Remarks by President Trump at Future Investment Initiative Institute Priority Summit

The full transcript is available on the White House dot gov site. We share excerpts here ~

February 19, 2025

https://tinyurl.com/mpeu999f

I come today with a simple message for business leaders from all across the nation and all around the world: If you want to build the future, push boundaries, unleash breakthroughs, transform industries, and make a fortune — because you want to make fortune; most of you have already made a fortune, I don’t want to say — (laughter) — there is no better place on Earth than the current and future United States of America under a certain president named Donald J. Trump. I think that you’re going to do very well. (Applause.)

And as of January 20th, 2025, the dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization — ooh, I know about weaponization — and total incompetence will be gone forever. Will be gone forever. (Applause.) Because the United States is back and open for business, and the golden age of America has officially begun. You see it happening. (Applause.)

Since my election, America’s economic engines have come roaring back to life in just a very short period of time. Think of it. From November 5th, the — the progress that’s been made has been amazing. The Nasdaq is up nearly 10 percent in just a few months, and that’s a lot. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 2,200 points.

And Bitcoin has set multiple all-time record highs, because everyone knows that I’m committed to making America the crypto capital. We want to stay — we want to stay at the forefront of everything, and one of them is crypto. And Miami seems to be the center of the action, come to think of it, and maybe it’ll stay there.

Business optimism skyrocketed 42 points — think of that — in a single month. The most in history, by far. That’s the biggest increase in history by not even close.

The ISM index of manufacturing activity surged into positive territory for the first time in many years. Amazing.

And it was just announced — this is an interesting one. I didn’t realize it was that bad for so long. But it was just announced by one of the nation’s most historically accurate and respected pollsters, Rasmussen, that the number of Americans who believe our country is on the right track now exceeds those who think it’s heading in the wrong direction for the first time in 20 years. Can you believe you that? Twenty years. (Applause.) And this is really a seismic 27-point swing from just before the election. That’s — nobody has ever seen anything like that one, Yasir. I want to tell you. That’s a big one. (Laughter.)

The best and most successful business leaders on Earth are now racing to invest in the United States. Since November, DAMAC has announced plans to invest $40 billion in the U.S., creating at least 10,000 jobs. SoftBank has announced investments of between $100- and $200 billion, creating at least 100,000 American jobs. Oracle and OpenAI and SoftBank are now collectively committing $500 billion to keep the United States on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.

And so many more — I mean, so many companies, they want to come to the White House and have a little news conference all the time. I said, “Why don’t you just announce it?” But they want to come, and I’ll do that. I don’t mind doing that. I say anytime they want to go $10 billion or more, I’m — I’m there. (Laughter and applause.) Ten billion or more.

But on his recent visit to the White House, the prime minister of Japan announced he anticipates Japanese investment in the United States of well over a trillion dollars, and we’re working on an Alaska pipeline already, which is the closest point to Asia.

And as you know, the ANWR, which we’ve started, Ronald Reagan couldn’t get it approved. Nobody could get it approved for so many years. Couldn’t get it approved. I got it approved. Actually, I got it approved twice. I got it approved, and Biden ended it. That was a shocker. But we just got it approved again. And we’re going to be — (applause) — it’s — it’s probably the largest deposit maybe anywhere in the world, just by itself. It’s — they say of similar size to Saudi Arabia, so we hope that’s correct.

Our first and most urgent mission is to remove the criminals that Biden allowed into our country with the ridiculous and very dangerous open-borders policy. They came from all over the world. They came from prisons and jails. They came from mental institutions and insane asylums. They were gang members. They were drug lords. They came from all over, and they were allowed to come into our country. And we’re getting them out in record levels, just like they came in in record levels.

I want to thank Tom Homan and Kristi, who is just doing — she’s doing a fantastic job — governor of South Dakota — and Tom Homan, you know, and they are doing a fantastic job. (Applause.) And the results are incredible.

And every country is taking them back. They’re sending their criminals to us, and they’re all taking them back. We had a little problem with a couple of them. That ended very quickly. And because some said, “We don’t really want MS-13 back in our country.” But I said, “Congratulations, you’re taking them back,” and they take them back.

And, by the way, Europe and other places ought to start also doing that. They better start looking at immigration, because it’s really hurting Europe very, very badly. And they better get smart and they better get tough before it’s too late.

We’re also working to end the highest inflation in our country’s history, all caused because they played with our energy policy and wasted money on the Green New Scam and other things such as that, and they wasted monies at — at never-seen-before levels. If Joe Biden had simply held federal spending at the pre-pandemic levels we had in 2019, we — right now, we would have virtually no inflation.

We’re trying to balance the budget immediately, and because of the tariff income, which is really go- — it’s — it’s already turned out to be amazing, actually. It’s really meant more for bringing countries and companies into our country, but it’s — the numbers are rather staggering, because we’re the big piggy bank that everybody wants to be. And they can play games, and they can say, “Well, there’ll be retribution and, you know, equal this and that,” but they can’t be equal.

But we want to keep it so that we’re the big piggy bank. And if we had years like we did the last four years, that wouldn’t have lasted too long. So, we’re not promising it, but you know, all of these things could happen. We — we hope to balance our budget.

So, I don’t want to promise it, because if I do and we come about $10 short, the fake news media back there would say, “We have breaking news. He did not make it. He did not make it.”

But we’ll get it done very soon. It might not be this year, but it could be this year. Actually, we have a chance at getting it even this year, which people would be shocked at, because they were talking about 10 years, 15 years, 20 years from now.

[DOGE] is now really waging war on government waste, fraud, and abuse, and they’re curbing inflation and saving taxpayers billions and billions of dollars every single day. And there’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20 percent of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20 percent goes to paying down debt, because the numbers are incredible, Elon.

So many billions of dollars — it’s billions — hundreds of billions, and we’re thinking about giving 20 percent back to the American citizens and 20 percent down to pay back debt — and pay down debt, which is — if you look at value, if it were a real estate balance sheet, the debt is tiny, but we still — we still want to pay it down. Doesn’t matter. We don’t look at it as a piece of real estate. It’s America. We’re going to get it down through intelligence, hard work, and, as Elon said, a word called “caring.” You have to have — you have to care.

There’s really a lot more. When they got around to the Q&A portion of the program, the host, Mr. Attias, asked the President what unusual thing he would do with a year-long sabbatical. He answered, “look, what I’m doing now is the most exciting job in the world.” That was followed by, “What is the best investment you have made in your personal growth, Mr. President?” and “If you were a historical ruler, would you prefer to rule during war or peace?”