is now over $1,000 a month. Never been anywhere near that, more than 20% of the median worker’s wage just to have an average car. This is a catastrophe for the American dream and a dire crisis for American automakers.

Trump’s Economic Priorities

One of my top priorities will be to quickly defeat inflation and make America affordable again. We will quickly defeat it, we have to bring down prices. I will cut taxes, slash regulations, curb wasteful spending, and unleash energy production, it’ll all happen very quickly. This will rapidly drive prices down, lower interest rates, and put more money into the pockets of American consumers.

It’ll also bring your grocery bill way down. I have more complaints on grocery. The word grocery, again, it’s sort of a simple word, but it sort of means like everything you eat, the stomach is speaking, it always does. And I have more complaints about that bacon and things going up double, triple, quadruple.

As part of this effort, I will pass major tax cuts for workers, including no tax on tips. No tax on overtime, and no tax on social security benefits for our seniors. And here’s what I told you about before. The reason you’re all sticking around, because I had a break. I said, do they mind a little bit longer speech? Because it is a big subject. No, sir, they love it. And I haven’t noticed anybody leaving.

Trump’s Comments on Public Speaking and Teleprompters

There was one gentleman over there, but he came back, he went to the bathroom. And what the fake news will do is take a picture of one empty seat, say, people are fleeing, now they don’t flee, nobody’s fleeing, nobody’s leaving. I always watch, if they start to leave, I just end the speech. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to make America great again, enjoy yourself.

No, I do that, because oftentimes I lose the teleprompter. Teleprompters go out, but she lost the teleprompter last week, did you see it? She was talking about 32 days to the election, and she goes, there are 32 days, my God, I just lost the tele, 32. Then she, 32, 32, 32, 32. And I said, what the hell happened to her? And then the teleprompter kicked back on, 32 days to the election. You don’t want this for your president. I lose teleprompters probably 5%, 10% of the time.

Sometimes I’ll be in front of 50,000 people, I’ll lose a teleprompter. You gotta wing it, you know what you gotta do. And you can’t say, I just lost my teleprompter. Ladies and gentlemen, how about Biden if he loses his teleprompter?

Trump’s New Tax Proposal for Car Loans

But this is what you’ve been waiting for. Because today I am also announcing that as part of our tax cuts, we will make interest on car loans fully deductible. So a man who’s a lot of you people are in the car industry, actually I met a lot of them backstage. What do you do? I’m in the car industry. But a lot of them, and I told him about a very knowledgeable person. He said, here’s a guy, he’s done it all his life.

He’s right sitting right over there, I don’t want to embarrass him. But he said, where did you come up with that idea? That’s the coolest thing. It’s like the paper clip again, right? It’s like the paper clip. Somebody comes up with a paper clip and everybody says, why the hell didn’t I think of that, right? Somebody came up with a paper clip, I guess made a lot of money. And other people said, gee. But he said, you know, I’ve been in the car industry all my life. I’ve never thought about that.

So we’re going to make it fully deductible, the interest payments. That’s going to revolutionize your industry. This will stimulate massive domestic auto production and make car ownership dramatically more affordable for millions and millions of working American families. This is a phenomenal thing. If I do say so myself. Who likes that idea? Is that great?

Trump’s Plan for Small Businesses

Likewise, to help small businesses afford the work vehicles they need to get the job done, we will double the amount of equipment investment they can deduct under Section 179. You know what that means. So you’re going to get tremendous deduction ability. This will be great for small businesses. It’s great for Ford and General Motors. It’ll be great for them. And we’ll sell cars and trucks and work vans like never before. You’ll sell so much.

Oh, those companies are going to like me. And I have nothing to do with them. I have nothing to do. See, another guy would have gone see them yesterday. Say, here’s what I got to do. This is how bad they are. They’re evil. Biden would have gone to see him. Hey, I have an idea. But he doesn’t have those ideas. Well, Hunter gets a half a million bucks a painting and he can’t paint worth a damn, right? So that’s worse. That’s much worse.

Trump on Energy Policy

As we protect gas-powered cars, we will unleash American energy and bring prices way down fast. Today I take office, the word will go out, and we are going to frack, frack, frack. And drill, baby, drill. And Kamala Harris, she’s been against fossil fuels all her life. She has no idea why. She has no idea. But she’s been against, somebody told her.

But Kamala Harris is doing the exact opposite. She’s waging war on American energy. And she’s imposed a natural gas export ban that I talked about with you before that’s currently in effect. And she is right now shutting down power plants all across our country, ruining our country, ruining our electricity pricing and our grid. She’s destroying our grid. Prices will soar by more than 100%, driving us into third-world status, even as she forces us to only buy electric cars. Think of it. We don’t have electricity.

In California, you have brownouts and blackouts every week. And blackouts, I mean, the place is stone cold, broke, no electricity. And this idiot governor over there that I had to deal with, that is really, I don’t know if he’s really for real. So you have blackouts, brownouts all the time. And now he wants to go 100% electric cars. And then if somebody wants to build some kind of a plant to make electricity, he’ll make it impossible for the gas. What are they doing? They’re destroying our country. They’re destroying our country.

If this continues, all Michigan manufacturing will be dead in absolutely no time. You won’t have any manufacturing. Because as that industry goes and as the energy goes, there goes your businesses.

Trump’s Energy Production Plans

As president, my policy will be to maximum, it’s going to be maximum energy production to achieve low prices and make the United States into a really a manufacturer. I want to be a manufacturing powerhouse. We’re going to be more powerful than ever before. You know, AI is a new industry, and it’s a very big one. And I don’t know, it’s got some interesting difficulties. But China wants it, and other countries want it, and we’ve got to be there. But you know, in order to be able to compete with China or compete even with anybody with AI, we have to make double the electricity that we have right now. So take all of the electricity we have, we have to double it up just for that one very big industry.

It’s going to be very big, but it needs unbelievable amounts of electricity. I will cut the price of energy and electricity in half. Ready? Twelve months from January 20th, I take office on January 20th, your electric bill, including cars, air conditioners, heating, everything, your total electric bill will be 50, 5-0, 50% less.

We’re going to cut it in half. And we have it, we have the power to do it because we have it. We don’t need ships, we don’t need a long train, we have everything. We’re going to have to build some pipelines because we can’t transport it. But that’s easy to do, and that’s safer than trains. But we’re going to get this done, and you’re going to have, within one year, think of it, within one year, you’re going to have electric bills and energy bills, and your gasoline for your car is going to be 5-0, 50% cheaper than it is right now. That’s a big thing. That’s a big thing.

But we will seriously expedite our environmental approvals. I will expedite them. If I have to, I’ll just approve them and approve them because they use that, you know, they use the environmental approvals to stop progress. And quickly double our electricity capacity, and we’re going to have it doubled and tripled. This will drive down inflation and make America and Michigan the best place on Earth to build a factory.

Trump on Chinese Automobiles and Autonomous Vehicles

And finally, as we bring back our economy and our auto industry, and you’re going to see an industry that’s going to come back so fast. They all want to be here. But the laws and the regulations and the tremendous crazy taxes and the competition with other countries made it impossible.

I will continue my first-term efforts to protect America from the threat of Chinese automobiles. I will stop Chinese and other countries to produce the audible feel and autonomous vehicles. Do you like autonomous? Does anybody like an autonomous vehicle? You know what that is, right? When you see a car driving along. Some people do. I don’t know. It’s concerning to me. But the autonomous vehicles, we’re going to stop from operating on American roads. Remember this.

I will close the loopholes under Biden and Harris that are beginning to allow Chinese vehicles to creep into American streets. They’re destroying Europe. Europe’s car industry is being just decimated. This is not just a matter of economic security. It’s a matter of national security. We have to have a car industry. And, you know, that can be swapped in wars that can be swapped and make other things. I mean, there’s so many reasons you have to keep it.

Trump on American Manufacturing History

Second World War. You know, we built in the Second World War. We built a ship a day. Nobody can even believe it. Today, we don’t build. We practically don’t build a ship a year. We used to build the Second World War. We built a ship a day, freighters and things, but a ship a day. And today it’s not. It’s crazy. We’re going to get it back to a position where we can do things like that.

This is how we will bring back our auto parts and bring back our manufacturing and unlock the destiny of the great state of Michigan. Michigan is going to be your biggest beneficiary for this. We’re going to put America workers first, America’s jobs first, American cars first, America factories first, and we’re going to put the American people first. It’s the first time in a long time you’ve heard that. From commerce to labor to FEMA. Boy, oh boy, have they been treated badly, the people of North Carolina and other states, Georgia, a little bit.

Trump’s Vision for America

DONALD TRUMP: You had some governors that did a great job, but boy, the federal government let you down. And I will work for Americans and only for Americans. I want to work for Americans. America first. It’s a very simple policy. America first.

When we do all of this, you will witness nothing less than the launch of a new American industrial revolution. Thousands of factories will open up all across our land. Great paying blue collar jobs will lift up those who have suffered so terribly over the past four years. You heard the numbers in the auto industry. It’s collapsing. Inflation will come down fast.

American cars and products will be exported and admired all throughout the world. Again, young people will move from the coast to big cities and to the heartlands to build their fortunes on the new frontier of the American Midwest. They’re going to move back instead of leaving. They’re going to be moving back.

And I’m telling you right now, standing here in the center of this once great city, that by the end of my term, the entire world will be talking about the Michigan miracle and the stunning rebirth of Detroit. That’s going to happen very quickly.

With your vote, we will bring back our country, we will rebuild our country and we will reunite our country with American heart, American grit and American hands. I want to thank you all for being here. This is a great honor. It’s such an important day to me because I’ve been talking about this subject for so long and I’ve watched politicians destroy this area, this state, this city. And it’s so easy to fix that we’re going to fix it better than anybody ever thought even possible. So God bless you all.

And now I think on top of all that, I think I have to answer some questions. Can you believe it? So I’ll stay here and I’ll answer some questions. But thank you all very much. And we appreciate it. Thank you.

Q&A Session

INTERVIEWER: You believe this? Well, that was a tremendous amount of information that you’ve given to us. And we’ll see that the questions you’ve really answered most of them already. I think so. I mean, you’ve really done a great job. And so what I thought I would do is to jump to a couple of personal questions.

The first one that I’ve always been intrigued with, you have an enormous amount of energy. I haven’t seen anybody like you in my lifetime that keep on going and going and going. In spite of sometimes some rather negative, you know, responses and forces here in our country. How do you do it like a bullet to the ear?

DONALD TRUMP: So I have parents that were great. It’s you had good parents. You sort of I believe in that theory. It helps. But I did. I have two parents that were energetic. They lived for a long time. They were around for a long time. They were great people. But my father had tremendous energy and my mother did, too. And it’s a little bit that I think more than anything else. And I enjoy what I do.

And I love this. You know, despite I could be right now in the most beautiful ocean on the sand exposing my really beautiful body. So beautiful to the sun and the surf skin cancer to the sun and the surf all over the world. And or I could be in Detroit with you. And I’d rather be in Detroit with you. OK, that’s great.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks. You know, we’ve known each other for a while. And I know your children and I have been just enormously impressed with their values, their lifestyles, and you did a great job raising them. How did you do that? Everybody here loves their kids. And you mentioned about creating an environment where we can pass our businesses down to our children, basically tax free or something close to that. What did you do with your children to make them so responsible and so involved in everything that you do?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m fortunate in that, you know, they’re smart children. Many of you have smart and some will have some that aren’t so smart. And you have to understand that happens, too. And that’s all. And you’re going to love them just as much. But, you know, I have smart children and they’ve been good academically, et cetera, et cetera. But very importantly, I would always tell them no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.

And they go out and Ivanka would say, Dad, stop telling me that. And I said, I’m going to tell you every time I see you, I’m going to drive you wild with this. You’re going to no drugs, no alcohol. And I would say that. And I hope that because who knows. Right. But they don’t have — they don’t have any of those problems. I mean, I’ve seen friends, very smart people. They have smart kids, but their kids get hooked on drugs or they get hooked on alcohol. Alcohol is in many ways like they tell me. I don’t know. I never had a glass of alcohol.

I had a great brother, a brother who was a wonderful guy, but he had an alcohol problem and he sort of do the same. He said, don’t ever drink alcohol. He was — he was and he smoked. And, you know, I put cigarettes in that same category, almost that same category. But they’re certainly not good for you. But I would always tell my kids, because I’ve seen parents that had brilliant children, went to the best schools, went to those, they were great. But they got hooked on drugs or alcohol and they never made it. They couldn’t compete, basically.

You know, they never made it. Many of them are dead. Many of them die. They die with this fentanyl that’s coming in. I’m going to get that problem. I had that problem almost solved with President Xi, by the way. And I said, you have to impose the maximum penalty or we’re not going to you know, I would always talk about trade. We have the power of trade.

And I said, well, we’re just not going to get along on trade. Hence, I can do things like we talked about. I don’t want to go into it, but we can do things. And he and I had a handshake on. He was going to impose the maximum penalty on people that run companies that tell us through Mexico. Almost all of it comes through Mexico. And the maximum penalty is the death penalty. And he was going to impose that.

And then we had the transfer of power. And this guy came in and he didn’t know what to do with anything. And so that went down the tubes. But one of the first things I’m going to do is talk to him about that, because they were going to give the death penalty to anybody sending fentanyl into this country. And that would have really solved a lot of the problem.

Trump on Drug Policy

And the other thing I say, and it’s not nice to settle like saying it, but, you know, I’ve seen a lot of countries. I deal with all of them. And I know that all of them and the only ones that don’t have a drug problem are the ones that have the death penalty. We can set up all of our blue ribbon committees. Everybody calls me. You would call me. My friends call me. Could I be on that blue ribbon committee and have a blue ribbon committee on drugs and how to stop, you know, these drug lords who are very smart people, very, very vicious, very smart. And we’ll have these people from New York, some dilettantes, and they didn’t want to talk about it. They just want to be a part of, you know, whatever it is. The only ones that stop drugs, the only ones are the ones that have the death penalty.

And you have to remember, it sounds horrible. But what’s more horrible is what they do to our country, because on average, he or she, male or female drug dealer, will kill 500 people. And that doesn’t include the families that are devastated. I know I know families that lost a son or lost a daughter. They’ve never been the same. I mean, they’re like different people. You know, you talk to them and years later, I say, has it gotten better? No, it’s gotten worse. They tell me. And there’s nothing worse than that. And nothing worse than that. And it’s because of drugs.

It’s because if you you know, I maybe it’s too much for the American people to to go with. But I will say this. The only countries that solve their drug problem, China, I went to presidency. I said, so first time I met him, I said, do you have a drug problem? No, no, no, no, no. One point four billion people. And why don’t you have a drug problem? He says. Death penalty, quick trial. What’s a quick trial? The dealer is immediately put on trial. They don’t have nine years of legal and then another nine years of appeals.

You know, 22 years later and then they’re released. No, no, this is they don’t play games. And, you know, it’s a tough, tough deal. But he said quick trial. So what is quick trial? Immediate trial. And you know what the drug dealers do? They say, hey, let’s get the hell out of here fast. They don’t play games. They don’t play games. They even send the bullet to the family and they make them pay for the bullet. They make them pay for the bullet.

It’s vicious. But they have no drug problem with one point where they had a drug problem for centuries, you know, with the poppy fields, with all the things, but countries were taking them over. They were much smaller. They were being decimated because everybody was they had a tremendous drug problem. But it stopped years ago and it was a death penalty. And I can tell you, you know, we could set up all the committees, blue ribbon, and everyone was headed by so-and-so society person from Madison Avenue. But I will tell you that it’s a waste of time. The only thing that’s going to stop and we got it down, I got it down 19 percent.

That’s great. But, you know, but it’s not like I got it done and we work like hell. We were — we had so much security in the border. We had the German shepherds as a certain dog, a certain type of German shepherd. So they have millions of dollars worth of machinery and they have a dog. And it’s a certain German shepherd. Some of you know what it is. It has a sense of smell that’s so incredible that it’s the machine is nothing by comparison. Nothing. And it’s incredible to see. I mean, incredible. But we watched it very closely on the border.

We had a lot of dogs that did this incredibly well. We had a lot of very expensive machinery that did it good. It’s not great, but they did it good. Not nearly as good, believe it or not. And we we had it down about 19 percent. And that was, you know, that was it. It was very tough with a death penalty. You would get rid of you would eradicate drugs in this country.

But and I talk about it a lot. I say that because maybe people have to get used to it because it sounds harsh. But when you think of it, if they do kill on average 500 people, everybody in this room knows a lot of people that they lost a child or sometimes a father or mother. But they’ve lost a child to fentanyl. And that wouldn’t have happened if if we had the death penalty. But the country is going to have to tell us that they’re ready for it because, you know, it’s a it’s a pretty big step.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned the Abraham Accords and Israel. This community is one of the largest Arab communities in the United States here. Dearborn, Michigan. And we have a thriving and very, very large Jewish community. Upon your inauguration, what will you do to accelerate the Abraham Accords and peace in the Middle East? What what can we possibly do at this point in time to change the direction right now and move forward?

DONALD TRUMP: It’s got to change. It’s got to change fast. Also, the Abraham Accords, where we did that, nobody believed it. We had four very important countries early on and we would have had all of them. And I even make this statement. I said it the other day. I even think we would have had Iran. And if you can believe it, I really believe that because they were they were ready to make a deal.

Trump on Middle East Peace

DONALD TRUMP: Biden lost an unbelievable opportunity. And now they’re very rich. And I don’t know, they they view it perhaps differently. But, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re doing so good either.

But I would I will tell you this. We have to have peace throughout the world. And if we don’t have peace throughout the world, we’re not smart people because it doesn’t make sense. You know, I’ve stopped a lot of wars from starting. I was very proud of that. People don’t know. But there are countries that were going to war and I stopped them using trade to stop them. I use trade. I threaten trade. I’d say you’re not going to do business with the United States. If you do, there’s countries that have been fighting for centuries, essentially, and stop and then they go kill a lot of people. Crazy.

But I’ve stopped a lot of people. And but the Abraham Accords were very important. And you had really peace. You had the Arabs and the Jews getting along. And those are for the four countries. Now, it should have been many countries right now. It’s still the same for think of it. When I left, we would have had we were going to sign people as fast as you can think. And they could have done the same thing, but they didn’t have the talent. They didn’t have the administration to do it. And they even agreed it was a good thing. It was a good thing. It was actually a great thing.

Trump on Recognition for Achievements

If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to him in 10 seconds. He got the Nobel Prize. He didn’t even know what the hell he got it for. Remember, he got elected. Well, so did I. He got elected and then after he was getting the Nobel Prize. Remember, he said, oh, what did I do? He didn’t know what the hell he did. He got the Nobel Prize for doing nothing. He for getting elected. But I got elected, too.

And, you know, if I think of that, we did something. The Abraham Accords. Unprecedented. Nobody thought it was possible. And I’m not saying want or not. I’m not saying I’m just saying it was anybody else. Liberal Democrat. They would have had it before the damn thing was even signed. You know, so there has to be fairness. And I don’t care, but I’m not looking for it. I’m not politicking for it. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of unfairness in this world.

And I think when you do things, you should really be weakened. You can have peace in the Middle East. You can get along. This was a start. This would have been so important if you could have had almost all of the countries and maybe even Iran. I mean, Iran would be the outlier, but maybe even Iran at a certain point. I really believe I could have gotten them all, including Iran and Iran. Everybody would have been happy. You would have peace in the Middle East. And you would have had the Arabs getting along with the Jews and the Jews getting along with everyone else. It would have been so beautiful. And they wasted this great opportunity. It’s so sad.

INTERVIEWER: So we have time for one final question. And it’s a DEC tradition. We have many young adults and students in the audience today. And so I want to end with this final question. What advice to your 25-year-old self would you give to the young people today and especially the ones in this audience?

Trump’s Advice to Young People

DONALD TRUMP: Okay, so I met some people backstage who were young and some really beautiful people. Great people, smart as can be from colleges and schools. And I think what I’d do is I’d listen to the speech I made. And I’d say maybe because they really would like to stay here. They grew up here. And I’d follow.

And I will say this. If I implement, and I will be able to do it. I will. If we win the election, I would stay right here. And I would follow the gravy train. Because you’re going to have such a great opportunity right in the area that you want to be. You want to be here because your grandparents are here and your parents are here. People, they don’t want to leave. They’ve been forced to leave this area because of politicians that didn’t know what they were doing. I would say stay tuned for a little while. Let’s see what happens in the election. This area will be thriving like probably almost no area in the country.

I think this area will be one of the hottest areas in the country. And I think you can stay here. You’ll get a great job. Because we’re going to have a lot of opportunities right here in Michigan.

And you’ll want to stay here because of your parents. A lot of them really, they told me backstage, I’d love to stay here, but there’s no real jobs here. And when you look at those horrible statistics with the auto workers and what’s happening to the industry. But if we win, I would stay here. And you watch what’s going to happen. You’ll be happier here and I think more successful here than any other place in the country. You will have the American dream. We have to bring back the American dream. You don’t even hear that statement anymore. And we have to have the American dream for our young people. And you’ll have it right here in Michigan.

INTERVIEWER: Mr. President, thank you. I’m looking forward to all those auto plants that I’m going to be building back here in Michigan in the Midwest. It’s okay, they all know anyways. Every time you’re on TV or on the radio, somebody calls me up and says, Oh, the President was talking about you again. Thank you so much. And that’s the end of our program today. Thank you all for coming. Let’s give the President a standing ovation.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. I still want to get him involved. No, no, no. He should be proud of it. Thank you. Young man. There’s no need to feel down. I said young man. Hit yourself off the ground. I said young man. Because you’re in a new town, there’s no need to be unhappy. Young man. Thank you. Thank you.

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