Well, thank you very much. It's been an interesting day from the standpoint of news. As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large. Largest one ever seized, actually. And other things are happening, so you'll be seeing that later, and you'll be talking about that later with some other people. But very excitingly, for me and for the country, we've just launched the Trump Gold Card. It was about 30 minutes from now, the site goes up. And all funds go to the United States government. Could be a tremendous amount of money. It'll also be able to have people like this keep, as an example, just one example, there are a lot of examples, people just buying them. It's somewhat like a green card, but with big advantages over a green card. And companies are going to be able to go to the Wharton School of Finance, the Stern Business School, Harvard, MIT, wherever you may get your students, any school. And you're able to buy a card and keep that person in the United States, actually. So, the certainty because a lot of, I've heard from Tim Cook of Apple, and I've heard from a lot of people, some of the people at this table, that essentially in the United States you can't keep the student. You can't hire people from the best colleges because you don't know whether or not you can keep the person. They come and have the people get out, they throw the person out of the country, they graduate number one from your college and there's no way of guaranteeing, I guess you could say, there's no way of guaranteeing that they're able to stay in the country. Howard, maybe you'll give a little description of the Trump Gold Card, please.
President Trump Participates in a Roundtable, Dec. 10, 2025
Sure. So, for an individual, it's $1 million, and for a corporation, it's $2 million. And as the President said, for a corporation, they spend $2 million, they can then have an employee, full vetting. The best vetting the government has ever done, $15,000 vetting to make sure these people absolutely qualify to be in America. Absolutely qualify. Then the company can keep them here, and they have a path to citizenship. Right? Obviously, they have to be perfect people in America, and having passed the vetting, after five years, they'll be available to become citizens. And then the corporation can put someone else on the card. So, for a company, they can keep putting people on the card, one person per card. And for an individual, it's $1 million and it's a gift to the United States of America to help America be great again under Donald Trump.
And it's really two gifts. It's a gift of getting somebody great coming into our country because we think these will be some tremendous people that wouldn't be allowed to stay. You know, they graduate from college, they have to go back to India, they have to go back to China, they have to go back to France, they have to go back to wherever they came from. Very hard to stay. It's a shame. It's a ridiculous thing. We're taking care of that. The companies are going to be very happy. I know Apple's going to be happy, but a lot of the companies, nobody talked to me more about it than Tim Cook. He said it's a real problem, and it's not going to be a problem anymore. As you know, they used to send people up to Canada and other places, other countries. So we solved that. And the other thing is it'll take in, we think probably billions of dollars that will go to the Treasury of the United States, that will go to an account where we can do things positive for the country. So it'll be a great thing. We'll take in, I think, you know, billions of dollars, many billions of dollars even. So that's very exciting. The Trump accounts are doing really well. We have a man on my right, Michael Dell, who's an extraordinary person. His wife, his wife is even more extraordinary. I think I can say that. They have such a good relationship, you don't know, but she's an extraordinary person, really. A great wife.
Absolutely.
But two great people. And as you know, last week, Michael contributed $6 billion 250 million. And this is just something that's so special. So many people are in love with that. He understood it right from the beginning. It was his idea, and he understood it right from the beginning. Could you give maybe just a little description of why you loved it for such a long period of time and we were able to get it through the great, big, beautiful bill basically. That's how, what gave us the authorization to do it. Michael, please.
Yeah, absolutely, sir. So, you know, when we first heard about this idea, the idea was that the government would give $1,000 to a newborn baby in an account that they would own, and it would go in essentially the S&P 500 and compound. And when the child becomes 18, they could use that money to go to college, to buy a home, to start a business, to continue saving. And, you know, I thought that was a great idea. I thought it'd be great if companies matched the government's contribution, which we're doing, and a lot of the companies around the table have committed to doing that. And also, the thought about this is, wow, this is going to be like a platform for families and communities and philanthropists to contribute to those accounts. And so...
Right.
We originally started with the idea of, well, what if we gave some money to all the kids in our home state of Texas, right? We thought that would be a nice thing to do.
That's still a lot.
Yeah, yeah, there is. One out of ten new kids in America are born in Texas. It's quite good. Happen to be a fan of the state of Texas. But anyway, we thought about it some more and thought, you know, this is going to be something really special. We have a foundation that focuses on children, been around for 26 years. And we said, well, why don't we go bigger? And so we talked about it, and you know, now that the Investment America Act is a law, which that in itself was a incredible thing that occurred. It does create a platform, and we were super happy to announce that we would give, you know, $250. We arrived at $250 because next year will be the 250th birthday of America. And 25 million children, we thought that was a nice thing to do because it would include most of the children that are 10 and under that are not part of the government program, that live in zip codes where the median income is less than $150,000. And that was an also an important part of our contribution. And I do believe there will be a number of other large gifts announced. I've already spoken with a few that will be announcing gifts at the state level and more to come.
That's amazing. And it's amazing the vision you have, but that's why you're so successful, frankly. And to think that Michael started off with not a lot of money, I would say, right? Not too much. Like very little. And he can give a gift of $6 billion 250 million, and I know he said he's going to do a lot more. It's pretty amazing. It's really a beautiful thing to watch. So great for our country. So we have the Trump accounts are doing really well, and it's become, I have to tell you, just everyone's talking about them, you know, beyond what I would have even thought. And it's going to make some young people relatively very wealthy. And in some cases, I mean, they could really, they could really be off to a great start. So some people have had that advantage and some people haven't. But it's a wonderful thing. Thank you to you and your beautiful wife. Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
So it's a pleasure to welcome so many brilliant minds and distinguished business leaders back to the White House. I love these brilliant minds, including Michael Dell of Dell Technologies, who makes a great product. And I want to thank him for what he's done, what we just discussed, the accounts. We also are grateful to be joined by Enrique Lores of HP. So thank you very much, Enrique. Great job you're doing. Antonio Neri of HP Enterprise. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir.
What's the difference between HP and HP Enterprise?
We focus on the cloud, security networking, and large systems.
The cloud's good. People have done very well with the cloud. That's great. Arvind Krishna of IBM, who's actually become, I would say, a legend, the job he's done. He's taken this stock from a rather low price to a very nice price. I won't say high because I'm sure you're going to say it's going to go up a lot more, right? But I can't say a high price. But he took IBM into a new stratosphere that nobody, I think, saw. If you go back to before when he took over the company, you would have nobody would have even imagined that you'd be able to do what you've done. So congratulations, Arvind. You've become a very good friend. Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm. And thank you very much. Congratulations on the success.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I know a lot about your company, you've done amazing. And executive director of the Technology CEO Council, Bruce Mehlman. So thank you very much. I think that these people know each other. We're going to be talking a little bit about technology today, and we'll take a few of your questions about technology. I'm sure you probably won't have too many of those questions, you'll be asking about some other things, right, Bruce? Our administration is committed to total dominance in technology. Right now, we're leading artificial intelligence by a lot. And I think, you know, you look at what's going up, and we're writing rules, regulations. We want to keep it at the federal government level, so it's simple for the companies, very important, frankly. And I think we're pretty well committed. I spoke to some of the senators today, and I think we're committed to do that. We want to make it as simple as possible, as easy because you're competing with some very big sources and we want to stay number one by a lot. We're leading the world in building new data centers and new semiconductor and chip manufacturing facilities and new capacity for AI. And we're unleashing all of the forms, literally all forms of energy, natural gas and oil, to clean beautiful coal and safe, reliable nuclear power. And I'm giving them approval to when they build these massive plants that cost $50 billion. You know, it used to be that for $50 million, you could build a nice little shopping center. But for $500 million, you could build one of the biggest, most beautiful centers. And now they're talking about $50 billion. So explain that one. These buildings are nobody, there's never been anything, there's never been anything like that. So you're all involved in that. It's pretty amazing. One year ago, our country was considered dead by many leaders throughout the world. And now we have what's called the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're the hottest country in the world right now. Ten months took us. I thought it was going to take longer, Michael, I really did. I didn't think we were going to have this success this soon. We have over $18 trillion being invested, much of it by, like you're in for a lot. What's the number that you're looking at?
150.
150 billion.
Yes.
That's good. I don't know, Michael, am I allowed to ask you? You already gave $6 billion 250 million. Do you have a have you stated a number that you're at for investment, future investment?
Well, you know, if I if I think about all the, you know, investment that we make with the American companies that are adding capacity, particularly around semiconductors, it's it's several hundred billion dollars.
I would think so. It's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty good. It makes the six billion makes the six billion sound very very small. That's very good. Antonio, what about you guys? What about you and Enrique? How's that going?
Well, have you have you announced a number or anything? No, I'm actually happy to share with you, over the next few years, we're going to invest an additional 3.5 billion building secure manufacturing. We built the largest supercomputer for United States government that supports both the DOD and the DOE. So in the next 18 months, we're going to build the last, the largest five supercomputers that will keep United States ahead of the game, both in life science and AI, but also to keep ahead owning the entire stack at the national security level.
Great. Are you doing that separately? Are you doing that together or separately?
No, we are totally separate companies. Totally separate. From our side, we invest in the U.S. about $19 billion per year. So if you look at the last five, next five, it will be close to $100 million, $100 billion. And we are going to be investing in AI at the edge, not only on data centers, but how to make AI available to customers in PCs, in headsets, in devices that they would be using every day, which is an unbelievable opportunity.
So it's over $100 over $100 billion. And you're doing well. HP is doing very well. That's great.
We're competing hard with Michael, but we're doing okay. Are you are you direct competitors?
Yes. That's it. That's it. That's why they're on different sides of the table, sir.
The old days would say why don't you make a deal? I guess now it's not so easy to make a deal. We can have an arm wrestling match now.
That's good. And Cristiano, you've been amazing, right? Your company with the investments. How are you doing with the investment? We're doing great. I think, Mr. President, you have a great decision. I think when you drove our company to continue to be innovating, and I think we're doing very good. We're being in addition to doing phones, I think we're now our chips are going to every car company in the world, all the car companies. We're we're entering today robotics, there's a lot of there's a lot of growth in robotics and the data center. The new smart glasses are going to be the future mobile devices, industrial. I think a lot of the drive towards manufacturing in the country is driving a lot of technology for smart manufacturing. We're making chips for that. So I think we're very excited. And I think, like Michael, I think the number of industries our chips are being enabling is driving hundreds of billions of dollars of investments. And and most important for us, semiconductor manufacturing is very important. So we are going to be customer of the fabs they're being built in the United States by TSMC and Samsung. So we're just going to keep going forward.
That's great. That's great. Yeah, those investments are very important. And we are all customers of those fabs. Those two are my customers too. So, and memory stuff, memory? We don't we don't do memory. We do a lot of processing. Who is the king of memory? Uh, it's Micron and SK Hynix. Micron's another one doing very well. That's great. Yeah, I heard you're doing fantastically. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. [16:15] The stock market has set a 51, think of this, 51 all-time record highs during the last 10 months. 51. You guys are big beneficiaries. You're setting the records, right? It's amazing. 51 times we've hit a new high. And in the history of our country, if you think about it, 51 times during the last 10 months. And Bruce, let me ask you, you pull these people all together, how's it looking for technology? A lot of global competition, but you'd rather be playing our hand than any other hand in the world. I think so. We have a good hand right now, don't we? Joe Biden secured just really much less than a trillion dollars of dual investments in four years, and in 10 months, we secured more than $18 trillion. So 18 times the amount in 10 months what they did in four years. And they would have gone negative, they were going they were heading toward negative, in other words, not not a trillion dollars, but it could have been three or four or five trillion less because people were leaving. So it was a big turnaround. In 10 months, the $18 trillion, it's a record. There's never been a country that's gotten anywhere near that. In the Middle East, when I left the Middle East, we brought back $3 trillion and lots of Boeing airplanes, like 300. And Boeing gave me the award for the greatest salesman in the history of Boeing, which was a nice little award, heavy plaque. The greatest, I think I've sold a thousand Boeing planes, can you believe? Now all they have to do is make them. Okay? They gotta make them, but they will. But we have made historic trade deals with the United Kingdom, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, the EU, Malaysia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Thailand, South Korea, and many others. And a lot of it's based on the November 5th election result, which was a massive victory. We won all seven swing states, the popular vote. We won the Electoral College by a landslide. We won the counties, the counties, they do a I don't know, to me, it's the most accurate of all in many ways. We're 2,700 counties against 525. That's pretty good, right, Cristiano? Pretty good. 2,700 against 525. 525. That's why when you see the maps, they're all red except for a little two little blue lines on the right and the left side of the map. They're probably changing too. Americans are great builders and in the Trump administration, America is once again a country where innovators get a green light. You have the greatest innovators in the world at this table and representing a lot of their friends who are competitors and friends. But we're we're really on a big move to get rid of red tape so they can run their businesses and not have to wait 10 years for an approval. In the old days, getting some of these approvals for plants that are already being built would have taken 10, 15, even 20 years prior to rejection. You get rejected. You'd work 20 years and then you'd lose 5 to 4. And we're getting plants approved in a matter of weeks. The biggest plants ever built in a matter of weeks. For every new regulation, we're slashing more than 10 old regulations. So we're not allowing regulations unless they slash 10 old regulations. We did that in the first term, and we cut more regulation than any administration ever. In our first term, we have the all-time record, I think we're exceeding it here. In fact, now it's 1 in 24 is the number we're at. It's 1 in 10 you have to do, otherwise we're not letting you do it. But we're actually up to 1 in 24, so we get rid of 24 regulations for every one. That's not a bad deal, right? And it's been very exciting, actually, but including we're allowing 100 in the great big beautiful deal, we're allowing 100% expensing for capital expenditures, including investments in factories and equipment and structure. So including even structure. So that if Michael goes out and builds a factory, you can you can take it against tax immediately, the whole thing. You don't have to wait 38 years or do it over a 38-year period. And I think that's what made the first tax cut, which we by the way got extended in this tax cut. So and you add it up, it's the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. But I think that the expensing factor, it's good for 10 years too. I think that's the maybe was the reason that so much growth was there were other reasons, but so much growth was gotten in the first term. So earlier this year, I said that the challenges of our time demand a new spirit of patriotism, a national loyalty in Silicon Valley, smart people, and from the whole technology sector. And that patriotism is on huge display here in this room with some of the most brilliant people. And I'd now like to ask Secretary Howard Lutnick to say a few words, and OSTP Director Michael Kratsios to also say a few words, and I look forward to hearing from Michael a little bit about this subject, Cristiano of Qualcomm, and Arvind, you'll say something and I appreciate it. And anybody else wants to say a couple of words, feel free. Good job. So why don't we start with Howard, please.
So the key to America's success is the amazing innovators that we have. I mean, we have invented everything from the lightbulb, transistor, GPUs, we are on the edge of everything. And we need to keep being on the edge, and the people at this table and this industry is why America's great. We need to build here. You know, for too many years, we innovated and we let everyone else build our stuff. And we we just can't do it anymore. So with President Trump coming and winning the election on November 5th, we changed that and now we're going to build it here. You've done everything you can and you've heard trillions and trillions of dollars of technology build coming home to America to protect and defend us and use our innovations here. You're driving interest rates lower, and you're going to continue to drive them lower. That makes it cheaper, it makes it more exciting to build here. You've blown out the regulatory deep state so that people can build here and do it fast. And the last thing is because of our investment in energy and to drive down the cost of energy for all Americans, including the people who are building here, drive down the cost of energy. It's great for America. Put all of that together and you are going to see the greatest growth the United States of America's ever seen. You're going to see north of 4% next year, and then it's going to go up from there to fives and sixes. This President's going to drive the greatest GDP growth, led by the tech sector coming home and driving growth.
Well, thank you. You know, one of the things I'd like to say, just before going over to Michael and this Michael and then we'll have this Michael, right? But one of the things I'd like to say is in the old days, when you announced really good results in this country, the stock market went up. And that's the way it should be. And we're going back to that. Because otherwise you can never really attain true greatness. In other words, GDP at four, oh, it's four's so high, let's raise interest rates and kill it. And we're going to go back to the old days. When we announce great results, it doesn't mean we're going to raise interest rates and try and kill it. It means that instead of 4% GDP or 3%, which they said is so wonderful 3%, it should be able to be 20 or 25%. I don't know why it can't be. You shouldn't kill it. And so we hope that if this country announces great results because you're going to see great results over the next couple of years, all these plants, and I'm not just talking about AI, we have the biggest number of auto plants planned. Toyota just announced $10 billion in plants built in various couple of locations, few locations in the country just a little while ago. They're all coming here. They're coming here because of tariffs, because they don't want to pay tariffs, but they're coming here because of the election and the mindset. But when we announce good results, the market should go up. Now, it's when you announce good results, Michael, the market goes down because they say, oh, that means things are good. That means we're going to kill it by raising interest rates. I think it's really wrong. It should be the opposite of what it is now. It should be the way it used to be. We announce good results, the market should go up and we should keep driving it up and have it keep going up and let it be much, much bigger, much, much better. And, you know, growth doesn't mean inflation. They're always afraid that oh, if we have and if there is inflation, that's okay, then we can slow it down. But we should be able to do a lot better than three and four. We're scheduled to be at 4%, which is pretty amazing because we have a, you know, deadhead Fed Fed Hair. I mean, this guy, the head of the Federal Reserve is a stiff. And you know you fight that. It's amazing. We fight that and yet interest rates are going down, except with him, not too much. He did a he did a rather, I would say, a rather small number that could have been doubled, at least doubled. And that's the other thing. I think the rates for the United States are always the lowest in the world because without us, there is no world. Without this economy, there is no world. You know, you can go to some of these wonderful countries that you think are so great. Well, one of the reasons they're great is because we allowed them to get rich off of us. We didn't charge them anything. You look at some of the deals, I don't want to say use Switzerland as an example, but Switzerland paid almost nothing in terms of a tariff or tax or whatever you want to call it, license. They paid nothing and, you know, we're they're paying now. They're paying a fair amount. I had them at 39%, but I decided to be nice. I was nice and I think they like us a little bit better. But the money you're talking about is enormous. Our country is a very rich country. But if we do well, the market should go up and the value of our country should go up. And if we do poorly, the market then should go down. It shouldn't be the opposite. And if we go up, we should encourage it to go up more. And those numbers, when you say, you know, 3% of GDP or 4% of GDP, they should be much higher. So, you know, I wanted to say it, I do say it, I believe it, and we have to get a mindset that when a country's doing well, you don't want to kill the growth. That's what they're doing. They kill the growth. I don't know if you guys even agree with that. They kill the growth because they're so afraid of inflation. But you can have tremendous growth without inflation. Everything everything goes up with the growth. But that's not inflation. So I think we can do much better than traditional numbers. And you see that. You see that with what we're doing. We're leading in everything. And now, and remember this, as far as prices are concerned and they talk about affordability, I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. They say it was 48 years, but I say it was the history. What difference? It's 48 years they were telling me, and they said I was being inaccurate because I said the history. I think 48 years is a long time, but it's actually I disagree, I think it's the history. So, in the Biden administration, I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country, of 48 years. And prices were very, very high. I brought the prices down. We had yesterday three states where oil was at $1.99 a gallon. How about that? And you know, with these guys, it was $4, $4.50. In California, it was like $7 because that's a badly run state. But the price for oil and gas and energy is so big, it's so big a category, you don't even know what number two is. There is no number two. And when you have the prices coming down for energy like that, you've killed inflation and you're lowering prices. So, I inherited very simply the highest prices in history, and I'm bringing them down really fast, led by energy. And when energy comes down, everything else comes down. But I've only been here a short while. We gave them a beautiful, beautiful thing and they destroyed it. They would have destroyed our country had they been allowed to stay. If they if we didn't win this election, if we had Kamala, who's the same as Joe, low IQ people, but if we had Kamala as you probably you would have a country that would be right now in ruins. I believe that 100%. Things would be in a state like nobody's ever seen before, worse than anything you've ever imagined. Worse than 1929 in my opinion. Instead, we have the hottest country in the world, and we're going to keep it that way. But just to finish, we inherited high prices, we're bringing them down very rapidly and we're bringing them down to very, very good levels. They'll soon be down at very good levels. Michael, please go ahead.
Absolutely. Um, as everyone in this room probably knows very well, leadership in science and technology has been foundational to our economic and national security for for decades. And because of the policies that you have championed and the private sector partnerships that you have made, America currently is leading the world in S&T, and it's benefiting all Americans every day. The one thing that I want to remind this group of, and many of you know, you know, the President has been arguing for American leadership in AI well before ChatGPT was even invented. The President signed executive order on artificial intelligence leadership in 2019, which set the stage for the revolution that we're seeing today. Um, in the past year, we built on that. We signed out the AI Action Plan in July of this year, which the President launched here in Washington along with three EOs. Um, and I know a lot of that effort is around creating a regulatory environment to allow for companies like yours to thrive, and for the applications that you build to have the biggest impact on Americans every day. So thank you for everything that you do, and I know we're going to keep working together to make sure that America is the home for the next great technological discoveries.
All right, thank you, Michael. And Michael.
Thank you, sir. Um, well, look, we greatly appreciate the focus the administration has on lowering energy costs. And, you know, energy is the substrate of manufacturing at the industrial level and really a an incredibly important input to the economy. We can't uh be competitive without a super low-cost energy industry. And had a great meeting earlier today with Secretary Wright and really appreciate all the work that he's been doing. This is of course incredibly important when it comes to AI because it does consume a great deal power, all the semiconductor manufacturing consumes a great deal of power. Another big area of focus for us is how we can take all this great AI technology, the AI stack of of the innovative companies here in in the United States and sell that around the world. And and so I'd like to ask Arvind to to speak a little bit more about this. Arvind?
Thank you. Uh, so Mr. President, first, we really would like to thank you for everything you're doing for economic growth, as you said. I completely agree with you, economic growth then drives a lot of other benefits to everything else. We also want to thank you for all the work you're doing on deregulation and making things easier for business to participate in that growth. Uh, Michael spoke of the AI stack. It's incredibly important that under the action plans that you have laid out and Michael Kratsios has just spoke of, we really uh help promote the AI stack, which is not semiconductors only, those are incredibly important, but it's semiconductors, it's software, it's the systems which many of us here build, and it is the software applications on top. The ability to take those to all of our friends in countries, so all the friendly countries, is going to be very, very important. And we wish to work with your government to make sure that we can do that, because otherwise we're afraid that competing countries are going to be able to get that stack. So we would say that.
Anything we uh that you're looking at that we can help you with, so that you create a bigger and better IBM and hire a lot more people, anything you need?
A few countries, uh we'll speak to members of your administration to make sure that those can go, and that uh barriers get lowered for being able to do it quickly. We agree guardrails are necessary, but lower barriers would be very, very helpful.
You mean tariffs?
No, because are they are these country tar are they tariffing you and you know making your life difficult? Are they doing anything else to make your life difficult? It's it's the ability to take certain systems which have semiconductors inside them into these countries. So right now, because we have our controls on where all the semiconductors can go, then the entire system is restricted. That's what we want to do, the same as you've done for other industries.
How many countries do that?
Um, probably a half dozen. So so...
I can tell you the countries already, I know. I know every country very well. And we have ways of combating that quickly. So you'll let me know.
And the last part I'd like to say is, I'd also like to thank you for all that you're doing to help modernize government itself, because we think that that's incredibly important. We know you've made a number of announcements, but a couple that I'd just like to point out, we worked with Commissioner Frank Bisignano to help make Social Security better. So I would like to thank you for your help on that. And we'll work with him on making IRS...
He's done a fantastic job. Yes. Frank's great. He's done a great job. Frank, he's had a great career, actually. Left a tremendous career, where his salary, I think, was a hundred times greater than it is now. And he was at JPMorgan Chase, and he's doing a fantastic he did a great job at Social Security quickly. And we hope to help him replicate that now at the IRS as well. Very good. Thank you very much. Good job. Cristiano, please.