President Donald Trump holds an important conference with many of the world's foremost CEO's that was also arranged by Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO of The Blackstone group. Listen in.
Here is a transcript of the remarks by President Trump and Steve Schwarzman in the Strategic and Policy CEO Discussion
Old State Department Library
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all for being here. Very much appreciate it. I want to thank Steve Schwarzman for putting together this very incredible group of world-class business leaders. That's what you are. Also, joining us are Secretary Betsy DeVos, Secretary Wilbur Ross, Secretary Elaine Chao, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, and my budget director, Mick Mulvaney. That's an easy job. Where's Mick? (Laughter.) Such an easy job. It's the easiest job of anybody in the government -- right, Mick?
At the top of our agenda is the creation of great high-paying jobs for American workers. And we've made a lot of process. You see what's going on; you see the numbers. We've created over 600,000 jobs already in a very short period of time, and it's going to really start catching on now, because some of the things that we've done are big league and they are catching on.
Already, we've created more than almost 600,000 jobs. And yesterday, Toyota just announced that it will invest more than 1.3 billion -- it's probably going to be 1.9 billion -- into its Georgetown, Kentucky plant, an investment that would not have been made if we didn’t win the election.
We have a lot of work to do. In the last two decades, our nation has lost a third of its manufacturing jobs, and our business tax is one of the highest in the world. It actually is, of developed countries, the single highest tax anywhere in the world.
For too long, we've punished production in America and rewarded companies for leaving our country. And we're going to reverse that. We would reward companies, give them incentives to leave. NAFTA is a disaster. It's been a disaster from the day it was devised. And we're going to have some very pleasant surprises for you on NAFTA, that I can tell you.
My administration has already taken historic action to unleash job creation. We've signed dozens of bills and executive actions to reduce federal overreach and expand domestic production.
On the environment, we're going to be very, very careful on the environment. It's very important to me and the administration. But we've allowed a lot of companies to go back to work. They were being restricted; their jobs were being restricted. We've unleashed a lot of companies, especially right now in the energy sector -- you see what's going on there. It was impossible for people to do what they had to do, and now they can do it. It's all done.
We’re also working to modernize our economy and harness the full potential of women in the workforce, which is crucial to our economic success. Economic confidence is sweeping the nation. You saw the new survey that came out. It's at 93 -- which is the highest it's ever been -- 93 percent of manufacturers are optimistic about the future. It was a 27 percent increase over two months ago when it was also high because of the administration, and much higher than it's ever been -- 93 percent. Highest it's ever been.
This is just the beginning. We're going to reduce taxes. We're going to eliminate wasteful regulations, which we've already done -- probably 25 percent. You can take a look at Dodd-Frank. For the bankers in the room, they'll be very happy because we're really doing a major streamlining and, perhaps, elimination, and replacing it with something else. But that will be the minimum. But we're doing a major elimination of the horrendous Dodd-Frank regulations, keeping some obviously, but getting rid of many.
And we're going to put many millions of people back to work. The banks will be able to lend again. So many people come to see me, I see them all the time -- small businesses -- they're unable to borrow from banks. They never had a
