Donald Trump: Well thank you very much, Klaus. And a very spe­cial con­grat­u­la­tions on your fifti­eth year host­ing the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, a tru­ly amaz­ing achieve­ment. It’s an hon­or to address the dis­tin­guished mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion for the sec­ond time as President. When I spoke at this forum two years ago I told you that we had launched the great American come­back. Today, I’m proud to declare that the United States is in the midst of an eco­nom­ic boom the likes of which the world has nev­er seen before.

We’ve regained our stride, we dis­cov­ered our spir­it, and reawak­ened the pow­er­ful machin­ery of American enter­prise. America’s thriv­ing, America’s flour­ish­ing, and yes, America is win­ning again like nev­er before.

Just last week alone the United States con­clud­ed two extra­or­di­nary trade deals: the agree­ment with China and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement—the two biggest trade deals ever made. They just hap­pened to get done in the same week. These agree­ments rep­re­sent a new mod­el of trade for the 21^st cen­tu­ry, agree­ments that are fair, rec­i­p­ro­cal, and that pri­or­i­tize the needs of work­ers and fam­i­lies. America’s eco­nom­ic turn­around has been noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar. When I took office three years ago, America’s econ­o­my was in a rather dis­mal state. Under the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion near­ly 200,000 man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs had van­ished, wages were flat or falling, almost five mil­lion more Americans had left the labor force than had got­ten jobs, and more than ten mil­lion peo­ple had been added to the food stamp rolls. The experts pre­dict­ed a decade of very very slow growth, or even maybe neg­a­tive growth. High unem­ploy­ment, and a dwin­dling work­force. And very much a shrink­ing mid­dle class. Millions of hard­work­ing, ordi­nary cit­i­zens felt neglect­ed, betrayed, for­got­ten. They were rapid­ly los­ing faith in the system.

Before my pres­i­den­cy began the out­look for many nations was bleak. Top econ­o­mists warned of a pro­tract­ed world­wide reces­sion. The World Bank low­ered its pro­jec­tions for glob­al growth to a num­ber that nobody want­ed to even think about. Pessimism had tak­en root deep in the minds of lead­ing thinkers, busi­ness lead­ers, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers. Yet despite all of the cyn­ics I had nev­er been more con­fi­dent in America’s future. I knew we were on the verge of a pro­found eco­nom­ic resur­gence if we did things right. One that would gen­er­ate a his­toric wave of invest­ment, wage growth, and job cre­ation. I knew that if we unleashed the poten­tial of our peo­ple, if we cut tax­es, slashed reg­u­la­tions and we did that at a lev­el that’s nev­er been done before in the his­to­ry of our coun­try, in a short peri­od of time, fixed bro­ken trade deals and ful­ly tapped American ener­gy, that pros­per­i­ty would come thun­der­ing back at a record speed. And that is exact­ly what we did, and that is exact­ly what happened.

Since my elec­tion, America has gained over sev­en mil­lion jobs, a num­ber unthink­able. I would­n’t say it, I would­n’t talk about it, but that was a num­ber that I had in mind. The pro­jec­tion was two million—we did sev­en, more than three times the gov­ern­men­t’s own pro­jec­tions. The unem­ploy­ment rate is now less than 3.5%. And at 3.5%, that’s a num­ber that is the low­est in more than fifty years. The aver­age unem­ploy­ment rate for my admin­is­tra­tion is the low­est for any US pres­i­dent in record­ed his­to­ry. We start­ed off with rea­son­ably high rate. For the first time in decades we are no longer sim­ply con­cen­trat­ing wealth in the hands of a few—we’re con­cen­trat­ing and cre­at­ing the most inclu­sive econ­o­my ever to exist. We are lift­ing up Americans of every race, col­or, reli­gion, and creed.

Unemployment rates among African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans have all reached record lows. African American youth unem­ploy­ment has reached the low­est it’s ever been in the his­to­ry of our coun­try. African American pover­ty has plum­met­ed to the low­est rate ever record­ed. The unem­ploy­ment rate for women reached the low­est lev­el since 1953. And women now com­prise a major­i­ty of the American work­force. That’s for the first time.

The unem­ploy­ment rate for vet­er­ans has dropped to a record low. The unem­ploy­ment rate for dis­abled Americans has reached an all-time record low. Workers with­out a high school diplo­ma have achieved the low­est unem­ploy­ment rate record­ed in US his­to­ry. Wages are ris­ing across the board. And those at the bot­tom of the income lad­der are enjoy­ing the per­cent­age, by far, largest gains. Workers’ wages are now grow­ing faster than man­age­ment wages. Earnings growth for the bot­tom 10% is out­pac­ing the top 10%—something that has not hap­pened. Paychecks for high school grad­u­ates are ris­ing faster than for col­lege grad­u­ates. Young Americans just enter­ing the work­force are also shar­ing in America’s extra­or­di­nary prosperity. 

Since I took office, more than two mil­lion mil­len­ni­als have got­ten jobs, and their wages have grown by near­ly 5% annu­al­ly, a num­ber that was unthink­able. Nobody would have ever thought it was pos­si­ble three years ago. A record num­ber of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 are now working.

In the eight years before I took office, over 300,000 working-age peo­ple left the work­force. In just three years in my admin­is­tra­tion, 3.5 mil­lion peo­ple have joined the work­force. Ten mil­lion peo­ple have been lift­ed off wel­fare in less than three years. Celebrating the dig­ni­ty of work is a fun­da­men­tal pil­lar of our agen­da. This is a blue-collar boom. Since my elec­tion the net worth of the bot­tom half of wage earn­ers has increased by plus-47%, three times faster than the increase for the top 1%. Real medi­an house­hold income is at the high­est lev­el ever record­ed. The American Dream is back big­ger, bet­ter, and stronger than ever before. No one is ben­e­fit­ting more than America’s mid­dle class.

We have cre­at­ed 1.2 mil­lion man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion jobs, a num­ber also unthink­able. After los­ing 60 thou­sand fac­to­ries under the pre­vi­ous two administrations…hard to believe, when you hear 60 thou­sand factories…America has now gained, in a very short peri­od of time, twelve thou­sand new fac­to­ries under my admin­is­tra­tion and the num­ber is going up rapid­ly. We’ll be beat­ing the 60 thou­sand num­ber that we lost, except these will be big­ger, new­er, and the latest.

Years of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion have giv­en way to a roar­ing geyser of oppor­tu­ni­ty. US stock mar­kets have soared by more than 50% since my elec­tion, adding more than $19 tril­lion to house­hold wealth, and boost­ing 401(k)s, pen­sions, and col­lege sav­ings accounts for mil­lions of hard­work­ing families. 

In these great num­bers are many things, and it’s despite the fact that the Fed has raised rates too fast and low­ered them too slow­ly. And even now as the United States is by far the strongest eco­nom­ic pow­er in the world it’s not even close. It was going to be close, but a lot of good things hap­pened to us and some not-so-good things hap­pened to cer­tain oth­er places. They’re forced to com­pete, and we com­pete with nations that are get­ting neg­a­tive rates, some­thing very new, mean­ing they get paid to bor­row money—something that I could get used to very quick­ly. Love that—gotta pay back your loan? Oh, how much am I getting?

Nevertheless, we still have the best num­bers that we’ve had in so many dif­fer­ent areas. It’s a con­ser­v­a­tive approach, and we have a tremen­dous upside poten­tial when all of the trade deals and the mas­sive dereg­u­la­tion starts kick­ing in, which will be dur­ing this year, espe­cial­ly toward the end of the year. Those trade deals are start­ing to kick in already. The reg­u­la­tions are kick­ing in right now.

And I see such tremen­dous poten­tial for the future. We have not even start­ed, because the num­bers we’re talk­ing about are mas­sive. The time for skep­ti­cism is over. People are flow­ing back into our coun­try. Companies are com­ing back into our coun­try. Many of you who I know, are com­ing back in with your plants and your factories—thank you very much. America’s new­found pros­per­i­ty is unde­ni­able, unprece­dent­ed, and unmatched any­where in the world. America achieved this stun­ning turn­around not by mak­ing minor changes to a hand­ful of poli­cies but by adopt­ing a whole new approach, cen­tered entire­ly on the well­be­ing of the American work­er. Every deci­sion we make—on tax­es, trade, reg­u­la­tion, ener­gy, immi­gra­tion, edu­ca­tion, and more—is focused on improv­ing the lives of every­day Americans. We are deter­mined to cre­ate the high­est stan­dard of liv­ing that any­one can imag­ine. And right now, that’s what we’re doing for our workers—the high­est in the world. And we’re deter­mined to ensure that the work­ing and mid­dle class reap the largest gains. A nation’s high­est duty is to its own cit­i­zens. Honoring this truth is the only way to build faith and con­fi­dence in the mar­ket sys­tem. Only when gov­ern­ments put their own cit­i­zens first will peo­ple be ful­ly invest­ed in their nation­al futures. In the United States, we are build­ing an econ­o­my that works for every­one, restor­ing the bonds of love and loy­al­ty that unite cit­i­zens and pow­ers nations.

Today, I hold up the American mod­el as an exam­ple to the world of a work­ing sys­tem of free enter­prise that will pro­duce the most ben­e­fits for the most peo­ple in the 21^st cen­tu­ry and beyond. A pro-worker, pro-citizen, pro-family agen­da demon­strates how a nation can thrive when its com­mu­ni­ties, its com­pa­nies, its gov­ern­ment, and its peo­ple work togeth­er for the good of the whole nation.

As part of this new vision, we passed the largest pack­age of tax cuts and reforms in American his­to­ry. We dou­bled the child tax cred­it, ben­e­fit­ting 40 mil­lion American fam­i­lies and lift­ing 650,000 sin­gle moth­ers and their 1 mil­lion chil­dren out of pover­ty, and out of pover­ty quick­ly. We passed the first-ever tax cred­it for employ­ers who pro­vide paid pater­nal leave for employ­ees earn­ing $72,000 or less annu­al­ly, and passed paid fam­i­ly leave for gov­ern­ment employ­ees as a mod­el for the country.

We made child­care much more afford­able and reduced or elim­i­nat­ed child­care wait­lists all across the nation. Our child­care reforms are sup­port­ing work­ing par­ents and ensur­ing their chil­dren have access to high-quality care and edu­ca­tion, all of which they very much deserve. We low­ered our busi­ness tax from the high­est in the devel­oped world down to one that’s not only com­pet­i­tive, but one of the low­er tax­es. We cre­at­ed near­ly 9,000 Opportunity Zones in dis­tressed com­mu­ni­ties where cap­i­tal gains on long-term invest­ments are now taxed at zero, and tremen­dous wealth is pour­ing into areas that for a hun­dred years saw noth­ing. The 35 mil­lion Americans who live in these areas have already seen their home val­ues rise by more than $22 bil­lion. My admin­is­tra­tion has also made his­toric invest­ments in his­tor­i­cal­ly black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. I saved HCBUs. We saved them. They were going out, and we saved them.

We’re remov­ing road­blocks to suc­cess and reward­ing busi­ness­es that invest in work­ers, fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­ties. We’ve also launched the most ambi­tious cam­paign in his­to­ry to reduce job-killing reg­u­la­tions. For every new reg­u­la­tion adopt­ed, we are remov­ing eight old reg­u­la­tions, which will save an aver­age of American house­holds about $3,100 per year. It was going to be for every one, we do two, but we were able to lift that to eight and we think that’s going to go quite a bit high­er. We still have a way to go.

Today, I urge oth­er nations to fol­low our exam­ple and lib­er­ate your cit­i­zens from the crush­ing weight of bureau­cra­cy. With that, you have to run your own coun­tries the way you want. We’re also restor­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al rule of law in America, which is essen­tial to our econ­o­my, our lib­er­ty, and our future. And that’s why we’ve appoint­ed over 190 fed­er­al judges—a record—to inter­pret the law as writ­ten. One hun­dred and nine­ty fed­er­al judges—think of that—and two Supreme Court judges.

As a result of our efforts, invest­ment is pour­ing into our coun­try. In the first half of 2019 the United States attract­ed near­ly one-quarter of all for­eign direct invest­ment in the world. Think of that. 25% of all for­eign invest­ment all over the world came into the United States, and that num­ber is increas­ing rapid­ly. To every busi­ness look­ing for a place where they are free to invest, build, thrive, inno­vate, and suc­ceed, there is no bet­ter place on Earth than the United States.

As a cen­tral part of our com­mit­ment to build­ing an inclu­sive soci­ety, we estab­lished the National Council for the American Worker. We want every cit­i­zen, regard­less of age or back­ground, to have the cutting-edge skills to com­pete and suc­ceed in tomor­row’s work­place. This includes crit­i­cal indus­tries like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, quan­tum com­put­ing, and 5G.

Under Ivanka’s lead­er­ship, who’s with us today, our Pledge to America’s Workers has become a full-blown nation­al move­ment with over 400 com­pa­nies com­mit­ting to pro­vide new job and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to already very close to 15 mil­lion American stu­dents and workers—15 mil­lion. America’s mak­ing sweep­ing changes to place work­ers and their fam­i­lies at the cen­ter of our nation­al agenda. 

Perhaps the most trans­for­ma­tive change of all is on trade reform, where we’re address­ing chron­ic prob­lems that have been ignored, tol­er­at­ed, or enabled for decades. Our lead­ers did noth­ing about what hap­pened to us on trade. Before I was elect­ed, China’s preda­to­ry prac­tices were under­min­ing trade for every­one, but no one did any­thing about it, except allow it to keep get­ting worse, and worse, and worse. Under my lead­er­ship, America con­front­ed the prob­lem head on. Under our new phase one agree­ment (phase two is start­ing nego­ti­a­tions very short­ly), China has agreed to sub­stan­tial­ly do things that they would not have done: mea­sures to pro­tect intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty; stop forced tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers; remove trade bar­ri­ers in agri­cul­tur­al goods and on agri­cul­tur­al goods, where we were treat­ed so bad­ly; open its finan­cial sec­tor totally—that’s done, and main­tain a sta­ble cur­ren­cy, all backed by very very strong enforce­ment. Our rela­tion­ship with China, right now, has prob­a­bly nev­er been bet­ter. We went through a very rough patch, but it’s nev­er, ever been better—my rela­tion­ship with President Xi is an extra­or­di­nary one. He’s for China, I’m for the US, but oth­er than that we love each other.

Additionally, China will spend an addi­tion­al $200 bil­lion over two years on American ser­vices, agri­cul­ture, and ener­gy, and man­u­fac­tured goods. So we’ll be tak­ing in in excess of 200 billion—could be clos­er to 300 bil­lion when it fin­ish­es. But these achieve­ments would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the imple­men­ta­tion of tar­iffs, which we had to use, and we’re using them on oth­ers, too. And that is why most of our tar­iffs on China will remain in place dur­ing the phase two nego­ti­a­tions. For the most part the tar­iffs have been left and we’re being paid bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars a year, as a country.

As I men­tioned ear­li­er we end­ed the NAFTA dis­as­ter, one of the worst trade deals ever made—not even close—and replaced it with the incred­i­ble new trade deal, the USMCA; that’s Mexico and Canada.

In the near­ly twenty-five years after NAFTA the United States lost one in four man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, includ­ing near­ly one in four vehicle-manufacturing jobs. It was an incen­tive to leave the coun­try. The NAFTA agree­ment exem­pli­fied the decades-long fail­ures of the inter­na­tion­al trad­ing sys­tem. The agree­ment shift­ed wealth to the hands of a few, pro­mot­ed mas­sive out­sourc­ing, drove down wages, and shut­tered plants and fac­to­ries by the thousands—the plants would leave our coun­try, make the prod­uct, sell it into our coun­try. We end­ed up with no jobs and no tax­es. We’d buy oth­er coun­tries’ prod­uct. That does­n’t hap­pen anymore.

This is the wreck­age that I was elect­ed to clean up—it’s prob­a­bly the rea­son I ran for pres­i­dent, more than any oth­er thing. Because I could­n’t under­stand why we were los­ing all of these jobs to oth­er coun­tries at such a rapid rate. And it got worse and worse and I think it’s prob­a­bly the pri­ma­ry rea­son that I ran, but there are oth­er rea­sons also. And to replace with a new sys­tem that puts work­ers before the spe­cial inter­ests. And the spe­cial inter­ests will do just fine but the work­ers come first.

Our brand new USMCA is the result of the broad­est coali­tion ever assem­bled for a trade agree­ment. Manufacturing, agri­cul­ture, and labor all strong­ly endorsed the deal. And as you know it just passed in Congress over­whelm­ing­ly. It shows how to solve the 21^st cen­tu­ry chal­lenge we all face: pro­tect­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, expand­ing dig­i­tal trade, reshoring lost jobs, and ensur­ing ris­ing wages and liv­ing standards.

The United States has also con­clud­ed a great new trade deal with Japan, approx­i­mate­ly $40 bil­lion, and com­plete­ly rene­go­ti­at­ed our deal with South Korea. We’re also nego­ti­at­ing many oth­er trans­ac­tions with many oth­er coun­tries. And we look for­ward to nego­ti­at­ing a tremen­dous new deal with the United Kingdom. Have a won­der­ful new Prime Minister, and wants very much to…make a deal, as they say.

To pro­tect our secu­ri­ty and our econ­o­my, we are also bold­ly embrac­ing American ener­gy inde­pen­dence. The United States is now by far the num­ber one pro­duc­er of oil and nat­ur­al gas any­where in the world, by far. It’s not even close. While many European coun­tries strug­gle with crip­pling ener­gy costs, the American ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion is sav­ing American fam­i­lies $2,500 every year in low­er­ing elec­tric bills and num­bers that peo­ple said could­n’t hap­pen. And also, very impor­tant­ly, prices at the pump.

We’ve been so suc­cess­ful that the United States no longer needs to import ener­gy from hos­tile nations. With an abun­dance of American nat­ur­al gas now avail­able, our European allies no longer have to be vul­ner­a­ble to unfriend­ly ener­gy sup­pli­ers, either. We urge our friends in Europe to use America’s vast sup­ply and achieve true ener­gy security.

With US com­pa­nies and researchers lead­ing the way, we are on the thresh­old of vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed reserves of ener­gy, includ­ing from tra­di­tion­al fuels, LNG, clean coal, next-generation nuclear pow­er, and gas hydrate technologies.

At the same time I’m proud to report the United States has among the clean­est air and drink­ing water on Earth. And we’re going to keep it that way and we just came out with a report that at this moment it’s the clean­est it’s been in the last forty years. We’re com­mit­ted to con­serv­ing the majesty of God’s cre­ation and the nat­ur­al beau­ty of our world.

Today, I’m pleased to announce the United States will join One Trillion Trees Initiative, being launched here at the World Economic Forum—one tril­lion trees. [applause] And in doing so, we will con­tin­ue to show strong lead­er­ship in restor­ing, grow­ing, and bet­ter man­ag­ing our trees and our forests.

This is not a time for pes­simism. This is a time for opti­mism. Fear and doubt is not a good thought process, because this is a time for tremen­dous hope, and joy, and optimism—and action. But to embrace the pos­si­bil­i­ties of tomor­row we must reject the peren­ni­al prophets of doom, and their pre­dic­tions of the apoc­a­lypse. They are the heirs of yes­ter­day’s fool­ish fortune-tellers, and I have them and you have them, and we all have them, and they want to see us do bad­ly but we don’t let that hap­pen. They pre­dict­ed an over­pop­u­la­tion cri­sis in the 1960s, mass star­va­tion in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s. These alarmists always demand the same thing, absolute pow­er to dom­i­nate, trans­form, and con­trol every aspect of our lives. We will nev­er let rad­i­cal social­ists destroy our econ­o­my, wreck our coun­try, or erad­i­cate our lib­er­ty. America will always be the proud, strong, and unyield­ing bas­tion of free­dom. In America, we under­stand what the pes­simists refuse to see: that a grow­ing and vibrant mar­ket econ­o­my focused on the future lifts the human spir­it and excites cre­ativ­i­ty strong enough to over­come any chal­lenge, any chal­lenge by far.

The great sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, from peni­cillin, to high-yield wheat, to mod­ern trans­porta­tion and break­through vac­cines have lift­ed liv­ing stan­dards and saved bil­lions of lives around the world and we’re con­tin­u­ing to work on things that you’ll be hear­ing about in the near future that even today, sit­ting here right now, you would­n’t believe it’s pos­si­ble that we have found the answers. You’ll be hear­ing about it. But we have found answers to things that peo­ple said would not be pos­si­ble, cer­tain­ly not in a very short peri­od of time. But the won­ders of the last cen­tu­ry will pale in com­par­i­son to what today’s young inno­va­tors will achieve because they are doing things that nobody thought even fea­si­ble to begin. We con­tin­ue to embrace tech­nol­o­gy, not to shun it. When peo­ple are free to inno­vate, mil­lions will live longer, hap­pi­er, health­i­er lives. For three years now, America has shown the world that the path to a pros­per­ous future begins with putting work­ers first, choos­ing growth, and free­ing entre­pre­neurs to bring their dreams to life.

For any­one who doubts what is pos­si­ble in the future, we need only look at the tow­er­ing achieve­ments of the past. Only a few hun­dred miles from here are some of the great cities of Europe. Teeming cen­ters of com­merce and cul­ture. Each of them is full of reminders of what human dri­ve and imag­i­na­tion can achieve. Centuries ago, at the time of the Renaissance, skilled crafts­men and labor­ers looked upwards and built the struc­tures that still touch the human heart. To this day, some of the great­est struc­tures in the world have been built hun­dreds of years ago. In Italy, the cit­i­zens once start­ed con­struc­tion on what would be a 140-year project, the Duomo of Florence. Incredible, incred­i­ble place. While the tech­nol­o­gy did not yet exist to com­plete their design, city fathers forged ahead any­way, cer­tain that they would fig­ure it out some­day. These cit­i­zens of Florence did not accept lim­its to their high aspi­ra­tions and so the great dome was final­ly built.

In France, anoth­er century-long project con­tin­ues to hold such a grip on our hearts and our souls that even 800 years after its con­struc­tion, when the Cathedral of Notre-Dame was engulfed in flames last year—such a sad sight to watch, unbe­liev­able sight, espe­cial­ly for those of us that con­sid­ered it one of the great, great mon­u­ments and rep­re­sent­ing so many dif­fer­ent things, the whole world grieved.

[Though] her sanc­tu­ary now stands scorched and charred, and a sight that’s hard to believe. When you got used to it, to look at it now, hard to believe. But we know that Notre-Dame will be restored. Will be restored mag­nif­i­cent­ly. The great bells will once again ring out for all to hear, giv­ing glo­ry to God and fill­ing mil­lions with won­der and awe.

The Cathedrals of Europe teach us to pur­sue big dreams, dar­ing adven­tures, and unbri­dled ambi­tions. They urge us to con­sid­er not only what we build today, but what we will endure long after we are gone. They tes­ti­fy to the pow­er of ordi­nary peo­ple to real­ize extra­or­di­nary achieve­ments when unit­ed by a grand and noble pur­pose. So togeth­er, we must go for­ward with con­fi­dence, deter­mi­na­tion, and vision. We must not be timid, or meek, or fear­ful. But instead we must bold­ly seize the day and embrace the moment. We have so many great lead­ers in this room, not only busi­ness lead­ers but lead­ers of nations. And some are doing such a fan­tas­tic job. We work togeth­er very close­ly. We will draw strength from the glo­ries of the past and we will make great­ness our com­mon mis­sion for the future. Together, we will make our nations stronger, our coun­tries safer, our cul­ture rich­er, our peo­ple freer, and the world more beau­ti­ful than ever before.

Above all else, we will for­ev­er be loy­al to our work­ers, our cit­i­zens, and our fam­i­lies. The men and women who are the back­bone of our economies, the heart of our com­mu­ni­ties, and the soul of our coun­tries. Let us bring light to their lives one by one, and empow­er them to light up the world. Thank you very much. God bless you. God bless your coun­tries. And God bless America. Thank you. Thank you very much. [applause]