President Trump speaks at the Business Roundtable Quarterly Meeting.
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00:00for a conversation with Chuck Robbins of Cisco.
00:05I'm delighted to ask you to join me in welcoming back
00:09to the Business Roundtable the President of the United States.
00:38Thank you very much.
00:39It's a good group out there.
00:42That's a good guy.
00:42Don't get better, actually.
00:45Thank you very much.
00:46Mr. President, thank you for being here.
00:48Thank you for coming back to the Business Roundtable.
00:50We're very honored that you would agree to accept our
00:53invitation in the first BRT meeting after your
00:56inauguration.
00:57That's true.
00:58Actually, that's true.
00:59And I have a lot of friends in the audience.
01:01A couple that I don't like particularly much, but for
01:05the most part, very good.
01:06And as we were talking about backstage, this is
01:11the largest attendance that we've ever had at a
01:15Business Roundtable meeting.
01:16Well, it's a great honor.
01:19So, if you don't mind, we'll jump in.
01:21Okay.
01:22So, first of all, congratulations on the
01:25ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia today.
01:27That was hugely significant, as you know.
01:32Well, it's Ukraine, but we hope to get Russia.
01:34It turned out to be the — you know, I've been
01:38saying that Russia has been easier to deal with so
01:40far than Ukraine, which is not supposed to be the way
01:43it is, but it is.
01:44And we hope to get Russia.
01:47But we have a full ceasefire from Ukraine.
01:49That's good.
01:50That's very good.
01:51And then this — the people in this room — and we're
01:53going to tie this back together — the people in
01:55this room obviously are very interested in all the
01:56conversations going on around trade and tariffs
01:59that are important here.
02:01And then you've also had a large-scale effort to root
02:03out wasteful spending in the federal government.
02:06And I believe there's a thread that kind of ties
02:08all that together, and I'm just curious if you could
02:10share with us what that is.
02:12Well, it's basically make America great again.
02:15We have a bloated, very dishonest, in many cases,
02:20federal government and bureaucracy that's been a
02:24long time coming.
02:25Somebody should have done this many years ago.
02:27And we're cutting numbers that, you know, nobody's
02:30ever seen before.
02:32Doge, as we call it, affectionately — you've
02:35been all hearing that term a lot.
02:38Elon's been doing, really, a fantastic job.
02:40He suffers a little bit because of it.
02:43People go after him.
02:44But actually, if you — I think, in the end, it'll
02:47maybe reverse itself and be just the opposite.
02:49That's happened before.
02:51There's people that — they tend to go after one
02:56group or another, but basically it's the other.
02:57You have — they go after conservatives, and when
03:01somebody stands up and fights, it ends up —
03:03their business ends up doubling.
03:06You can see that.
03:06Just a little example.
03:07Goya Foods, he was just a wonderful man — the owner
03:11and family, and largely Hispanic foods.
03:16And they went after him because he supported me.
03:18And this was the end of the first term.
03:23And he fought back, and it ended up that he ended up
03:26tripling his business.
03:27And it's, today, a much bigger business than it
03:30was before.
03:31And there are many examples of that.
03:32And maybe it's going to be that way with Elon.
03:35When I saw what was happening with his, you
03:37know, the concerted effort by paid — I think they're
03:39paid agitators.
03:42And when I saw what was happening, I said, I want
03:44to buy a Tesla.
03:47And we just went to the front.
03:49He had four beautiful cars there.
03:52And I bought one in front of the press.
03:55It was a very public purchase.
03:59And they're beautiful and do a great job.
04:01Very good competitors with Mary and everybody else.
04:04You know, he's done a great job.
04:06And he shouldn't be sacrificed or have to
04:08suffer because he wants to help government.
04:11It's not that he's a Republican, which he's,
04:13you know, not strong.
04:15I mean, I don't — sometimes, I'm not even
04:16sure what he is, in terms of his philosophies.
04:20But he's a great guy.
04:21He's a patriot.
04:22He wants to see the country straightened out.
04:25And he's done a fantastic job with those.
04:27We've found massive fraud, abuse, waste.
04:32And we had many, many jobs where there was nobody
04:35working but getting a check.
04:37We had contracts that expired years ago, but
04:41they were continuously being paid.
04:44Probably — I'll bet you it's $500 billion,
04:48perhaps, if you add it up so far.
04:51And we're trying to get to a trillion dollars.
04:53That's a big — that's a big number.
04:55And he did have an ability to do something that a
04:58lot of people didn't think of.
04:59He'd come in with bigger ideas.
05:02We'd say, we want you to cut down the size of your
05:05agency by 2 percent.
05:07And we thought that was good.
05:09He came in.
05:09He said, 80 percent.
05:10I said, what the hell is going on?
05:12Eighty percent.
05:14And largely — and we had to do it carefully, and
05:17we had some little hiccups, not big hiccups.
05:21But we saved a tremendous amount of money for the future.
05:23This is going into the future.
05:26And in some cases, it would be 80, and in some
05:28cases, it would be 5 percent or 2 percent or 3
05:30percent, you know, depending on the agency.
05:33But — and you can almost — you're all great
05:36professionals atop, and you can almost look at some
05:39of the agencies and see which ones had to be cut
05:42and which ones didn't, also in terms of their
05:44importance and in terms of being current.
05:48So we saved a tremendous amount of money.
05:50And I think, you know, it's — I don't know if
05:51it's going to reach a trillion, but it's going
05:53to reach a lot.
05:54And it was an honor to have Michael there yesterday.
05:57You got to see a little bit of it.
05:58We had a conference.
06:00And a lot of investment coming into our country,
06:03much more than I've ever seen.
06:06Apple is investing $500 billion.
06:09IBM was with us yesterday, and they're investing a lot.
06:12Just companies all over.
06:14I could name them.
06:14You've read most of them, many of them.
06:17But hundreds of billions of dollars is being invested.
06:20That wouldn't have happened if I didn't win the election,
06:22number one.
06:23And I think, number two, the tariffs are having a
06:25tremendously positive impact.
06:28They will have, and they are having.
06:30We have car companies that are not building in Mexico.
06:33Now they're building in the United States.
06:35Some of them, the plants were already started,
06:37and they stopped construction, and now
06:39they're going to build in the United States.
06:41It was very unfair.
06:42They'd build in Mexico and sell them across the
06:45border with no tax, no nothing.
06:46They'd take away our jobs.
06:47They'd close up places in Michigan and all over the
06:49country, and they'd build them in Mexico.
06:52In many cases, they were owned by China — built
06:54in Mexico, owned by China.
06:56And that's all stopped now.
06:58They're all coming — they're all coming here.
07:02Honda is building a massive plant in different places
07:06— Indiana, South Carolina, but also in Michigan.
07:11A lot in Michigan.
07:12A lot of activity is happening.
07:14They're looking all over the place for places.
07:16And that's because there is a good spirit.
07:19There's a renewed spirit.
07:20And also, very importantly, the tariffs are — they
07:24don't want to pay 25 percent or whatever it may be.
07:27It may go up higher.
07:28It may go up higher.
07:29Look, the higher it goes, the more likely it is
07:31they're going to build.
07:32And ultimately, the biggest win is not the tariff.
07:36That's a big win.
07:36That's a lot of money.
07:38But the biggest win is if they move into our
07:40country and produce jobs.
07:41That's a bigger win than the tariffs themselves.
07:44But the tariffs are going to be throwing off a lot of
07:47money to this country.
07:49And we've been ripped off for years by other
07:51countries — many, many decades.
07:53And they were doing the same thing.
07:55But I think we'll do it better.
07:56And I think we have a bigger advantage because
07:58we really are the piggy bank.
07:59They weren't.
08:00The Press Thank you, Mr. President.
08:04You've also mentioned rebuilding the American
08:05—