TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Addresses a Business Leaders Dinner in Tokyo, 10.28.25
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George Glass: Thank you. Wow, this room really is full. Thank you. Uh, good evening everyone, and a very warm welcome on this truly very special occasion. This is, in so many ways, a celebration of the United States and Japan Alliance. And the power and the potential of that partnership is sitting in this room. Uh, we took, added up the market cap and it's over $8 trillion is sitting in this room. And around these tables, we have the very best American and Japanese economic might. And it is your company's innovation, your expertise, and vision harnessed by President Trump that is ta- -- taking our remarkable partnership to new heights. It was an honor to be part of two of the president's election campaigns.
And it's, it's, uh, to be able to witness during those, his tireless energy and his love of country. And it is a privilege of a lifetime to serve him and the American people at such a significant moment. Since Inauguration Day this year, the president has shown once again that he is the greatest deal maker, he is the greatest peacemaker, and he is the world's greatest leader. And it is my deep honor to welcome to the stage the 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
President Donald Trump: Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That was a nice, wasn't that a nice introduction? Wow. I wanna use that elsewhere on occasion. And you know what? Sit down. You're just all happy because the stock market hit an all time high today. [Laughter] Which it did. You made a lot of money. You're making a lot of money but I congratulate. It really is, it's an amazing room of people and tremendously successful, great businessmen. Beyond business, really, most of you're really beyond business, so it's an honor to be with you. We had a long day, a long couple of days, uh, we were in Malaysia, we're celebrating a great, uh, into a war that could have happened, where it was, uh, big deal.
I won't, I won't bore you with the facts, but we, we ended eight wars in eight months and, uh, I think there's another one coming. I thought the one coming was a lot easier than the Middle East. We did great with the Middle East, but with, uh, Russia, I thought that was gonna be an easy one. Ukraine-Russia, because of the relationship with President Putin. But that didn't work out too well so far, but it will. We'll get it done too, but it'll be, uh, that'll be number nine. I think that's just about it. Anyone starts, I think generally speaking, I'll end it. Otherwise, a lot of people die and we don't like that. But I want to thank our outstanding ambassador, George Glass, who you just heard from.
Thank you, George. And his wife, Mary. Mary, thank you very much. Great, great job. This is such a great peop- -- group of people that you put together. I'll be meeting with, uh, President Xi the day after tomorrow. I'm going to, uh, a wonderful place where I think a lot of you may be going. Uh, we're gonna be meeting tomorrow at a very fantastic meeting. Who's going tomorrow? Is anybody going that I know in this room? I think a lot. Tim, are you going? Maybe? You're not. You mean you came here for this, and you're just going back just like that, huh? But we'll go, be going to South Korea. And then, um, on the following day I'm meeting with President Xi, as you probably heard.
I'd be surprised if anybody didn't hear. That's a big, big meeting, and I think it's gonna work out very well, actually. I think it's gonna be great for everybody. But I also want to recognize people that have been doing a fantastic job. Uh, our cabinet, we have a lot of members here tonight. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Where are you, Marco? Stand up, Marco. Thank you. Great job. You're doing a great job. They're all doing a great job. Secretary of War. You know what used to be Secretary of Defense? Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Thank you, Pete. You know, we used to be Secretary of War. It used to be the Department of War, and then we became politically correct.
We won World War I, we won World War II. We won everything in between and everything in front of it. And then we'd win wars but we'd leave after we won. We'd go into wars that we shouldn't have been in, but then we'd just leave. We'd bomb the hell outta somebody and we'd leave. And, uh, I said, you know what, what do you think of that idea? Pete said, "I like it." I said, "Boy, that didn't take long." [Laughter] Right, Pete? But, uh, he's doing a great job. He's doing a great job on the border, too. You see what's happening? And, uh, we had drugs coming in, a lot of 'em coming in by sea. There aren't too many coming in by sea anymore. They've decided to take a pass.
I don't know if you've seen what's happening, but, uh, it's really been amazing what's been happening. And in terms of our border, we have a border that's totally closed. We used to have a border that was totally open. We took in 25 million people. Many of them should never have been there. And, uh, they came from prisons, jails, they came from, uh, mental institutions, insane asylums. Some people say, how come you mention both? I said, well, the Insane Asylum is a mental institution on steroids and it's beyond the men- -- mental institution. But we took them both, and we took drug dealers, we took everybody. What a disgrace. What a disgraceful job they did, the previous administration.
And I wouldn't normally say that. But what they did to our country, it was incredible. And now, you know, we had a country, it was a dead country. Everybody, so many of the leaders that I've met, king of Saudi Arabia, told me very -- They all said, essentially, "We thought your country was dead one year ago. We thought your country was dead." Now, it's the hottest country anywhere in the world. Like by far, I mean, we have some leaders here, so I don't want to insult anybody. We have the hottest country in the world. So I just wanna thank some of these people. Scott Bessent, you're doing a great job, Secretary of Treasury. Thank you, Scott. Thank you Scott. Great. How good is he on television? You know, he soothes the markets. I don't soothe the market. [Laughter] I sometimes disturb the markets. He soothes the markets. He goes -- I said, "Scott, go in and clean it all up for me, Scott." And he goes in, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.
And he's really terrific. He's done a great job. And I'm thinking about him for the Fed. See, now the camera's going b- -- breaking news, but he won't take the job. He likes being Treasury. [Laughter] So we're not thinking about him really. Oh, yeah. But, uh, he's -- We're very proud of the job you're doing. Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick. Thank you, Howard. We just said -- I guess it's about 518 billion in the other room. We were a little bit short of 500. And then we had a couple of people that just announced including, uh, Toyota, 10 billion, uh, gonna open new car plants throughout the United States.
A lot of them. And uh, that's great because of the tariffs, and because of the November 5th election. I think both. But the tariffs have been tremendously helpful in terms of national security, the national security for our country. And a lot of the, uh, a lot of the wars that I stopped were because of tariffs and be- -- frankly, I did a great service to the world b- -- because of tariffs, because of trade. If you look at, uh, India and Pakistan, uh, they were going at it. Seven planes were shot down. Seven brand new beautiful planes were shot down and they were going at it, two big nuclear powers. And I said to Prime Minister Modi, and I said to the prime minister, very nice man, a very good man, and the field marshal over in Pakistan.
I said, "Look, we're not gonna do any trade if you're gonna be fighting." "No, no, no. One thing has nothing to do with the other." I said, "Is it?" It has a lot to do with the other, two nuclear powers. We get that nuclear dust all over the place. All of you are affected, right? [Laughs] Then we said, "No, we're not doing any deals if you're gonna fight." And within about 24 hours, that was the end of that. It was amazing actually. And we've done numerous like that. I would say trade is responsible for 70% of the fact that we didn't have wars by using our heads, because they want to trade with the United States. But I said, "We're not gonna trade if you're gonna go to war." And it's amazing how quickly they were able to make deals.
And you know, they would've been fighting for 10 years, killing millions of people, numerous of them. So we're very happy about that. But I also wanna say that U.S. trade representative of, uh -- Jamieson Greer is like -- He's really fan -- where is he? He leaves everybody happy. He does -- Everybody -- You know, they have such confidence in him. Even the other side. I mean, you have to have both sides have confidence, especially when it comes to trade between countries. But Jamieson, you're doing a great job. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. And we had a phenomenal day here in Japan with a momentous trade deal. We made a big, big beautiful trade deal for both countries. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, I think Japan also had their best stock market day ever. So your new prime minister is doing very well. First female, first woman prime minister. And I said, "You already hit the highest stock price you've ever hit." So she's very happy. And we spent the whole day together.
It was beautiful. And she's, she's great. We went out to the George -- USS George Washington, the SS George Washington. It was, uh, it was really great. This, the, uh, the sailors and a lot of others. We had a lot of people, a lot of military people were there. But boy, that was some scene. It was incredible. You wouldn't believe that a ship could hold that many people. But I just want to, uh, say that, uh, she is a delight and she's gonna be -- I think she's gonna be a great prime minister. Really do. I've got to know her pretty well in a short period of time. She was a very good friend and ally of Shinzo Abe, who was a friend of mine. One of my best friends in terms of this world, the world of nations. And, uh, he was a great man. And he got -- Unfortunately, what happened to him was sad, very sad. But, uh, he was a great leader and, uh, we, we miss him very much. But a fantastic tribute to the U.S.-Japanese Alliance, uh, aboard that ship today, USS.
Think of it, USS George Washington. It's the only ship that just doesn't come back to the United States. [Laughs] It stays here and it's very proud. This is our largest military contingent [inaudible 00:05:33] I think like 66,000 soldiers, Navy and others. So this was a fantastic day. The, the level of excitement and enthusiasm. It's so easy. People say, "How do you speak in front of that many people and enjoy it when you have so much love?" There's such love, with such love on that ship. It's really easy to do. They don't understand that it's easy to do. But tonight, I'm more confident than ever that the friendship between the United States and Japan is strong, as strong as it can be, and it's thriving, it's prosperous and it'll soon be, I think, greater than ever before, and we had four great years.
You know, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country, but we're blowing it away this time. To be honest with you, we're blowing it. That was, we had four great years. Uh, as you know, we had the one-year deduction that I got that one-year little deduction, like you can deduct every single thing. And nobody ever thought that was possible. That beats 38 years, right? But now, we did it for a period of 10 years instead of period of one year. It's much stronger. It's, uh -- And you can deduct structures and, and for, uh, the people you have no tax on tips, no tax on social security, think of it. No tax on overtime, for your workers.
And, uh, it really covers everything. The Great Big Beautiful Bill, uh, we got everything done. I said, "Let's get it all done." A lot of people want to do it. Little small pieces, like 9 of them, 12 of 'em. I said "Put it all into one bill and if we get it done, we're done for four years." We don't need anything more from Congress in terms of that. Right, Scott? If we got it all done. It was a little risky, but because if we didn't get it done, I don't know, who knows what would've happened with these radical left lunatics that we have to deal with. But, uh, we got it all done and now we're, we're set, and you're set. The investment in this country is set.
You have all that you want. The people in, uh, this room are the living embodiment of the US-Japanese economic partnership that together we're taken to even greater heights. It will, I think, never be like it. It's now, but it'll get even better if that's possible. I especially wanna thank Japanese companies, SoftBank. I think, uh, Masa is here. Where's Masa? And I played golf with this guy last week. He sank every putt. Every putt. We played with Bryson DeChambeau. We had a great match. And the great Gary Player. Gary player is 90 years old and he shot 70. Is that right?
Masayoshi Son: Yeah, we did the 22 under.
Trump: That's right. We won the tournament. We had 36 teams and we won the tournament. Oh, we didn't cheat either. You know, a lot of, a lot of those teams cheated because I know how they play and they did not shoot those scores. But I think we, we got, uh -- Well, it helped to have Bryson hitting a ball 400 yards, you know. It's always nice to have. And he said, "I'll take Bryson on our team." But we had a, we had a great time and you played great and you putted very well and I appreciate it, 'cause I now have an extra trophy on my desk and I like that. Yes, please.
Son: Four, four, uh, eagles.
Trump: That's right.
Son: Four eagles, we made.
Trump: Four eagles. We made four eagles. And, uh, no, I seriously mean he -- Every time he stood over a putt -- I'm not saying it's gonna happen every time, but it happened this time and he's, "Bing, bing." And we didn't have to putt 'cause we were playing baseball, so we didn't have to putt. So thank you very much, Masa. That's better than all the deals you made. That made him feel better than all the deals he's made. Thank you. It's great to be here. We'll do it again. But I also want to thank Toyota for that great -- Uh, it's not a contribution, it's an investment. We are, uh, we're having investments in the, in our country greater than ever before.
Greater than any country has ever had, actually. We'll talk about that. And I also want to thank the people from Carrier here someplace. Where's Carrier that were here? Just thank you. Thank you very much. They made a big contribution also, uh, to the White House Fund. We're redoing lots of things in the White House. We're bringing it up to, to, uh, the way it should be. And you probably heard, I don't know if anybody heard about we're building a little ballroom over there. People are loving it. Now, they're loving it. Took 'em a little while to understand [Laughs] what was going on, but now, we actually got an editorial from the Washington Post and from the New York Times saying, "You got to build that ballroom." I almost, I couldn't believe it when that happened.
Look, they're back there right now. They can't believe I'm saying good things about it, but it's been great. But I want to thank Carrier and make great air conditioning, heating and things. And they were very generous. It's really fantastic what they did. And with the help of many of you here tonight, almost all of you, the only people that haven't done anything, snuck into the room because I think you're all here because of what you've done. And so if there's anybody that hasn't done anything, please raise your hand and we'll throw you the hell out of here. Okay? But Japan is already America's sixth-largest trading partner. And I think as of today, that's, that's gone up probably two notches, and the number one source of foreign direct investment.
And so they're very happy because, uh, you know, as goes our market, so many countries. They invest in the United States, but we've never had anything quite like what's happening. And I think it's gonna get better. I can say it now. Uh, so we have over $17 trillion of investment in eight months. And I think by the time we go to the 12-month period, we'll have over $20 or $21 trillion invested. Uh, or to be invested, very importantly. I mean, the money's coming in and a lot of it is commitments that are incredible. Tim Cook is doing I think like $600 or $650 billion, right? Think of it, you've done more than the entire group here. We raised 518 billion and there's one man sitting here at 650, but good.
And, and everything is they're treating you great, right? [Audience member responds "Absolutely"] We give 'em fast permits. We give everybody fast permits. No more waiting 20 years before you get rejected. You know, that used to have a process. I, I know a couple of people, they started a process when they were young men. Now they're old men and they got rejected. Can you imagine? They devoted their whole life to getting a couple of permits. Uh, one of the things I did that's really helping AI because of the massive amount of electricity that they need is I said, "You build your own power plant if you'd like." So far everybody said, "We like." But w- -- at first they weren't doing it. I said, "I wonder why?" Because they didn't believe me. They didn't believe they were actually getting this.
You know, we have a grid that's like, a lot of grids are, it's old and nobody ever said that we're gonna be, you know, doubling. You have to double or triple the amount of electricity that we current have. As, as an example in the United States. You have to triple it, but double it at a minimum, but really triple it in order to take care of just AI. Can you believe this?
More than double what we have currently. So for all of that, we have to more than double it. And I said, "Well, that, that's not, you know, something you can do from the grid." I mean, how would you do that? You have an old grid and it's doing okay. We're fixing it, but you can't do that. And I came up with the idea that you're building a plant, they're spending $50 billion to build a plant. I said, "You can build your own electric generating sources." And honestly, some of the people in this room, they've, they're building, um, electric generators that are so far beyond anything that's ever been built before. They're using all different types of fuel. They're using nuclear, they're using oil and gas.
They're using coal as a backup. Coal is a great backup. If something happens, you can put it aside and if you ever need it, you can, you can use it. But, uh, it's a great thing, uh, that they're -- And we're getting you very fast approvals. Lee Zeldin's doing a fantastic job. We're giving you fast approvals. You don't have to wait, you know, nine years. You w-, you're waiting a matter of weeks, literally a matter of weeks. You're coming in with the best engineers in the world. You know what you're doing. And so as you build your plant, you're, uh, sort of in the utility business like Con Edison in New York. You're building your own electric and, uh, you can build it as much as you want.
And if you have any leftover, you send it, you sell it into the grid. So our grid picks up a lot of electric without really us doing anything. You talk about private sector, that's the ultimate. But everybody loves it. And they, they're coming. Honestly, I mean, somebody that understands that better than information, which is what the other par- -- part makes. You're gonna make a lot of money with information. And, uh, but somebody that really does understand the generation of electricity, the kind of plants that are being built are unbelievable. They're far beyond anything being built in terms of your regular utility companies, which you know is sort of an older business.
So I congratulate you. But the beauty is that you start building immediately, Tim. You don't have to wait, you know -- Well, if we went by the grid, 10, 12, 15 years, but, uh, the permits are fast and y- -- it's, you open as soon as you have your, your plants, right? Your combination of plants. Some are building it on top, some are building it to the side. Some are building separate buildings, some are building in one building. And I love the idea, but literally they, the, it took them a while to really, they thought I was kidding. It was so good. They said, "No, no. He's kidding." I said, "I'm not kidding." That's why we're leading China. We're leading everybody in this race.
So, uh, we're with you all the way and you're gonna, I hope everyone's gonna do great and make a tremendous amount of money and create a lot of jobs under the historic trade deal with the Prime Minister that has signed today and private sector agreements that were signed moments ago. We'll be increasing our commerce very, very much further. Uh, Japan's gonna be investing $550 billion into the United States, and it's, it's an amazing thing. And they're happy and they're, they're gonna, they're gonna love it. It's gonna be really good. It's gonna be a great, great for everybody. But building up an allied industrial base, and you know, one of the things that makes me so happy is they'll be, uh, taking some of our product.
Japan is, uh, typ- -- I don't think I'm saying anything that's very secret. They've been typically slightly closed as the country. Was not easy to come in, but they're taking some of our cars and some of our, a lot of our, our different thing, uh, rice, which is actually a big deal because, as you know, they wouldn't do that. And they're taking corn and, uh, they're taking the Ford 150 right here, the big thing, some of our cars. So it's really a great thing. It's gonna be great for them. It's gonna be great for everybody. But, uh, we're doing, uh, semiconductors together, critical minerals, shipbuilding. We're starting shipbuilding together and they're doing pretty well with shipbuilding.
They're number three. They're gonna be coming over to the United States and building ships in some of the yards. We have some great yards. You know, the United States was number one during World War II, number one in the world in shipbuilding by far. We would produce a ship a day. Can you believe it? A ship a day, you know, freighters and this and that. But some big ones too, some great warships. And, uh, we just let that, our leadership, the person standing right where I am numerous years ago, a number of 'em, they just let it slip. And, uh, so we're gonna be very heavy into the shipbuilding in a very pretty short period of time. It takes a while to get that one going.
But to think that we were number one in the world and now we're, you know, we basically don't make very many ships anymore. Uh, we do beautiful coast guard cutters. We do beautiful smaller ships like, uh, destroyers, et cetera, but we, we don't essentially, we don't really do what we should be doing. And we will be doing that pretty soon. But the deals will create jobs and opportunity, wealth, tremendous wealth and security for both sides and for both sides of the Pacific, and make our cherished, uh, bond between the two countries even better. And we've got so many wonderful deals, but this is one that people have been very, very interested in. They really waited for this day.
And, uh, I found it to be an amazing day. Not an easy day. I, I think we've gone to about nine stops. I think, you think Biden coulda done this? I don't think so. [Laughter] You think so? I don't. I've been walking back and forth, "Sir, we're going over here. It's just a quarter of a mile. Uh, walking would be fine, sir." "Oh, thanks a lot" you know? [Laughter] But we had a lotta stops today, uh, from early in the morning until now, but this is one that I was thrilled 'cause I see the list of people. This is really a who's who, this list. I was reading it. I don't get that impressed with things, I'd say, "Wow, that's really pretty amazing." But I'm thrilled that, uh, so many Japanese investors recognize that people from all over the planet are now discovering that the United States is hot, and it's also a place where you can really do business.
Getting the approvals is, is so great. You know, in, uh, my first term, we had an LNG plan, two of 'em, they were under approval. One was 14 years and one was 16 years. And actually, one of 'em was a big Japanese investor group. And, uh, they couldn't get their approval, so it was never gonna happen. I come in, I didn't know anything about it, but I came in, I heard about it. And so they were 14 years, I think in 16 years. And they were just about, they gave up, essentially. And I got one done in one day. And the other one it took me, I didn't do as well, uh, it took me three days to get it done. And they were under construction in less than a week. And they're up now and they're doing phenomenally well, you know, in, in Louisiana, actually, two of 'em right on the coast.
And people said, "How did you do that?" I said, "I have no idea, but I get things done." There's no better place on earth to invest and grow your business than the United States. And a lotta the environmental nonsense. And I'm a big environmentalist, in a sense. Like, I want clean air, I want clean water, but, uh, we're gonna make, make it great for our workers and our economy. We're not gonna, we're not gonna take, honestly, when I say five years, much longer than five years to do things. I actually said to some of our people, I said, "Look, you have, on big plants, you have two weeks on oil and gas to get the approvals. And if you go nuclear, three weeks for nuclear." You know, nuclear with Westinghouse is here today, they've done great.
They've really, uh, I mean, they've, they had a difficult problem a few years ago. They have become very hot, Westinghouse, and they're doing a lotta work in the United States. We're doing a lotta nuclear now. Nu- -- nuclear now is safe and it's inexpensive. It's really, it's great energy now. I was not, I was, I was with nuclear, but I didn't love certain aspects of it. Today is so different and it really is a safe, great way to go. A lotta people are going that way. But one year ago, the United States was really, uh, you'd never get, you'd never get your permits. You'd, you'd wait years and years and years. And, and honestly, if you had another, like Kamala, I don't know where the hell she came from, but if you had Kamala, I was right. I'm against Biden. I went up by 29 points.
All of a sudden they take him out. It's like a fighter. He's losing the fight, they replace him in the middle of the fight. They gave me a new one. They gave me Kamala. I went from Joe to Kamala. But if she got in, you, you, I don't think there'd be nobody in this room. You wouldn't be doing anything. You'd be elsewhere doing things and, uh, wouldn't be the same. But you have a, you have a, a great partner now in the United States get- -- getting you started and you will, you will have everything done very, very quickly, record time, as fast as, I think much faster than maybe any other country, other than China 'cause in China you have a good system. Also, you have a system where President Xi can approve it immediately.
So that's even faster. He doesn't have to wait two weeks. I have to wait two weeks. But, uh, you do go quickly there. But we have a lot of advantages, as you know. Since the election, we've secured all of that money coming in, and we have a lot more money coming in. And, uh, again, I mentioned SoftBank, but Jira, JCB, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Honda, they're all coming into the United States. We have a lotta car plant's opening up because of tariffs, they don't wanna pay tariffs. And, um, they come and, and frankly, Japan is, uh, sponsoring many of 'em because that way you don't have to pay the tariffs. Without the tariffs -- I mean, tariffs are about national security and we're making a lotta money.
We're gonna pay, start paying down debt very soon. We have a lotta debt because we, honestly, we didn't know what the hell we were doing as a country. Uh, GDP growth in the second quarter was an amazing, uh, almost 4%. Nobody thought, they thought it was gonna be 2%. They had no idea. Just announced 4%, almost 4%. And then the next quarter, I don't know, I think it'd go much higher. I think when we kick in, when these plants start to open, we're building many of 'em. Uh, and a lot of them are car plants, but, you know, you keep hearing about the AI and that's obviously the biggest thing right now. And, and nobody's doing like we are, but we have a lot of other plants coming in. But a lotta car plants are coming in. They're coming in from other countries.
And, uh, next quarter, I think you're gonna see, uh, maybe 4%, maybe more. But, uh, when these plants start opening up, you're gonna see numbers that are gonna be shocking. Energy prices are down. Gasoline are down. Groceries are down except for the, uh, beef, which I'll get down to. Uh, they, our, our ranchers were, for 25 years, they did poorly. And I put tariffs on some. It was just too much. They couldn't compete. They were going outta business. And, uh, maybe they're doing too good now, but we want them to do well, but we have to get the beef prices down. So that's, uh, you know, it's an easy problem to solve. But we'll always take care of our ranchers.
They, and they were with me 100%. They've been with me from the beginning. You know, we had, uh, an election that was too big to rig. We had to get it. We, we -- I would constantly say too big to rig. Don't believe polls that we're way up. Just you gotta go and vote. You know, when the polls are too high, people say, "Let's go to a movie and we'll go home and watch our president win." Uh, but I said, "You just gotta go because, uh, we have a very corrupt election process." And you need that.
You need borders and you need a fair press. And, and the press is slightly better. I'd say, you know, slightly, but it'll get better. And I think it's getting better and better because otherwise, they're gonna lose all credibility and nobody's gonna be watching or listening to them. But you need strong borders and you need good voting. And we're getting 'em both much better. The mortgage rates, except for the fact that we have an incompetent head of the Fed, I think he's incompetent or a bad guy or, you know, but despite that mortgage rates are down, who could believe that we have a, an anti-person who -- I call him too late. He's always too late.
He's been too late. And, uh, Jerome "Too Late" Powell. So somebody gave me a bad reference on him. I put him in based on some guy that, uh, turned out to be not so hot. And we got a bad Fed guy, but he'll be out of there a few months and, uh, we'll get somebody new. I guess, Scott, you have a long list of people that want it. If anybody has any, uh, suggestions, 'cause we really do. We have, you know, all the, the people that peop- -- that are being talked to. If you have a suggestion, just shout it out. Just shout it out. Marc, you have a suggestion? Marc has some pretty good suggestions. He put me on the cover of Time Magazine. And that was a nice picture. Thank you very much for that. [Laughs] That was very good. It was a nice story, too. Thank you very much. I was -- I've been on the cover almost 50 times, but, but, Marc, I can only use 17 of 'em, you know, meaning the rest of 'em aren't so good. 17 are great.
Marc Benioff: This one's good.
Trump: This one was very good. I -- This is going up. Now, I have 18. [Laughs] Thank you very much. I'll see you in a little while. But, uh, mortgage rates are down. And we're rapidly building the greatest economy, I think, I think in history. I mean, look, bad things can happen, you know. We, we were doing great. And even after COVID, we had the best four years. But, uh, all of a sudden, COVID -- Things happen. Things happen. I hope things don't happen here. But, uh, we were doing numbers like nobody had ever seen before. Not as good as we're doing now. And then all of a sudden, we started hearing about, uh, people dying in different places of the world, in China and other places.
And, and, uh, we have a COVID. We have a pandemic all of a sudden and, uh, you know, things like that happen. But hopefully, that won't happen in this case, in this term. But we did a good job in handling it. We, we made more, more machinery and everything else. We did great with the, uh, therapeutics, Regeneron, and, uh, we did the vaccine. We had the vaccine approved in nine months. And there were many people that say, say that we saved 50 million lives worldwide. Not everybody agrees with that, but a lot of people say we saved 15, 50 million lives. You know, in World War II, I guess we lost close to 100. People don't know that it was so bad, the Spanish flu, that it actually ended the war.
That was what stopped the, the first World War. But we were on our way to really terrible numbers. We had, obviously, so many million people died. That was a terrible thing. But things happen and, uh, things that you wouldn't think of. Who, uh, would've thought pandemic? I thought that was like an ancient problem. It wasn't a modern-day problem. But a lot of people did a great job there. And we ended up with the four years great. We actually ended up, when I left, with a stock Marcet price that was higher than it was before the, the pandemic came in. Who would think that was even possible? 'Cause we were rocking and rolling, and then that happened.
And we ended up higher, the stock Marcet was higher than it was just prior to hearing about this, uh, horrible plague. So just as importantly, we've implemented the largest regulation cuts in the history of our country, even larger than we had. We had the biggest, by four times, the biggest regulation cuts in history in my first term. And we're going to be doing that. And we're cutting, as you know. Uh, if we add one regulation, one new regulation, you have to cut 8 or 10, 8 to 10. So you, you add one and you, it's okay, and you cut 10. And we started at 8, now we're 10, including massive reductions in the red tape for the infrastructure and the rapid approvals, et cetera.
But this includes the upcoming liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska, which we have well underway, to export vast amounts of American energy. And Japan is one of the big customers, by the way. And, uh, you know, the slogan, our slogan, and we have fantastic people. Chris Wright is phenomenal. Doug Burgum is, Doug is fantastic. Those two guys are like a partnership. They're unbelievable. I'm sure – -- our slogan and we have fantastic people. Chris Wright is phenomenal. Doug Burgum is -- Doug is fantastic. Those two guys are like a partnership. They're unbelievable. I'm sure you're dealing with them very successfully. But our motto is drill, baby, drill. That's a little different than people that say you can't, you, you know, drive energy through the roof.
And I think you're gonna see two-dollar gasoline pretty soon, and that's like bigger than a tax cut. That's the equivalent of something bigger than a tax cut. So support of Japanese companies like SoftBank, we're pursuing a very bold national policy to keep the United States the world's leader and artificial intelligence. We have some of the greatest in artificial intelligence right here. They were the ones that showed me some things. I said, "You gotta be kidding." It's fantastic. My uncle was a great professor at MIT and he was always ahead of the game. He was a smart guy. He was there for -- He has a distinction of being at MIT, longest-serving professor in the history of MIT, Dr. John Trump. And he was always ahead of the game. And when I see some of the things that are happening, you guys are really ahead of the game. We're speeding construction of AI infrastructure and bringing production of the, uh, critical chips and semiconductors back onshore. And I wanna congratulate Jensen 'cause he's been really amazing.
He's an amazing guy, brilliant guy. I'm seeing him tomorrow. 11 days ago, Nvidia and TSMC announced that they have produced a very fast first-rate state-of-the-art, the Blackwell. It's like, I don't know, people say 10 years advanced, who knows? But a lot. And, uh, it's entirely made in the USA. As you know, TSMC is, and Nvidia are spending, uh, hundreds of billions of dollars now in the United States. And, uh, many other chipmakers are too. It's, uh, it's incredible actually to see what's happened in literally a period of -- Now it's a little bit less than nine months. And don't forget, we had to celebrate for a couple of weeks. So I have to sort of deduct. Once we won, we celebrated, and we shouldn't have done that.
We should have started immediately, not wasted eight days, but, uh, but we really didn't. America's, once again, a manufacturing nation and something that we haven't, uh, talked about for a long time. Uh, Japan has been with us all the way. And it's amazing that we had a little conflict with Japan. You may have heard about it and, uh, that after such a horrible thing that the two nations are the closest friends and partners that you can be. And based on a shared commitment to freedom, democracy, security, prosperity, civilization, and just basic human achievement, it's amazing actually. As some of you may know, this very, uh, residence was once the home to the great General Douglas MacArthur. I don't know if you ever heard he was supposed to be -- He graduated number one in his class at West Point, but they say that he was the single greatest student in the history of West Point. Now I don't know how they go about doing that.
You know, I could see number one for the year, I could see number one for graduating, but they say he was the greatest student who's a great intellect. A lot of people don't know that about General Douglas MacArthur. The moment that the peace was signed 80 years ago, that very brilliant man said about building a friendship between our two countries that has grown and deepened. And he actually wrote the Constitution here, and he did it all by himself. He was an intellect. And, uh, still the Constitution. Our partnership has been an extraordinary blessing to the world. If you look at what's happened and what's come out of it, I think a lot more is gonna come out of it than even in the past. And I look forward to expanding it even further. We will do that. And I'm so happy, uh, to have gotten to know your new Prime minister. I think she's going to go down as great. She was a, uh, real friend and ally of one of -- As I told you, a great, a great man, uh, Shinzo Abe. He was really a great man.
He was a great prime minister and she was an absolute ally and he would've been very happy if he knew that she was, uh, very, very heavily supported and, uh, ultimately winning for Prime Minister. So she's gonna do, I think she's gonna do a great job. She's got all of our support, but I want to thank everybody for being here. You're an amazing group of people. It's, uh, I mean, each one of you has a story like really no other. And, uh, it's an honor to be here. We traveled long and far. It's a long flight, going to Malaysia then say, "Let's stop over. Let's stop over." But we wanted to be here for this because it's very special. And, uh, keep up the good work and remember that you have a, a great friend and ally and, and if you can't get Scott and Howard and all of our people, Marco, to get it done, call me and I'll override them, if I have to. I will override them. [Laughter] But I want to thank you all very much and I want to thank my cabinet for doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you very much.