Full text of Trump's Davos 2025 speech and Q&A with financial giants

Source: YouTube, CNBC; Compiled by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

President Donald Trump spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, his first appearance at an international event since returning to the White House earlier this week.

In his 45-minute speech, Trump criticized European regulators for being too harsh on U.S. technology companies, oil producers for keeping oil prices too high, and large banks for refusing to serve conservatives.

He also called on countries around the world to invest in the United States and promised to provide low tax rates and a looser regulatory structure.

Domestically, Trump said he would put pressure on the Federal Reserve on interest rates.

"I would ask for an immediate reduction in interest rates," Trump said. "Similarly, interest rates around the world should also fall. Interest rates should follow us down."

It is widely believed that Trump's remarks are the opening remarks of his upcoming lobbying campaign against Federal Reserve Chairman Powell.

Golden Finance sorted out the full text of Trump's speech as follows:

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum:

Hello, Mr. President, it is a great honor and pleasure to welcome you back to the Davos family. You have only been in office for four days. We are very grateful for your presence today and we wish you all the best. As you undertake the key work in the future, the global challenges we face today are huge, and the leadership of the United States and your personal leadership in this regard are crucial. We are here to listen to your vision and policies for revitalizing the economy and responding to global challenges. As you would expect, Mr. President, your return to office and your upcoming policies have been the focus of our discussions this week. Therefore, 3,000 political and business leaders from more than 130 countries have gathered in Davos, and we look forward to hearing your speech first.

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum

Trump:

Thank you very much, Claus, beautiful Davos!

President Trump, President of the United States

Hello everyone, this has been a truly historic week for America. When I was sworn in three days ago, we ushered in a golden age for America, with the recent presidential election won by millions of votes and in all seven states, a massive mandate from the American people that has not been seen in many years, and some political pundits, and even some of my so-called enemies, are saying this is the most important electoral victory in 129 years.

What the world has witnessed in the last 72 hours is nothing short of a common sense revolution, and our nation will soon be stronger, wealthier, and more united than ever before, and the entire planet will be more peaceful and prosperous as a result of this incredible momentum.

My administration is moving at an unprecedented pace to address the disasters we have inherited from a group of completely incompetent people, and to address every crisis our nation faces. Starting with the economic mess caused by the failed policies of the previous administration over the past four years, our government wasted $8 trillion in deficit spending and implemented nation-destroying energy restrictions, draconian regulations, and hidden taxes, etc. The result is the worst inflation crisis in modern history, with interest rates that are outrageous for our citizens and the world, and skyrocketing prices for food and nearly everything else known to man. President Biden has completely lost control of what is happening in our country, especially in our hyperinflationary economy and at our border.

Because of these destructive policies, total government spending this year is $1.5 trillion higher than I projected when I left office four years ago. Likewise, the cost of servicing the debt is over 230 percent higher than projected for 2020. The inflation rate we inherited is still 50 percent above historical target, which may be the highest inflation rate in our country's history. That's why from the moment I took office, I moved swiftly to reverse every radical left policy that created this disaster, especially immigration crime and inflation. On day one, I signed an executive order directing every member of my Cabinet to mobilize every power at their disposal to defeat inflation and lower the cost of everyday life. I implemented a federal hiring freeze, a federal regulation freeze, and a foreign aid freeze. I created the new Department of Government Efficiency. I ended ridiculous and unbelievable waste.

The Green New Deal, I call it the Green New Scam, Withdrawing from the one-sided Paris Climate Agreement, ending the crazy expensive electric vehicle mandate, we will let people buy the cars they want.

I am declaring a National Energy Emergency, this is very important, the National Energy Emergency is to unlock the liquid gold beneath our feet and pave the way for the rapid approval of new energy infrastructure, the United States has the most oil and natural gas on the planet, we will use it, which will not only reduce the cost of nearly all goods and services, but will also make America a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

My Administration has also begun the largest deregulatory campaign in history, far exceeding the record-breaking efforts of my last term, the Biden Administration has added $50,000 in additional regulatory costs to the average American family over the past four years. I promise to repeal 10 old regulations for every new one I repeal, which will quickly put thousands of dollars back in the pockets of American families and further unleash our economy.

We will pass the largest tax cut in American history, including massive tax cuts for workers and their families, and huge tax cuts for domestic producers and manufacturers. We are working with Democrats to extend the original tax cuts, and you probably only have to read any newspaper to know that my message to every business in the world is simple, come make your products in America, and we will give you the lowest tax rate of any country in the world. We are reducing our tax rates significantly, even lower than the original tax cuts, but if you don't make your products in the United States, which is your privilege, then very simply you will have to pay a different amount of tariffs, but tariffs will direct hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars into our coffers to strengthen our economy and pay down our debt.

There is no better place on earth to create a job, build a factory, or grow a company than the United States under the Trump Administration. You can already see this in the American economy, where economic confidence is surging. Just announced that small business optimism surged 41 points in one month, the highest it has ever been, there has never been anything like it. Softbank announced a $100-200 billion investment in the U.S. economy because of the election results, and just two days ago Oracle Softbank and Open AI announced a $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure, and other companies have announced billions, billions, billions of dollars in investments, adding up to trillions of dollars in investments in the U.S.,

Today's newspapers also reported that Saudi Arabia will invest at least $600 billion in the U.S., but I would ask the Crown Prince to round the number up to around $1 trillion, he's a great guy, and I think they will do it because we've been very good to them, I would also ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower the cost of oil, you have to bring the price down. If the price of oil drops, the Russia Ukraine war will end immediately. The price of oil is high enough right now, the war will continue. You have to lower the price of oil, you have to end the war. They are actually very responsible to a certain extent for what is happening. I would ask for interest rates to be lowered immediately, and similarly, interest rates around the world should also be lowered.

Everything you've seen is because of our recent historic victory in the presidential election, which was widely known around the world, and I think a lot of things are happening in a lot of countries. They say that since the election, the world is shining, and even countries that we're not particularly friendly to are happy because they understand what the future holds and how great it will be under our leadership. America is back and open for business.

This week I also took swift action to stop illegal immigration at our southern border. I have decided to declare a national emergency at our border to immediately stop all illegal border crossers from entering the country. I will begin the process of rapidly returning illegal border crossers to the places from which they came. As you may have seen, that action has already begun, very forcefully, with active duty American military personnel and the National Guard deployed to the border to help repel the invasion, which was a real invasion, and we will not allow our territory to be violated after four long years. The United States is a strong, sovereign, and beautiful nation, and it is once again a strong, sovereign nation.

In addition, I am pleased to announce that the United States is also a free country. On day one, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship. Our government will no longer label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which is the favorite word of sensors and those who wish to prevent the free exchange of ideas and frankly progress. We saved free speech in America, and we saved it forcefully this week with another historic executive order.

I have also ended the weaponization of law enforcement against the American people and frankly against politicians, and restored the rule of law to fairness, equality and justice. My administration has taken action to dismantle all of the discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion bullshit. These policies are absolute bullshit throughout government and the private sector. With the recent but somewhat unexpected Supreme Court ruling that just came out, the United States will once again become a merit-based country. You have to hear the term "merit-based country".

I have officially announced that it will be the official policy of the United States that there will only be two genders, male and female. We will not have men in women's sports, and transgender activism, which was once all the rage, will be very rare.

Finally, as we restore common sense to America, we will move quickly to restore strength, peace, and stability abroad. I will also require all NATO countries to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP, which should have been done a few years ago when it was only 2%. Most countries did not pay these military expenses before I took office, and I insisted that they pay, and they did pay, because the United States did pay the difference at the time. This is not fair to the United States, but many things have been unfair to the United States for many years. Even before I took office, my team negotiated a ceasefire in the Middle East, and without us, this agreement would not have been achieved. Earlier this week, the hostages began to be returned to their families, they're coming back, it's a beautiful place, they're coming back in greater and greater numbers.

Our efforts to secure a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully underway, and it's very important that this work is completed. This is an absolute killing field, millions of soldiers have been killed, nobody has seen anything like it since World War II, they're lying on a flat field, this is a flat farmland, there are millions of Russians and millions of Ukrainians, nobody has seen anything like it since World War II, and it's time to end it.

In the United States, we have a big event next year, the United States is going to have its 250th anniversary, and I'm honored to be president, and it's a big event that they've been talking about for 10 years. We also have the World Cup, and then we're about to have the Olympics, which was also a key role that I played in my first term, who would have known that I would get the Olympics by skipping a term. I'm going to be president during the World Cup, the Olympics and the 250th anniversary, so that's going to be three big events and we've accomplished more in less than four days, we've actually worked more in four days than any other administration has accomplished in four years.

We're just getting started and it's been amazing to see the spirit and the light of our country. Our country has suffered tremendous losses under the last administration, but we're going to bounce back and make it stronger and better than ever. I hear the audience is great, many of my friends are in the audience and I'm going to take questions from some very distinguished people right now, thank you very much, thank you very much.

Q&A session:

Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman

Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman:Mr. President, thank you for your very powerful speech, and I think you can hear the applause from Davos to the White House. So we welcome you to join us again next year, thank you very much. My question is, about something I observed in Davos: There are a lot of European business people who are very unhappy with the regulatory system in the European Union, and they think that there are many reasons for the slowdown in economic growth here, but mainly because of regulation. And you have a completely different approach in this area, and I would appreciate it if you could explain the theory of what you are doing, thank you very much.

Trump: I want to talk about the European Union because you mentioned it specifically, and I also have a lot of friends and leaders of countries that I got to know during my first term. I got to know them very well and like them very much during those four years, but they are very frustrated. Because it seems that everything takes time to get approved environmental impact statements, which you should not have done. Because there are many other ways to replace statements. I'll give you a simple example, in private life, I live a simple and beautiful life. But when I was living a simple life, I did some projects, I had a big project in Ireland, it had to be approved, and this would make it better, and I got approval in Ireland in a week, which was a very, very effective approval. They told me the big problem was you had to get approval from the EU and we thought it would take five or six years. I said you have to be kidding me, I don't want to take five or six years, but it's going to be a big investment, it's going to be good, it's good for the project, I sent someone to the EU to see if they could speed it up. I realized then and there that this was my first real involvement with the EU, but I realized then and there that this was a problem, I didn't even bother to apply.

If I had done that, I would have withdrawn very quickly because you can't wait five or six years for approval. So a lot of people are claiming from a very big business perspective that this is a US problem, that the EU is very unfair to us, very bad, they have a huge tax system that we know about, and they impose VAT, which is a very substantial tax. They don't take our agricultural products, they don't take our cars, but they send us millions of cars, and they impose tariffs on what we want to do. They want to sell their products in the US, so we have a deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with the EU, and nobody is happy about it, and we're going to do something about it. I think the EU has to speed up their approval process, and I have some friends in some countries in the EU, and they are great people, and they want to be able to compete better. If you can't get through the approval process quickly, you can't compete. They impose VAT and all these other taxes on the United States, which is very, very unfair, and we have some very big complaints about the EU.

Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies

Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies:I am honored to represent the energy industry on this panel tonight. Total Energy is indeed the fourth largest gas and power company in the world. I will not ask you about oil prices. We are an exporter of LNG from the United States, we are a strong contributor to the Mamu Energy Project in Texas, we invested $20 billion, well below $220 billion, but $20 billion. We contribute to Europe's security of supply with these investments because we export this energy to Europe, and some experts are concerned that if the United States develops too many projects on LNG, it could have an inflationary effect on domestic gas prices in the United States, and they recommend taking a stance on this project. I would like to ask you the following question, what do you think of this stance on US energy investment, and what would happen if you found that domestic gas prices would increase due to exports? The last question is important for Europe, do you agree to guarantee the security of supply of US energy to Europe? TRUMP: To your last question, yes, I will make sure it's safe and we'll make a deal. LNG is very interesting because when I came into my first term, the first thing I looked at was two, there are two very large plants in Louisiana, which is very favorable to me. I'm actually very grateful for it, they said there were two plants that have been under environmental consideration for more than 10 years, and their cost is as you said, you know how expensive these plants are, but they cost about $12 billion, I think it was $14 billion or $15 billion, but they couldn't get the permits, they were under review for many years, probably a decade or more. I said this is ridiculous. You said the total investment was $25 to $30 billion, and it looked like it was going to end, they couldn't get the permits, and I did it in less than a week. What I would like to see is that we will quickly approve these reviews in the United States, just like the AI ​​program, a lot of people want to build them, it's going to be a big thing, we will build the power generation facilities, and I will get approval for them under the emergency declaration. I can get approval myself and I don't have to wait years and years and the big issue is, we need to double the energy we have in the United States right now, can you imagine AI being as great as we want it to be because it's going to be very competitive, it's going to compete with China and other countries. Coal is great as a backup if there's an emergency, it's a great backup to have that facility, it doesn't cost a lot of money, we have more coal than anybody, we have more oil and gas than anybody, so we're going to have these plants have their own generation facilities, connected directly to their plants, they don't have to worry about the utilities, they don't have to worry about anything, we're going to get approval very quickly.

(Brian BAC Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America)

Brian BAC Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America:Good afternoon, Mr. President, congratulations, obviously it's been an eventful week for you and your family, if you remember five years ago you came here and we spoke with 50 CEOs from around the world, and you discussed with them your policies and procedures. As you mentioned earlier, a series of orders followed on immigration, trade and many other issues, so as representatives of the United States, we received a lot of questions. The president is focused on growth, prosperity, market growth, stock market growth, good bond markets, and lower prices, so how do you see the impact of these orders? How quickly are they issued? How are you going to balance that? Keeping GDP growing, keeping inflation down, keeping stock prices good, and getting corporate taxes down to 21%? TRUMP: Actually, if you look at states and cities, in many cases, corporate taxes were well above 40%, and I'm bringing them down to 21%, and now we're going to go from 21% to 15%. If you make your product in the United States, you have the lowest tax rate, almost the lowest tax rate, and the lowest of any major country. You know, a wealthy, powerful country, by far, can't even compete, so we're going to bring it down to 15%.

We are actually cutting taxes for corporations and small businesses, we are going to get it down to 15%. That is really a great thing. By the way, speaking of you, you are doing a great job, but I would like you to start opening up your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the bank will not allow them to do business inside the bank, including a place called Bank of America.

(Anna Budin, Executive Chairman of Santander Bank)

Anna Budin, Executive Chairman of Santander Bank:Mr. President, congratulations on our historic victory. I believe you don’t know me as well as my colleagues, so let me introduce you. Santander Bank is one of the largest banks in the world, with 170 million customers, which is more than my friends Brian or Jamie have. They're fixing the regulation that's coming in, and that's tricky, we're a big investor in the United States, we have millions of customers, 12,000 employees, we're one of the largest auto lenders, we recently launched a fully digital bank called Open Banking, and we firmly believe that banks play a critical role in the economy, and we can accelerate growth and help more customers, and that's what we're doing in the United States. So as Brian pointed out, we very much welcome your focus on deregulation and reducing bureaucracy. So my question is, what are your priorities in this regard? How quickly will this happen?

Trump: Thank you very much! I know your bank very well, you're doing an amazing job. We're going to move quickly, we're moving very quickly, and in the last three days we've done things that no one thought possible for years, and everything is going into effect. It's going to have a huge impact on the economy, a huge positive impact, money is being wasted on crazy things, I mean the Green New Deal is a complete disgrace. I should add that they never even took a class on energy or the environment, it was just a game. You know, in the four years that I was in office, our air was the cleanest, our water was the cleanest, but our economy was the most productive in history. In fact, you can look around the world, we beat all the countries. One thing we have to do is we have to demand respect from other countries. For example, Canada, we have a huge deficit with Canada, we are not going to do that anymore. Canada has been very difficult to deal with for many years, we have a $200 billion or $250 billion deficit, it is not fair. We don't need them to make our cars, we don't need their wood, we don't need their oil and gas. We are dealing with Mexico, I think it's great, we just want to be treated fairly with other countries. The politicians are allowing other countries to take advantage of us, we can't allow that to happen anymore, you know we have a debt, it's a small debt. We just want to eliminate the debt and we will be able to do that fairly quickly and a lot of good things are going to happen, honestly good things are going to happen to the world and good things are going to happen to the people that we deal with.

I really want to meet with President Putin as soon as possible to end this war, not from an economic or any other point of view, but from the point of view of the millions of lives that have been wasted. Young people are being shot on the battlefield, you know bullets are on very flat land, as I said, bullets don't hide, the only thing that can stop a bullet is the human body, you have to see, it's a massacre and we really have to stop this war. And that's not counting the people who have been killed as cities are destroyed building by building, so we really should stop that.

The same is true in the Middle East, I think we've made a lot of progress in the Middle East and I think it's going to make good progress.

Borge Brende, CEO of the World Economic Forum

Borge Brende, CEO of the World Economic Forum:Thank you, thank you, Mr. President. We know that the most important relationship in the world is the relationship between the United States and China. We account for 28% of the global economy, and China is close to 20%, almost half of the global GDP. How do you see the relationship between the United States and China in the next four years under your leadership?

I think we're going to have a very good relationship, we want fairness, we just want a level playing field, we don't want to take advantage. Biden's $1.1 trillion deficit is ridiculous, it's just an unfair relationship, we have to make it fair.

A lot of Asian countries actually, our deficits are very large, we can't continue like this.

We've always had a very good relationship with China, and we look forward to having a good relationship with China, and we hope that China can help us stop the war with Russia and Ukraine. They have a lot of influence on the situation, and we will work with them.

We want to denuclearize with President Putin before the election results are known.

Borge Brende, CEO of the World Economic Forum: Mr. President, will Ukraine and Russia reach a peace agreement?

Trump:If I were the president of Ukraine, this war should not have started.

There was no war during my tenure, and I never even talked about it. But when I stepped down, bad things happened. The end result is now these bombed-out cities, they look like demolition sites, and a lot of people have died, and I think you're going to see far more deaths in Ukraine than is reported. I've seen it, and when you see a city turned into a demolition site, buildings destroyed by missiles, and a lot of people killed, I'm surprised how that relates to me. I think you're going to find that more people died in the war in Ukraine than anyone thought, but if you look at it now, many of the people who were killed were soldiers with guns and rifles and drones, new forms of war drones... It's a very sad thing.