Read the full transcript of President-elect Donald Trump’s speech at the New York Stock Exchange after being named TIME Person of the Year (December 12, 2024).
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Well, thank you very much. This is an honor, a tremendous honor. I brought some of our compatriots along with us. They’re going to do a beautiful job for you for the next four years. And it’s really been something very special. And I have to say, Time magazine getting this honor for the second time, I think I like it better this time, actually. But we did a good job.
We had a great first term, despite a lot of turmoil, caused unnecessarily. But the media has tamed down a little bit. They’re liking us much better now, I think. If they don’t, we’ll have to just take them on again, and we don’t want to do that.
But I do want to thank Time magazine. I’ve been on the cover many times. I don’t know who has the record, but I can only probably talk well about 25 percent of the covers. Twenty-five percent are great. The others I just sort of hide. But it’s been an honor, and every time it’s an honor, I will tell you. And thank you very much for doing it. And thank the whole group at Time. Really very professional people. Thank you very much.
New York Stock Exchange
And to Jeff and all of the people from the New York Stock Exchange, he knows how much I like it because many years ago I bought a building across the street, and I wasn’t going to buy it. Then I said, you know, it’s right next to the New York Stock Exchange. I’m going to buy it.
We’ve had great success. 40 Wall Street. We’ve had tremendous success with it.
But you’ve really had success with the New York Stock Exchange. It’s an incredible group of people. And, Jeff, you have done an incredible job, you and your group. And what a beautiful speech you made. Thank you very much. That was some introduction of all of us.
Economic Growth
But we’ve gone up since the election. I was just told by Scott. Everybody said, “You have to pick Scott.” Scott Besant, he has to be the one chosen for Treasury. Where is Scott? Let’s see. He’s around here someplace. He’s around here. He told me we picked up $3 trillion since the Election Day. And I said, “Well, that’s good, but what about before the Election Day?” He said, “We picked up some money there because they thought you were going to win.” I said, “I like this guy. He’s going to be my Treasury Secretary.” But it’s true.
I think we’re going to have a tremendous run. We have to straighten out some problems, some big problems in the world. When we left, we didn’t have any of these problems. We didn’t have Russia with Ukraine. We didn’t have Israel October 7th. We didn’t have the Afghanistan disaster. We didn’t have inflation. We had no inflation. And we had a very strong economy. And we’re going to do that again, but I think we’re going to even up it because now we have experience that we didn’t have.
Now I know everybody. You know, when I first came in, we came down, Melania and I, a great First Lady, who’s very popular, by the way. She rang in. She rang in the bell. She rang in the bell. But we came down, and we’re driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, and it was so beautiful. I said, “You know, I’ve never done this before.” I didn’t know anybody. I got to the Oval Office, and I’m picking all these big positions, and I didn’t really know the people in Washington. But, boy, did I get to learn fast.
Incentives and Approvals
And now we do, and I think we have an incredible staff behind me and others that aren’t here. And we’re going to do a fantastic job. We’re going to create the incentive theory again. In fact, I just announced yesterday. I didn’t announce it for this reason. But anybody investing a billion dollars or more gets a very expedited approval process because, you know, the approvals, when people come into the country, it takes them, in many cases, 14, 15, 16 years to get the approval.
Lee is around here someplace. He’s in charge of the environment, and that’s Lee Zeldin, who ran an incredible race for governor in New York, was a very, very successful guy before that. He was a great congressman, and he’s a fantastic lawyer. He’s in charge of environmental, and we’ll try and push him as much as possible to get those permits very quickly, like a nuclear power plant, I would say, a week would be enough time. What do you think? Is that okay? We’re going to get fast approvals, and it’s great that we have Lee and all of the people behind. They’re all stars in their own way.
But it is an honor, and this is a double, because usually they don’t coordinate the man of the year or the person of the year with the ringing of the bell. And brilliantly, you picked them both at the same time, and you were all friends, and you said, “Let’s do it.” And it takes one trip. It doesn’t take two trips. That’s okay. We like to save. We like to be able to do it properly. But this is a special group.
So many friends in the audience, too. John, great job you’ve done at ABC. I’m really proud of you, and you’ve been so nice to me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t actually acknowledge you at all. But you have been. That really is a terrific job you’ve done.
Closing Remarks
But again, I want to thank you. We’re going down to ring the bell now. And I can just say that the economy, I believe, is going to be very strong. We do have to solve some problems. We have wars going on that we didn’t have. We have a lot of things happening that we didn’t have that would have never happened. They would have never happened, but now they have happened. And I want to get them solved. We have to get them solved, because ultimately, the power of weaponry today is the biggest threat we have, in my opinion. It’s not some of the other things that you read about. It’s the power of weaponry. The weapons are so powerful, so devastating.
And I rebuilt our military. I got to know every one of them, including nuclear weapons. I hated to do it. Actually, I hated to do it. But we did some nuclear weapons that are so devastating. It almost makes you very sad when you – as you get them and as they come online. It makes you very sad because you know what the purpose of them is, and you just hope to God that you never have to use them. Because if you do, the world will never be the same.
So we have to be very, very smart. We have to be very sharp. We have to be – we have to be very special to do a job. And I think we’ll get it done, and I think we’re going to get a lot of people in the room.
We’ve seen it. We were in France, where President Macron did a fantastic job with the cathedral – an absolutely fantastic job – of Notre Dame. And it was beautiful. The opening. It was the opening, and I just got back, and it was something really beautiful. And a lot of world leaders there. We had about 80 world leaders, different countries, and they were all coming together. They all wanted to meet us and meet me as representative of the U.S. And there was a lot of goodwill. But we’re going to get some really tremendous goodwill.
I was even thinking about inviting certain people to the inauguration. And some people said, “Wow, that’s a little risky, isn’t it?” And I said, “Maybe it is. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens.” But we like to take little chances. But that’s not a bad chance.
Here’s a gentleman that’s going to do a great job at HUD. Good luck, my friend, right? He’s going to be a – he’s going to be a – he’s been my friend for a long time. It’s nice to see you. I haven’t shaken his hand yet. Come on. Congratulations. Thank you. Really terrific. You’re going to be great. And Ben Carson is your biggest fan in the world. You know that. Ben has been with us for a long time, and he’s done a fantastic job. Thank you. Good.
Incentives and Taxes
So, ladies and gentlemen, go on. We’re going to put it straight. We’re going to give tremendous incentive like no other country has. We’re cutting your taxes. We’re going to cut them very substantially. We got them down to 21 percent from probably 42 or 44 percent, depending on where you are. And we got them down to 21. Everyone said that was a miracle. Now we’re getting them down to 15, but only if you make your product here. Otherwise, you pay 21, which is not bad. It’s in the middle of the pack. But 15 brings you down to among the lowest.
And for those that are running the big companies, those great, big, beautiful companies, nobody’s going to be leaving us. You’re going to be coming back. You’re going to be bringing it back to the United States. We are incentivizing everybody to come back to the United States. We want you back here. Car manufacturers, everybody. And we have one product that nobody has, really, to the extent that we do. It’s called oil and gas. There is no country in the world that has more. We’re number one. I brought it to number one during my first term in terms of production. We’re going to be number one-plus. We’ll do numbers that nobody will really see before.
Inflation and Economy
And when that happens, prices are going to start coming down because people can’t afford their groceries, and they’re going to be affording their groceries very soon. I tell the story about a woman who – an old woman, an old woman, no money, went to a grocery store, had three apples. She put them down on the counter, and she looked, and she saw the price, and she said, “Would you excuse me?” And she walked one of the apples back to the refrigerator and came back to pay for the two apples. And she left with two apples. And the woman at the counter said that was so sad. And when I heard about the story, I said that should never happen in America, and it’s not going to happen in America.
We’re going to do it right, and we’re going to take care of our people, and we’re going to do things that nobody ever thought even were possible. We’re going to have an economy the likes of which nobody’s ever seen before, and everybody’s coming back to America.
I saw that the other day at the cathedral. They’re all saying, “We want to come back, we want to come back.” And with a couple of changes done by Howard and Scott and some of the great people up here with me, we’re going to bring them all back. They’re all coming back.
So thank you very much. This is a great honor, and ringing the bell will be fantastic. And go out and get them. We’re with you all the way. Thank you very much.
