Thank you very much. Uh, I think you probably noticed the cabinet room is getting more and more beautiful. You can see the flags behind us of the different forces and the American flag and uh, various others. It's I think quite spectacular. It's never, never looked this good. And hopefully we're gonna do work that's never been as good. So, uh, I think that's basically what's happened in our first year. We've had a, an amazing year and uh, this will be our first cabinet after the year. So we're starting our second year. Tremendous progress has been made. I want to thank my entire cabinet for 12 months of unprecedented achievements. We really have. I mean, it's unprecedented. The numbers we've had on the economy and growth, uh, you see them. And that's despite a Democrat shutdown. Without the shutdown, we would have picked up about a point and a half more than already high numbers, record-setting numbers. So this has been, I think, and a lot of people say it, the most successful year of any administration in American history first year. There's never been a first year like this including the fact that we put out extinguished eight wars and another one we think is coming. Uh, Steve Witkoff's working very hard and Jared and everybody else and I think it's coming. It was just announced that the murder rate in our country is the biggest drop ever recorded. It's at the lowest level in 125 years. First in recorded history, it's the lowest in at least 125 years. It's a wonderful thing and the crime is way down and one of the reasons is we've taken a lot of bad people and gotten them out of our country. In some cases, they're so bad that we put them in prison because we don't want them to even take a chance of coming back in, even though our border is very secure. Record-setting secure. Uh, we had uh zero illegal aliens being admitted into our country for the last eight months. That's hard to, that's hard for even me to believe, but the people that make up the lists are supposedly nonpartisan, but I would say they lean toward the Democrat side and if they say that, I'm all for it. Uh, as you know, uh we've had a uh situation take place with respect to Venezuela. I want to just thank uh General Kane and his staff, who have, the job that they've done is uh incredible. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And once it did take place, I want to thank the leadership of Venezuela. We're getting along really well with them. The relationships have been very strong, very good, and they have uh informed me that they feel there's very good security, very strong security. We're working with uh the various people involved, including Chris and Doug and everybody on uh the oil. We have the major oil companies going to Venezuela now scouting it out and picking their locations and they'll be bringing back uh tremendous wealth for Venezuela and for the United States and the oil companies will do fine, too. Venezuela will actually make for themselves more money than they've ever made before. And that's a good thing and the people of Venezuela were, were literally in the streets waving American flags. They were so happy and the people in our country, like in the Doral section of Miami, which is considered Little Venezuela, they're, they're thrilled. And I just spoke to the president of Venezuela, informed, informed her that we're gonna be opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela. American citizens will be very shortly able to go to Venezuela and they'll be safe there. They'll be safe. It's under very strong control and the people of, uh, formerly of Venezuela, some want to go back and some want to go back to visit and they're gonna be able to do that. So, uh, I've instructed Sean Duffy and everybody else concerned, including the military, that if you would by the end of today, I'd like you to have the airspace over Venezuela, planes can go to Venezuela, opened up. Okay?
President Trump Participates in a Cabinet Meeting, Jan. 29, 2026
Yes.
Thank you very much. And uh, I want to thank all of the people in Venezuela for what uh, you know, what they went through and I want to thank the leadership for, really they're doing a good job. And just as I promised, we've uh defeated the Biden inflation nightmare and achieved explosive new economic growth. The Atlanta Fed is predicting an astounding 5.4% GDP growth in the fourth quarter and that's despite the fact that we had a Democrat shutdown. We would have had, that number would have been 7%, which is a number nobody's ever heard of and uh, we've had uh, we've been giving great national security because of tariffs and we've also been given uh unprecedented income because of tariffs. Uh, part of the income that we gave, $12 billion we gave to the farmers of our country, so that yesterday I was up in Iowa and uh they were very happy, Madam Secretary. They were very, very happy. They were great. So, uh, the GDP growth in the fourth quarter was great and it's going to be, I think we're going to have an amazing and incredible year. Hopefully, we won't have a shutdown. Uh, we're working on that right now. I think we're getting close. The Democrats, I don't believe want to see it either, so we'll work in a very bipartisan way, I believe, not to have a shutdown. We don't want a shutdown. And just yesterday, the S&P 500 hit 7,000 for the first time ever. There's never been any time at which it's done like that and the other stocks also. I think it was 52 times for the Dow had hit a record high. But the 7,000 was not a number that was even thinkable if you go back a year ago, uh, and uh, so S&P hit 7,000 for the first time ever. The stock market has set uh, it's actually 53, 52, 53, uh, all-time record highs since the election, adding $9 trillion in value to savings, retirement accounts, and 401(k)s and I mean, everybody benefits, but we have record, record stock markets. Companies have never done well and most importantly, if you think about it, after four years in which Biden got much less than $1 trillion of investment into our country, uh, in just actually it was taken over 11 months, even though we're 12 months, in 11 months uh we've taken in more than $18 trillion. So they did less than $1 trillion, Scott, in a period of four years and we've done $18 trillion in less than one year. So, there's never been anything like that. No other country has done those numbers, by the way, in history. Ten years ago, one country did three million, three trillion. No other we did $18 trillion is being invested now, thousands of businesses, plants, equipment all over the country are being built right now and they're gonna be opening pretty soon and when they open, you'll see numbers like nobody's ever seen before. The economy is doing amazingly. Well, I wish the press would report it, but the people are finding out, they're seeing it, it's it's coming uh it's becoming pretty evident. It's hard to hide. Uh, Biden inflation, which is really stagflation, cost the typical family $34,000. Think of that, $34,000. But after one year, growth in real incomes is outpacing inflation by more than 3,000 under Trump. So one cost 34,000 and one made 3,000. That's a big swing. Gasoline has plunged to uh, think of this, over $4 a gallon depending on where you are. In California, it's $7, $8 a gallon. Uh, I was in Iowa and they had $1.85, because I had it at $1.99 a gallon and I was corrected by two farmers that said, I just bought my gasoline for 1.85. So Chris, you have to be doing something right, you and Doug, right? But I don't want to give you too much confidence. You got to keep it going. We're drilling, I think I can say we're drilling more than at any time ever in the history. We're taking out more energy out of our land, but specifically, if you take look at oil and gas, we've never been anywhere even close. Is that a correct statement?
That is correct. All-time records.
Yeah. Great. It's a great job. Well, it's supply and demand, so that's going down rapidly. And you know, when energy goes down, everything else goes down. They were they had very, they tried to do their thing. It was a disaster. Then they ran back very late to the Trump policy, but they didn't do the Trump policy. They cut leases, they did everything that they could do, but they lost it and they were very high in where we're now uh less than $2 in many areas, $2.30 a gallon average. Grocery prices, airfares, hotels, car payments, and rent prices are coming down very fast and you don't hear the word affordability issued by the Democrats anymore. Now they're uh going into other things because they're getting beaten badly on affordability. Remember that when I was uh elected, I came into office, I inherited a total mess starting from eggs, which were four times higher than they were just a year before and uh Brook got 'em down very quickly before Easter. They said they wanted me to buy plastic eggs for the egg hunt, the very famous egg hunt at the White House. Sir, would you buy plastic eggs? So we buy a lot, like 100,000 eggs. I said, we're not going to buy plastic eggs. And by the time we had the egg hunt a few months later, we had the prices down pretty good. And now they're really low. Now they're at a very low level. So we really have, you don't hear the word affordability because we inherited very high prices and we inherited the highest inflation in 48 years. I say the history of our country. I think it sounds almost the same. Actually, I think 48 years sounds actually worse for some reason. So I'll go with the 48 because the press corrected me, I said history and they said it's not history, it's 48 years. I said I'll accept that. And uh, we had the highest inflation in 48 years. We have uh now very as you saw yesterday with the Fed, not a fan of his, he said that inflation essentially is not a factor. It's really been pretty amazing. I just put out a statement about his statements. I won't repeat them here because it'd do- do angry. And uh thanks to our tax cuts, millions of Americans will soon receive record-setting tax refunds. You're going to get a lot of tax refunds with the average refund expected to be over $1,000 higher than it has been at any time. So we're going to be getting some pretty good refunds, a lot of people. If congressional Democrats had their way, Americans would right now be facing the largest tax hike ever. You know, their proposal was to raise taxes very substantially and our proposal, which is in the great big beautiful new deal, it's a new deal in its own way, it's a Republican version of the new deal, right behind you is a nice picture of FDR. This is a much better deal than the FDR deal. But we have the great big beautiful bill and it's given tremendous tax cuts and a lot of other things. People are now finding out how good it is and it's just kicked in as of January 1st, by the way. So we're really we're really starting to see it, even though it's a month, we're really starting to see it. The U.S. economy would be cratering if they uh if they had won this election. Our country would be in very bad shape, would be maybe not much of a country anymore. I don't think it would be a country anymore. They were doing everything wrong, but they were going to give you the largest tax hike in history and we're giving you the largest tax cut in history in the great big beautiful bill. In addition, I think it's very good, I think it's very important, you have no tax on overtime, no tax on tips, and no tax on social security, but you also have you're getting an inte- this is the first time this ever happened, if you buy a car, you go out and borrow money, you get an interest uh deduction, you take the interest rate, the interest that you're paying on the loan, you're able to deduct it for income tax purposes. So that's uh a first ever and I think it's going to be great for everybody, including the car companies. I was in Detroit three weeks ago, I went to the Ford factory, spoke to the General Motors people, it's all the same, they're doing better than they've ever done. Uh, the factory I went to was like a World War One, earlier than World War One factory opened up, uh, one of the oldest buildings but one of the biggest. And Ford was getting ready to close it a couple of years ago and then they saw that I was doing well and it looked like I would have a good chance of winning and they kept it going, barely going, and uh last week they announced during my visit, they announced that they're going to round the clock uh all round the clock production. They never thought I was, I said, did you ever think, I spoke with Bill Ford and uh and the president of Ford, they were both there and they said, uh we can't even believe it. We were going to close this building two years ago and now it's going round the clock. He said, we cannot, I mean, I would he they wished they said they wished it was twice the size. But they're now building additional plants in the United States as is everybody else. Uh, you have AI building, but the the car companies, I love the car companies, and you have they're all coming back. They're coming back from Mexico, they're coming back from Canada, they're coming back from uh Japan. They're coming back from Germany, all over Europe, they're coming back, they're building here because they want to avoid the tariffs, they don't want to pay the 15%, in some cases, 25% tariff could be a lot higher than that if it wasn't working. Uh, so because of that, they're all coming back. Uh, one statistic yesterday that Scott told me is that for the first time ever, tell them about the steel and Japan, that we are now making more steel. Go ahead, please.
So, uh, yesterday they reported for the first time in 26 years, the United States of America produced more steel than Japan. And that is entirely driven by your tariffs.
Amazing. I think that's- he obviously said that much better than I did, because I got no applause, but I'm giving you I'm giving you home run after home run. He says one thing and everybody loves it. I should have saved that one for myself. No, but think of it, uh, first time in they say they read at almost 30 years, but I guess it's what 26, 27 years that we are now producing more steel than Japan. Japan being a big steel producer, uh, Japan and other countries really took our steel production away from us. Now if you think of this, uh three, four years ago, the steel companies were all closing up. We worked a fantastic deal with U.S. Steel, we saved U.S. Steel and now it's all coming about, but we're- and that's just the beginning. There are a lot of steel plants right now being built. So it's uh, that's an amazing I- that's an amazing number. Nobody would have believed that. If you would have said that uh three, four, five years ago, people would have said you it's not a it's not a true fact, but it's so it has to be true because otherwise you you question me, you question me on everything. I have to be extremely accurate. I don't exaggerate, I don't want to exaggerate because you will call me. You don't call other people, but you would call me under my most favored nations policy, which I think is the most important thing, Bobby, of all what we've done because we're bringing drug prices down by 80, 90%, depending on the way, you could say 5, 6, 7, 800% depends on the way you want to calculate it, right? But let's go the old-fashioned way. But drug prices for prescription drugs will be down 80, 90%, 75%, 68%. Uh, they've only gone up for years and years and years, they've only gone up and now we're going to have essentially the most favored nation. We're going to have the most favored price in the whole world. Whatever the lowest price in the world is, that's that's what price we're going to pay. And I don't want to go into a big deal, but nobody else could have gotten this, but this administration, being very nice when I say that. The cost of prescription drugs is coming down by tremendous by a number that never was never even thought of. This will have a huge impact on healthcare, by the way, because obviously uh drugs are a big part of healthcare and it will help repair some of the Affordable Care Act damage that they've done because the Affordable Care Act, which is Obamacare, it's unaffordable. It's unaffordable and it's a disaster. And hopefully, we will be paying money directly to the people instead of giving the insurance companies the money. They'll go into a healthcare savings account or whatever it is, but uh think of it. We pay the money, billions and billions, really trillions of dollars going to insurance companies. We want that money to go to the people, they buy their own healthcare. And it'll be and it's so popular. The problem we have is the Democrats are owned by the insurance companies. They are literally owned lock, stock, and barrel by the insurance companies and uh they hate it, but the people love it, including all Democrats. So I think we'll perhaps be successful with it. But it was an idea I had, you know, I read the papers and I'm reading one of the stories about uh the insurance companies how much money they're making where they received, you know, billions and billions of dollars for this stuff from the United States of America and their stock has gone up by 1400%. Think of it, 1,400. One went up 1700%. Numbers went up, if you if you go up 1,000%, you're doing bad in that business, right? And it's all because of the money, not all, but mostly because of the money the United States pays the insurance companies. They say, this is really this is big stuff. And I asked somebody, why don't we just pay the people directly? And they said, that's a good idea. You know, it's funny, it's a very complicated business, but actually it's not so complicated. And I went to Bobby and I went to Dr. Oz. I said, could I talk to you guys about this? Is this the kind of money the insurance companies get? Yes. Why don't we pay the people directly? And the primary answer was that the Democrats will never go along with it. But the people go along with it because I put it out, it went viral. It went viral as soon as I went went all over the place. It became the biggest story. I just said it. And uh, so I think we have a great situation if we could do it. But if you think, most favored nation policy for drugs will bring your drug prices down at levels never never seen before. It's going to have a huge impact, positive impact on healthcare. So with that, uh we are going to ask a couple of people to say a few words. We're not going to go through the whole table because the last time we had a press conference, uh it lasted for three hours. And some people said, he closed his eyes. Look, it got pretty boring. In all fairness, I love these people, I love these people, but there's a lot of people. It it was a little bit on the boring side. But I didn't sleep, I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell out of here. Some of them, they I didn't sleep, by the way. I don't I don't sleep much, I'll tell you. But you know, it's funny, some of them got me in a blink, you know, when you go like you go and they took me as at the closed segment of my cycle. And they said they said he's sleeping. And besides that, Marco, between these two guys, if I was sleeping, they'd be waking me up very fast. They'd be knocking me. Come on, you got to wake up, boss. But no, we have uh we've had we've had great me- look, we're the most transparent uh presidency by far and I love going around the room, but we're going to pick a few people. I think I would like to ask Steve if he could just give us a uh brief description of how well we're doing in the Middle East because we have peace in the Middle East now. Just a couple of little minor flames that we put out very easily. And very importantly, we got our last hostage back, which is incredible, unfortunately dead.
And that was something that nobody said could be done. And I will tell you, Hamas was a big factor in getting all of the the hostages back. They they had a- we we were not happy with them and they had to bring them back and they they found the dead hostages, the the bodies of hostages were and those parents wanted their sons back, I think in all cases, sons, but they wanted their sons and their family, they wanted their sons back as much as the people that had living hostages that we got them back to. So we got the 20, but remember we got hundreds back pre- previous to that. But I always said getting those last 20 back is going to be very tough and uh we got them back and we got all of the bodies back also, which to those parents was uh just as important as uh getting back the son that was living. Steve, could you give us a little description, please? Well, your your policy of peace through strength, that's what that's what delivered them home. Without that, without that pressure, it never happens. We we are in the second phase now. Uh we've we've stood up for the first time, Mr. President, on your behalf, a uh technocratic uh all all Arab government. We've got the terrorists out of there and they're going to demilitarize. They will because they have no choice. So, uh, we expect that-
Pardon me? And now we want to get Hamas no guns, right?
Right. They're they're going to give it up. They're going to give up the AK-47s.
We're just going to get that. A lot of people said they'll never disarm. Looks like they're going to disarm. And they did help us with those bodies getting them back. Lexi-
And that family is so grateful to you. They called, I spoke to them, Jared spoke to them. You know, it's an amazing story. He broke his shoulder. But he went out there to to because he didn't want his friends to fight alone. He he would be alive today but for that. He had no reason to go out with a broken shoulder and he went out and uh fought them courageously.
And died.
And died.
That's right. It's a great story and the parents are great. They were the only ones who didn't, you know, they came back pretty rapidly, actually, considering. We had uh get some back initially with the initial group. After that, we had to get a lot, that's a tough job, that's a nasty job, too. Who who would want that one? That's a nasty job and between Israel and Hamas working together, if you can believe it, they got them back and we got the last one back yesterday and the parents are so happy. It's amazing actually how-
We we we sent a message to the parents on your behalf uh as you suggested and they are they were so grateful. You'll I have a note for you.
Yeah. Grateful to me is a much better word, because it's hard to be happy. But they were, actually, I mean they couldn't believe that they had their their baby boy, the the mother said, the baby my baby boy back. It's a very uh terrible thing. Steve, uh Russia, Ukraine, we've making a lot of progress. Could you explain that?
The Ukrainians actually said that we've made more progress in the last since Geneva than they've seen in the last four years of that conflict. So, uh, we had five Russian generals last Sunday in Abu Dhabi with Jared, I, and uh Dan Driscoll. And we think we made a lot of progress. The talks will continue in in about a week, but lots of good things happening between the counterparts uh discussing uh the land deal and-
They're talking together.
And we have a security protocol agreement that's largely finished, a prosperity agreement that's largely finished, and I think the people of Ukraine are now hopeful and expectant that we're going to deliver a peace deal sometime soon.
And because of the cold, extreme cold, they have the same that we do, uh I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kiev and the the cities and towns for a week during this. It's extraord- it's not just like cold, it's extraordinary cold, record-setting cold over there, too. They're having the same problems. It's a big it's a big pile of bad weather, the worst. But it was uh really uh they said they've never experienced cold like that. And uh I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kiev and the various towns for a week and he agreed to do that. And I have to tell you, it was very nice. A lot of people said don't waste the call, you're not going to get that, and he did it and we're very happy that they did it because on top of everything else, that's not what they need is uh missiles coming into their towns and cities. So, I just thought I should say it. I thought it was a very uh very good thing. And and Ukraine was uh almost they didn't believe it, but they were very happy about it because they are they are struggling badly. They're struggling.
I think it shows, Mr. President, um how you uh you provide an overarching uh sort of presence in these negotiations. The Ukrainians never thought it could happen. The Russians are doing things maybe that people wouldn't give them the credit for doing and I think it's it it always comes down to your indomitable spirit.
Well, it was a good thing. You know, if you think it's cold over here, they say in Ukraine you can add another 20% to it. It's uh was very cold place anyway, but this was uh they they see numbers that are so they'd never seen numbers like that, cold numbers like that. So it was uh I thought I should mention it. Uh could I ask uh Scott Bessent, we have so many things happening. Could I ask you to maybe say a few words, please?
Uh, yes, sir. So, uh, the one big beautiful bill that was passed on July 4th last year, we're starting to see the effects kick in. You you mentioned the great economy. One of the things in the one big beautiful bill, uh, Mr. President, it was an honor to host you and as you said, the best rapper in the world, Nicki Minaj, at yesterday's Trump Account Summit. She was great. Uh we've now had a million people sign up for Trump accounts just just this week. The the we think there'll be 25 million families who are eligible. Uh the segment that you and she did has a billion hits, a billion hits on the internet. So we're telling everyone go fill out form 45-47, uh trumpaccount.gov. So, uh, thanks to you, the Trump accounts next generation's America will benefit from today's record-breaking economy, record-breaking uh markets. Uh, sir, when we came in, the Biden administration had destroyed the American people with the three I's: immigration, inflation, and interest rates. Immigration, check, you closed the border. The inflation, as as we've heard, back down to target, prices are coming down, and interest rates, we hope there's more uh on on the way. Uh we've got gains in wages, low prices, and I think 2026 is going to be the year for the Trump boom. It's going to be a supply-side boom. I enjoyed the trip out to Iowa. In the diner, the staff there was thanking you for the no tax on tips and they're expecting big refunds, the from that. We saw the CEO of John Deere who said thanks thanks to your tariffs, new new plants in Indiana and North Carolina coming.
Massive, two massive plants uh being built by John Deere. And I specifically he's the chairman and CEO, wonderful guy, and I said to uh he was at the event we had in Iowa, which is appropriate, John Deere, Iowa. But I said to him, so what are you doing? He said we just announced two massive plants. In fact, they're going to have one plant for excavators and he said there hasn't been an excavator built in this country in 50 years or something. He said it's they're taking it out of Japan and they're moving it into the United States. Very two very big plants. And I said, so why are you doing it? He said because of you and because of tariffs. I said, if we didn't have tariffs, would you be doing it? He said absolutely not. So, it's very important. And I hope we're going to be successful with the Supreme Court case because we're waiting and uh we're taking in hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars and we don't want to give it back. Number one, and number two, it you know, the people that are fighting us on that case, by the way, are China-centric. These are people that are for China, but they're also outside of the United States. These are countries that have ripped us off for years, for years and years, charging us tariffs. And now we're doing an amazing job and we're getting it back, we're getting it all back and then some and they're the ones that are leading that lawsuit that we have in front of the United States Supreme Court. So it's a very important lawsuit for our country, uh, and uh hopefully it's going to work out. We're waiting a long time, but hopefully it's going to work out. We've taken in hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars. And certainly we've taken in trillions of dollars of, you know, a big part of that 18 uh trillion dollars that's coming in is because of tariffs that coming in. They're building because they don't want to pay the tariff and the tariffs are very, you know, steep. They could be much steeper. You probably saw I put out a truth today and the tariffs could be much steeper. We're we've been actually very nice about it, but even being nice about it, we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars and honestly they've given us tremendous national security. The power that we have because of that, they have given us tremendous strength and national security. Go ahead, Scott.
Yes, sir. And the the the IEEPA power you used on the tariffs, as you said, we've got we're bringing in tens of trillions of investments. The tens of trillions of investments turns into factories construction, which turns into factory jobs, which turns into consumer spending. Uh you've right-sized the the government, so government employment is down, uh private sector is up. Growth was a stunning 4.7, 4.8% in the past two quarters, biggest back-to-back gains in a decade. And we are doing that with government finances improving. So that will bring down the borrowing cost. The calendar year budget for 2024, 7% deficit to GDP, highest when we weren't at war, not in recession, all the way down to 5.4% and getting better, biggest decline since 2014. Uh generational gains in productivity, soaring productivity. We're going to lift uh workers pay, record high prices, record high profits, and stock prices are are soaring. You got a manufacturing renaissance and all the key inflation metrics are trending lower over the past three months. The consumer price index is just 2.1 and core prices are even lower, 1.6 and I think that that could trend below 1 given energy as you talked about, the pharmaceutical discounts, the and uh rents. So, we're expecting a great year in 2026, Mr. President.
And we're going to be announcing next week, I think sometime, God and Howard and everybody, we're going to be announcing the head of the Fed who that will be and it'll be a person that will uh I think do a good job. We're paying far too much interest in the Fed, the Fed rates too high, uh unacceptably high. We should have the lowest, and I think you read my statement today, I put out a statement before the meeting, but we should have the lowest interest rate in anywhere in the world because a lot of these countries are successful only because of us because we allow them to have surpluses. And without surpluses, some of the countries that you most respect financially that you say, oh, this or that, or this or that, they're successful because we allow them to have surpluses and we could easily stop that with the powers that we have. But we don't we we took some of it, uh but we took really just a small portion of it compared to what we could take if we wanted to. We should have the lowest interest rate anywhere in the world. They should be two points and even three points lower. And if it was each point is the equivalent of I would say uh $500 billion. So if you got two points low, you have a trillion dollars in saving and it's almost if you call call it just a paper expense. You could do it with a pencil. It's not cutting, it's not saying we have to get rid of jobs, it's just like literally so easy to do. But we have a guy that doesn't want to do it because he's uh I think he's politically biased. I really do. I believe he's politically biased because uh most smart people say it's not even a question. But despite that, uh we were able to bust through like busting through a wall, we were able to bust through a wall and we have the kind of numbers that Scott and Howard with the steel and other things uh talk about. What would you say, Howard, in terms of how we're doing generally speaking? Great businessman, uh very successful guy, he's doing a really good job. What would you say?
Well, no one uh before you walked in the door, no one thought our economy could grow 2%. Fourth quarter with the shutdown, 5.5% and that means the first quarter you could see the United States of America with its $30 trillion economy grow in the 6% range and no one thought that was possible. That's how you get jobs, that's how you get money down, that's how you fix the deficit. You are fixing everything with your policies. You have changed America and created the golden age.
Thank you. And with the help of the Fed, because we really, you know, we want want help, not hindrance. Why would the Fed hinder? But with the help of the Fed, with the right choice, if we make the right choice, you know, a lot of times you make a choice, you think it's good and it turns out to be not good. But with the help of the Fed, we could hit numbers that have never been hit before. We could hit eight, nine, ten. There's no reason why not. And uh you know, it's I talk about if you go back 20 years, 25 years, I'm old enough to remember, uh when we had good news, when you announced good news, the stock market went up. You announce anything good, the stock market went up. You announce bad, the stock market went and that's the way it should be. But now it's over the last 15 or so years, if you announce good news, that means they're going to raise interest rates, uh because they want to kill it. So you can never really be that successful because you announce all record numbers, great, great, great, because they're afraid of inflation. But growth doesn't have to have any impact on inflation. It can make inflation go down in many cases. So and you've seen that with us. I mean, we're growing at a much faster rate than anybody thought was possible, we have very controllable inflation. With Biden, we were getting killed and we had the worst inflation in 48 years, in history, in the history of our country and that's with going down. So growth is a great thing. It's doesn't mean inflation and I want to go back to a system where when we announce good news, they say, that's great, we can lower interest rates instead of raise interest. And by the way, if inflation comes, we'll take care of it when it comes. But you know, they're trying to guess it and they're trying to get it ten years before in advance and you know, we want to make this country greater than ever before and I think we're doing that, but uh we want to make it that when we announce great news, everything goes up. If we announce bad news, that happens too. We bring it down and we control and we do what we have to do. But we can have numbers on the upside like nobody's ever seen before. I want to ask Bobby to say a few words if he would about uh some of the incredible things that we've been doing in your department with Oz and everybody else.
Hey, uh, Mr. President, we're in the process of implementing your great Amer- your great healthcare bill, which is going to increase affordability, uh drive down costs, and increase the quality of healthcare for every American. You mentioned um MFN, most favored nation. We now have de- agreements with 16 of the 17 drug companies. Uh and you asked it us to do something, you know, uh Clinton had promised to do this, Biden had promised to do this, Obama, Bush had all promised to do it, none of them succeeded. It was regarded as impossible and you made it ten times harder. As you said, not only do I want MFN, but I want them to all reshore their production to this country. And they don't have any money to do it because we've taken it all from them. And I want to make sure we continue to lead the world world in innovation. We succeeded in all of those goals and the the proof that we did that is after we signed those agreements, the stock prices for those companies went up $1.3 trillion. Amazing. Right. And they are reshoring, Eli Lilly is building six new plants including an API plant. So the next time that we have a pandemic in this country, we're not going to be stuck buying API from China who cuts us off. We're going to be able to make it right here. Novo Nordisk is building four new plants and we are going to be releasing TrumpRX so that every American can get the lowest prices in the developed world. In some cases, they're going to be lower than the lowest prices in the developed world and that's going to be happening sometime probably in the next ten days. So, um, we're doing rural healthcare. We sent out $10 billion last week. The states have that money, they're going to be giving it to rural hospitals sometime the next two weeks and we're going to revolutionize rural healthcare in this country. We you are putting you are raising the influx of federal dollars to rural healthcare by 30% over the next five years. So 30% every year more dollars, federal dollars, are going to be flowing into them. It's going to allow them to rebuild their decaying infrastructure, to retain providers, and also to revolutionize the use of AI and other technologies, which is going to dramatically lower the prices for rural Americans and raise the quality of their healthcare. We did Brook and I released the dietary guidelines, which have been receiving incredible acclamation from both sides of the aisle. We are going to change the food culture in this country. Brook gives away $405 million a day to buy food for Americans in the WIC program, the Head Start program, SNAP, school lunches, the VA, uh and the military. They're now going to be getting real food for the first time. Amer- and it's going to and Brook came up with the ingenious idea of of requiring every store in this country that accepts food stamps to double the amount of real food that they're selling. And this is going to drive change in the market and it's going to lower the cost of meat, of proteins, of whole grains, of fruits and vegetables so that every American will have in their reach an affordable meal that actually is real food. 70% of American kids now are 70% of the diet of American kids is now ultra-processed foods. That's why we're spending $5 trillion in in treating chronic disease in this country every year. We are attacking fraud. We have Oz uh finding hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid, Medicare fraud in states like Minnesota and California and we are clawing back that money. Um, we also accomplished something that every American has promised, which is prior authorization. Now we have 80% of the insurance industry that has agreed to eliminate prior authorization in almost all of their their procedures. So that every Amer- this is going to dramatically change the experience of every American with the healthcare system. When you go to your doctor or your point of care, before you leave that office, you will know whether the insurance company is going to pay for the procedure or the drug and that is going to, as I said, change the experience. We're also doing price transparency, which you asked during your first term, it never got implemented because the Biden administration never enforced it. We brought more enforcement actions against hospitals than in in this one year than the Biden administration bought in four years and we're doing a crackdown so that every American when you go to a restaurant, you look at the prices before you buy the meal.
You ought to be able to do that when you go to a hospital and by the time that we leave office, every American is going to have that guarantee. We're doing a lot of other stuff, but we were uh told to keep it short. You are, you are. And the autism that's moving along, really, you know trying to figure out what we're doing we've commissioned now dozens of studies, maybe over a hundred and we are going to get those done for you. Yeah, it's so important. Uh also uh Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, every drug company, they're spending trillions of dollars right now as we speak building plants in the United States because they want to be able to uh save a lot of money on tariffs. It'll be hundreds of percent, uh 100%, 200%, 300% in two or three years from now. So I said you better have your plant built because in two years from now, before I leave office, it'll be a sad day, a very sad day for me. But before I leave, uh every one of these plants better be built because you're going to be paying 300% tariffs. And they're all building their little hearts out. Uh I spoke with the head of Eli Lilly, who's a fantastic guy, a star actually, he's a star, very smart, and he told me he's building six plants in the United States, big ones, and locations that I know very well, but all over the country. They're uh Merck is building and Pfizer's building and every one of them's building and foreign uh companies are building. So it's a amazing thing that's happening and you're doing a fantastic job. I read an article today where they think Bobby is going to be really great for the Republican party in the midterms. So I have to be very careful that Bobby likes us, but we're letting you do your job, right?
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you very much. You're doing a great job, you and Oz and the whole group. Did doing a-
I'll add this, that Marty Makary has done an incredible job at FDA. Last month, we approved more gene and cell therapies than at any time in history. And we're making this a safe and productive and encouraging ecosystem for biotech so that China does not steal that industry from us.
Fantastic. Uh I'm going to ask Scott Turner to speak really quickly about housing because in my opinion you have very strong opinions on housing, that's what I did for a long time, I did good with it. But you know, uh we got to get interest rates down even lower. They are now pretty low, but we got to get them lower. And I'm a big factor, uh to me, the biggest factor is interest rates for housing only in that uh you know, you have a lot of people that have become wealthy in the last year because their house value has gone up. And you know, when you get the housing when you make it too easy and too cheap to buy houses, those values come down. I don't want those values to come down. We have millions of people that own houses and for the first time in their life, they're wealthy because their house is worth $500,000 or $600,000 or more or less, but more money than it's ever been worth before. I don't want to do anything to knock that down and so I want to be very careful with this. You know, you make housi- I can turn on housing immediately, but you make it too easy and you're going to knock the value down of people that own houses. I want to give for those people, those millions of people that own houses, we're going to drive those values up, but we're also going to try making it easier for people to buy the best thing that can happen for both groups of people is lower interest rates and those interest rates are coming down and with a proper intelligent person at the Fed, uh that person will be able to work with us to get interest rates down. That covers all of the sins, it covers everything. Lower interest rates uh keeps the values up for the people that have housing and lets other people buy housing and Scott, if you could just expand quickly on that.
Yes, sir. Uh you did allude to when we first came in, sir, you know, our fiscal house in or in uh in America was a mess, uh but because of your economic policies, the economy is thriving. Uh and I do have some good news to share, as you said, you know good news, I hope this will make the interest rates continue to go down. Uh but because of your policies, sir, home sales in December, they rose sharply to their strongest pace in three years. A lot of people when we first came in, in particular young people, were concerned and asking the question whether would ever be able to afford to buy a house in America, which is the American dream. The uh 30-year fixed mortgage rate dipped to a multi-year lows driving monthly payments down uh for the over two years at the lowest levels. So more people can get a mortgage now, more families uh can be able to afford to get a home and achieve the American dream. At HUD last year, we helped to support over 1 million people uh through FHA and Ginnie Mae to be able to buy a home, 500,000 of those were first-time homebuyers and hundreds of thousands of our veterans uh we supported. And so that's good news that millions of people in our country are now beginning to buy homes. We also, sir, uh saw to you are and we're working with you making bold action uh to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. Those homes are for the American people, so sir, thank you for your leadership on that. Also working with Director Polti uh over at FHFA uh to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities, driving down even more the cost to uh get a home. And so, uh we're grateful for those actions. Also the one big beautiful bill uh has been tremendous, uh making the low-income tax credit increase, working with Secretary Bessent at Treasury to produce more projects and more homes in America. And the one big beautiful bill also made our beloved opportunity zones permanent. And the media doesn't talk about opportunity zones very much, but I'll do it today uh because I know that they have been transformative in our country. Over one million people lifted out of poverty, sir, in opportunity zones, 300,000 new units of housing in opportunity zones and a 3.4 increase in the value of houses in opportunity. And that's- by the way, we have to give him credit. Senator- he's a great guy, Tim Scott came to see me first administration, first term and he had this idea for opportunity zones and he gave me the idea, we did it, we implemented it. It's one of the most successful programs in the history of our country and nobody talks about it. The press doesn't talk about it, but I want to just tell you Tim Scott, Senator, South Carolina did a great job, right?
Did a wonderful job. Yes, sir. He did a good job. He's a good man.
Yes, sir. And so those have been made permanent now, uh will help millions of Americans to be able to afford to buy homes. Also the one big beautiful bill uh has been uh allowing HUD to make sure, working with Department of Homeland Security, that every person that lives in HUD-funded housing is an American citizen. Uh a blind eye has been turned prior to us being here to people living in HUD-funded housing but no more. We're going to take account and transparency to make sure and sir there's a lot of crime that goes on in public housing, uh but we're we're coming after the criminals and making sure that everybody in there is an American citizen. Uh so thank you for your support. Uh we are now have taken possession of our new building uh in Alexandria and we're going to save the American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. So, sir, thank you for your support and your leadership.
Thank you, Scott. Great job. Appreciate it. Uh one of the things Scott said, though, is uh again, existing housing, people that own their homes, we're going to keep them wealthy, we're going to keep those prices up. We're not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home. We're going to get we're going to make it easier to buy, we're going to get interest rates down, but I want to protect the people that for the first time in their lives feel good about themselves. They feel like they've, uh you know, that they're wealthy people and I want them to understand that, you know, there's so much talk about, oh, we're going to drive housing prices down. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes. And they can be assured that's what's going to happen. Uh Chris, could you say a few words about energy, please?
You bet, Mr. President. I can say with confidence that your energy dominance agenda is firing on all cylinders. United States oil production today is greater than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, the number two and number three producers. Our natural gas production today is greater than Russia, China, and Iran combined, the second, third, and fourth largest natural gas producers. Huge production in the United States. Secretary Burgum at the Interior Department has taken in more money on oil and gas lease sales in the first year of this administration than the entire four years of the Biden administration. And beyond oil and gas, six new coal leases under this first year of this administration from the Interior Department and coal production is growing again in the United States after years of of decline. And this beautiful clean coal was the MVP of the huge cold snap we're in right now. I can say with some confidence hundreds of American lives have been saved because of your leaning in and stopping the killing of coal and revitalizing coal. Coal over the last few days where we had peak demand in electricity has delivered 20 times more electricity than solar and batteries. Think about that, 20 times more electricity in an hour in the street.
Well, produce coal doesn't mind very cold weather, right? Clean- we don't you're not allowed to say the word coal without preceding by saying clean beautiful coal. Clean beautiful coal, it's not affected by bad weather, rain, snow, sleet, freezing, freezing cold. How does it react under freezing, freezing cold weather?
It steps up and delivers big time. In fact, what coal did during this this storm was deliver massively more electricity than it was delivering a month ago, because we needed far more electricity. Who can step up? Natural gas.
The windmills, by the way, are all frozen. You know, they don't turn. The windmills are not turning. The windmills that these fools paid for that the fool is this country, because the people that have the windmills get massive subsidy and they make a fortune on windmills that don't even work and they don't produce anywhere near what they should be. And it's the worst, most expensive form of energy there is. And by the way, Europe is destroying itself with the stupid windmills they're putting all over their beautiful uh areas, the most magnificent landscapes in the world and they're just destroying Europe better get smart. Between immigration and energy, they're destroy- it's not recognizable. They've got to smarten up before it's too late. Please, go ahead.
Yeah, in New England, with with somewhat European energy policies, at peak demand time, very cold in New England, wind, solar, and batteries that you were just speaking of delivered less than 3% of the electricity needed at peak demand time. And that's when it matters, because if electricity goes out when it's very cold, people die. Over 200 people died in a smaller cold snap snap during the Biden administration. This was massively larger geographically. We have had no failure of the electricity grid, no failure of long-distance transmission lines. Local distribution lines have iced up and come down and we have people from all over the country working to get those back up because people need their lights back on. But your energy policies delivered just a dramatically, dramatically different outcome for the American people. If we'd continued the Biden-era policies for one more year, continued to shut down coal plants, continued these crazy climate restrictions, they wouldn't even let power plants run at maximum at maximum demand time, we hadn't liberated all the backup generators they're sitting there, we gave open emergency approval. Run everything.
A lot of those plants that were going to close, coal plants that are were modern and good and threw off very little problem, uh and that were really powerful. You know, by the way, China does most of everything they're doing with coal. Not that we want to copy anybody, but you know they make the windmills, but they don't have a lot of wind farms. That's somebody ought to look at that. How many wind farms do they have? Very, very few. They make them, they sell them, they make a fortune, but they don't use them. Uh so the coal, I'm use- I understand they're using it also as a great backup. So you build a plant, but they have it as a backup in case of tragedy, in case of really bad weather, etc, etc. They actually store coal on the site of other plants so that if they need emergency energy, the coal is always going to be there whereas other things aren't. Is that correct? I mean...
Exactly. Coal stepped up here to 25% of our electricity during this this high demand time. Natural gas, coal, and nuclear, they're what run the American electricity grid. The others are ornaments and often expensive ornaments that drive up our prices.
And you stopped plants from being demolished, right?
17 gigawatts of coal generation plants were slated to close last year that were stopped from being closure by this administration.
And if they were closed, we would be really tight on energy.
We would have had significant blackouts at these peak cold times and extrapolating from the last storm during the Biden administration, I think at least hundreds of deaths because in the south, a lot of heating is done with electricity generation. If those grids go down, people die. So these and and when you going back to the working families tax cut act or the one big beautiful bill, that got rid of $500 billion of subsidies, energy subsidies that do nothing but make energy more expensive and less reliable. Under this administration, we've spent massively less on energy and we've delivered massively more on energy and when you have more energy at lower prices...