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Trump Addresses World Leaders at World Economic Forum. Aired 11-11:30a ET
Aired January 23, 2025 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[11:00:01]
PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: With us now, Richard Quest, Jeff Zeleny, Phil Mattingly, Alex Marquardt, and David Sanger.
Richard, I want to start with you. What are you expecting?
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE: Oh, well, let me just set the scene for you, if I may.
Behind you, they're all lining up to get into the main room, which is the Congress Center, the big hall where the speech will be received. It's quite an interesting concept here, because you have the great and the good, the absolute world's elite.
But when you come to an event like listening to Donald Trump, they're just chopped liver, like everybody else, and they have to line up and show their passes to get in the room. Once they are in there, Donald Trump's expected to speak via video, and then he's going to be questioned.
They're describing it as a discussion. Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Ana Botin of Bank Santander, the CEO of Total of France. A whole variety of CEOs will put questions or discuss with the president. How that goes, no one knows.
We're in uncharted territory here.
BROWN: We certainly are, and we are waiting for Trump to address those world leaders. We were all kind of giggling, calling them chopped liver. They have to wait like everyone else.
Alex, this is Trump's first foray onto the international stage, as I noted. What are those world leaders and those business leaders, what are they hoping to hear from Trump?
ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I think a little more meat on the bone.
We have heard Trump talk about a whole range of foreign policy issues, but more specifics, I think. I mean, this is a conference that's taking place in Europe. It's a relatively jittery crowd, especially among the Europeans. We have heard this most recent threat of tariffs against European Union countries. It's no secret that the E.U. countries preferred the way that Biden/Harris did business, putting NATO at the center of their foreign policy.
So there are some concerns about Trump. At the same time, that's not true of everybody. And I'm thinking, in particular, the Arab countries in the Gulf. For all the unpredictability of Trump, this is not these countries' first rodeo when it comes to seeing Trump, and they know two things about him. He likes flattery and he likes transaction.
And so you have already seen some countries approach him with a much more transactional approach, like the Saudis promising $600 billion in investment, Trump saying that he'd be willing to go out to Saudi Arabia if they invested some $500 billion.
So I think there are -- we have heard the foreign policy questions about Greenland, Panama. Phil was just in Panama. The Europeans are certainly going to be looking for specifics about the war in Ukraine and, of course, how to manage the cease-fire in Gaza. So there are all kinds of things that I think the folks in that room are going to be hoping that he touches on today.
BROWN: Right, we shall see.
I'm going to bring you in, Jeff, because, as I recall, Trump did Davos twice during his first term. You were there at one of those appearances 2018. How will this presidential address compare to then, given his sort of new era of power that he's in?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, this is going to be a fascinating bookend in which to sort of judge the president in his first term versus the president right now in his second term.
I do remember well that speech back in 2018 when the world leaders, his new colleagues, were unsure exactly what to make of him, but President Trump at that time stuck to the script just perfectly. The big takeaway, as I recall, was America is open for business. He wanted to speak with CEOs and world leaders as well, talking about investing in the U.S.
We are seeing similar strains of that already so far in the opening days of his administration, and certainly in the transition. What he did not say in 2018 in that first speech was talk about geopolitics or China. So, as of now, I mean, for all the speeches and all the words we have heard from the new president, he's talked very little about Russia, very little about Ukraine.
Of course, he vowed to end that conflict within the first 24 hours. That was never reality, but he almost certainly must address that in some form today in this speech, but it will be interesting to see how much he delves into China and geopolitics. It's not something that we're being at least signaled by his advisers he intends to do much on this.
So, in one respect, he wants to appear before this group because he loves being in this type of audience. It's a lesser -- it's a bigger, more open question, I guess, to see if he actually puts a lot of meat on the bones, as we were just saying. People want him to. We will see if he does.
BROWN: All right, David, to go to you, Jeff just pointed out that Trump, as we know, vowed to end the war in Ukraine on day one. Clearly, that hasn't happened. What are the prospects for ending that war soon?
DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the really fascinating part of this, Pamela, is that, in recent times, in recent days, he has actually issued a few threats to Putin. If you don't come to the negotiating table, if you don't solve this problem, I'm going to impose tariffs on you.
Now, let's stipulate for a moment that there are so many sanctions that the Biden administration put on trade with Russia, that there is almost nothing to tariff. There is almost nothing left to sanction.
[11:05:06]
But at least he's coming off at the beginning saying, I'm going to have some leverage in this. The big question is whether or not he is willing to have the United States participate in some kind of security guarantee for Ukraine should the moment come where there really was an agreement, because, otherwise, the Ukrainians will fear that Russia will simply take the time to put their troops back together and reinvade the country.
And Donald Trump doesn't want that happening on his watch.
BROWN: There's still a lot of questions, Phil Mattingly, about what Donald Trump is going to do about the economy, right? I mean, that was one of his big campaign pledges. He's going to lower the cost of groceries and so forth.
And now he's sort of changing his tune on tariffs with China, right? He had said during the campaign, I believe, it would be 60 percent, now 10 percent. What's going on there?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: It seems to depend not just on the day, but on some level on the hour.
And I think that's what -- if you're talking, Jeff makes a great point about this is a different environment in terms of the audience and how they feel about the president, about what they're looking for, particularly economics -- economically, particularly on deregulation issues as well, tax policy.
On tariffs, they don't really know. And I think that's -- if you have watched the market, you talked to market participants over the course of the last 72 hours, he promised a couple of weeks ago that, on day one, he would slap 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, 10 percent tariffs, as you noted, on China.
Then his team put out an executive order that laid out kind of a blueprint for studies reporting back on April 1 that could lead to significant tariffs, but weren't the kind of across-the-board, sweeping tariff plans on the U.S.' biggest trading partners. And so the market exhaled a little bit. And then, a few hours later,
when he was in the Oval Office signing executive orders, he said again, February 1 was the deadline. So I think what market participants want, what the CEOs in that meeting want is some certainty about tariffs?
How much of it will actually be implemented?
BROWN: All right, let's listen.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... Davos.
This has been a truly historic week in the United States. Three days ago, I took the oath of office, and we began the golden age of America. The recent presidential election was won by millions of votes, and all seven, every one of them, all seven swing states. It was a massive mandate from the American people, like hasn't been seen in many years.
And some of the political pundits, even some of my so-called enemies, said it was the most consequential election victory in 129 years. That's quite nice. What the world has witnessed in the past 72 hours is nothing less than a revolution of common sense.
Our country 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 and what we're doing and going to do. My administration is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we have inherited from a totally inept group of people and to solve every single crisis facing our country.
This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration. Over the past four years, our government racked up $8 trillion in wasteful deficit spending and inflicted nation-wrecking energy restrictions, crippling regulations and hidden taxes like never before.
The result is the worst inflation crisis in modern history and sky- high interest rates for our citizens and even throughout the world. Food prices and the price of almost every other thing known to mankind went through the roof.
President Biden totally lost control of what was going on in our country, but in particular with our high-inflation economy and at our border. Because of these ruinous policies, total government spending this year is $1.5 trillion higher than was projected to occur when I left office just four years ago.
Likewise, the cost of servicing the debt is more than 230 percent higher than was projected in 2020. The inflation rate we are inheriting remains 50 percent higher than the historic target. It was the highest inflation probably in the history of our country.
That's why, from the moment I took office, I have taken rapid action to reverse each and every one of these radical left policies that created this calamity, in particular with immigration, crime and inflation. On day one, I signed an executive order directing every member of my Cabinet to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and reduce the cost of daily life.
I imposed a federal hiring freeze, a federal regulation freeze, a foreign aid freeze, and I created the new Department of Government Efficiency. I terminated the ridiculous and incredibly wasteful Green New Deal, I call it the green new scam, withdrew from the one-sided Paris climate accord, and ended the insane and costly electric vehicle mandate.
[11:10:24]
We're going to let people buy the car they want to buy. I declared a national energy emergency, and it's so important, national energy emergency, to unlock the liquid gold under our feet and pave the way for rapid approvals of new energy infrastructure.
The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we're going to use it. Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services. It will make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.
My administration has also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my last term. In total, the Biden administration imposed $50,000 in additional regulatory costs on the average American household over the last four years.
I have promised to eliminate 10 old regulations for every new regulation, which will soon put many thousands of dollars back in the pockets of American families. To further unleash our economy, our majorities in the House and Senate, which we also took, along with the presidency, are going to pass the largest tax cut in American history, including massive tax cuts for workers and family, and big tax cuts for domestic producers and manufacturers.
And we're working with the Democrats on getting an extension of the original Trump tax cuts, as you probably know by just reading any paper. My message to every business in the world is very simple. Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth.
We're bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts. But if you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff, which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our Treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.
Under the Trump administration, there will be no better place on Earth to create jobs, build factories, or grow a company than right here in the good old USA. Already, Americans, economic -- you can see this, I think, maybe even in your wonderful, wonderful room that you're all gathered together, so many of my friends.
But Americans, the economic confidence is soaring like we haven't seen in many, many decades, maybe not at all. Upon my election, it was just announced that small business optimism skyrocketed by 41 points in a single month. That's the highest ever. There's never been anything like that.
SoftBank has announced between a $100 billion and $200 billion investment in the U.S. economy because of the election result. And just two days ago, Oracle, SoftBank and OpenAI announced a $500 billion investment in A.I. infrastructure. Other companies likewise have announced billions and billions and billions, adding up to trillions, of investment in America, in the United States.
And it's also reported today in the papers that Saudi Arabia will be investing at least $600 billion in America. But I will be asking the crown prince, who's a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1 trillion. I think they will do that because we have been very good to them.
And I'm also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil. You got to bring it down, which, frankly, I'm surprised they didn't do before the election. That didn't show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that.
If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price. You got to end that war. They should have done it long ago. They're very responsible, actually, to a certain extent, for what's taking place.
Millions of lives are being lost. With oil prices going down, I will demand that interest rates drop immediately. And, likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us. All over, the progress that you're seeing is happening because of our historic victory in a recent presidential election, one that has become quite well-known throughout the world.
[11:15:00]
I think a lot of things are happening to a lot of countries. They say that there's light shining all over the world since the election. And even countries that we aren't particularly friendly with are happy, because they understand what -- there is a future and how great the future will be.
Under our leadership, America is back and open for business. And, this week, I'm also taking swift action to stop the invasion at our southern border. They allowed people to come in at levels that nobody's ever seen before. It was ridiculous. I decided a -- and declared to just do -- to do, and very, very importantly, a national emergency on our border immediately halted all entry of illegal border crossers, of which there were many, and began promptly returning the illegal trespassers back to the place from which they came.
That action, as you have probably seen, has already started very strongly. I have deployed active-duty U.S. military and National Guard troops to the border to assist in repelling the invasion. It was really an invasion. We will not allow our territory to be violated.
After four long years, the United States is strong and sovereign and a beautiful nation once again. It's a strong sovereign nation. In addition, I'm pleased to report that America is also a free nation once again. On day one, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship. No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas and, frankly, progress.
We have saved free speech in America, and we have saved it strongly. With another historic executive order this week, I also ended the weaponization of law enforcement against the American people and, frankly, against politicians, and restored the fair, equal, and impartial rule of law.
My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense, and these are policies that were absolute nonsense, throughout the government and the private sector. With the recent, yet somewhat unexpected, great Supreme Court decision just made, America will once again become a merit-based country. You have to hear that word, merit-based country.
And I have made it official and official policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female. And we will have no men participating in women's sports, and transgender operations, which became the rage, will occur very rarely.
Finally, as we restore common sense in America, we're moving quickly to bring back strength and peace and stability abroad. I'm also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago. It was only at 2 percent, and most nations didn't pay until I came along.
I insisted that they pay, and they did, because the United States was really paying the difference at that time, and it was unfair to the United States. But many, many things have been unfair for many years to the United States.
Before even taking office, my team negotiated a cease-fire agreement in the Middle East, which wouldn't have happened without us, as I think most of the people in the room know. Earlier this week, the hostages began to return to their families. They are returning, and it's a beautiful sight, and they will be coming in more and more.
They started coming back on Sunday. Our efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully under way. It's so important to get that done. That is an absolute killing field. Millions of soldiers are being killed. Nobody's seen anything like it since World War II. They're laying dead all over the flat fields.
It's a flat field, farmland, and there's millions of Russians and millions of Ukrainians. Nobody's seen anything like it since World War II. It's time to end it.
And, here in America, we have big events coming up. Next year, we have the 250th anniversary of America's founding. I'm so honored to be president during that. That's been a big event. They have been talking about it for 10 years. We also have the World Cup.
And I understand Gianni -- Gianni is in the room, Infantino. He was very instrumental in helping us get it. He's there with you someplace, I think. And I want to thank him for that. And then we have the Olympics coming up, which I was instrumental in getting also in my first term. And who would have known that, by skipping a term, I would get the Olympics?
[11:20:00]
I was upset. I said, you know, I got the Olympics to come, and I won't be president. But it turned out through a stroke of luck or whatever you might call it, that I'm going to be president during the World Cup and the Olympics and the 250th anniversary. So that's going to be three big events.
And we have accomplished more in less than four days -- we have really been working four days -- than other administrations have accomplished in four years. And we're just getting started. It's really an amazing thing to see. And the spirit and the light over our country has been incredible.
Under the last administration, our nation has suffered greatly. But we're going to bring it back and make it greater, bigger, stronger, better than ever before.
I want to thank everybody for being with you. I would have been there myself, except the inauguration was two days ago. I thought it might be a little bit quick to make it the first stop. But we will get there. One day, we hope to get there.
But I do appreciate. I heard the audience is fantastic, and many of my friends are in the audience. And I will be taking questions now from some very distinguished people. Thank you all very much.
(APPLAUSE)
BORGE BRENDE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. President, for that very powerful speech. And I think you could hear the applause all the way from Davos to the White House.
But next year, it will be even better, because then you can get that applause here in Davos. So we wish you welcome to our village next year. We hope to see you.
TRUMP: Thank you very much.
BRENDE: So we also know, Mr. President, that you opened up for interaction here. We have a great panel with some of the most distinguished businesspeople in the world. Let me start with someone that you know really well that I think is
almost the neighbor of you in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Mr. Steve Schwarzman, chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Blackstone Group.
So, Steve, floor's yours.
STEPHEN SCHWARZMAN, CEO, BLACKSTONE GROUP: Well, Mr. President, I'm sure the crown prince of Saudi Arabia will be really glad you gave this speech today.
(LAUGHTER)
SCHWARZMAN: You have had the busiest four days that anybody can imagine, and congratulations for that.
And my question is about some of the things I have observed here at Davos. It's a terrific forum. I have met lots of people, as usual. I think I have been here 30 years. And a lot of the European businesspeople have expressed enormous frustration with the regulatory regime in the E.U.
And they attribute slower growth rates here because of the numerous factors, but especially because of regulations. And you have taken a completely different approach in this area.
And if you could explain the theory of what you're doing, how you're going to do it, and what you expect the outcome to be, I'd appreciate it.
TRUMP: Well, thank you very much. And, congratulations, Steve. You're a friend of mine, but on a great career. You have had an amazing career, and it continues. I just want to congratulate you. You're very inspirational to a lot of people.
I want to talk about the E.U., because you mentioned specifically that I have also had a lot of friends and leaders of countries. I got to them all my first term, and a little bit during this period of four years, and know them well, like them a lot, but they're very frustrated because of the time everything seems to take to get approved, environmental impact statements for things that you shouldn't even have to do that, and many, many other ways that it takes.
And I'm going to give you a quick little example. I -- in the private life, my beautiful private life, before I had all these things happening, the world is a little different. I had a nice, simple life. You knew that. But when I had that simple life, I did projects, and I had a big project in Ireland.
And it had to get approval on something that would have made it even better. And I got the approval from Ireland in a period of a week, and it was a very, very, very efficient, good approval. And they informed me, though, the problem is you're going to have to get it from the E.U., and we think that will take five to six years.
[11:25:00] And I said, you have to be kidding. And this was before politics. And
I said, wait a minute, it's not that important. I don't want to go five or six years. But it would have been a big investment. It would have been nice. It would have been good for the project.
And I sent the people to the E.U. to see if they could speed it up. And, basically, it was a five- or six-year wait just to get a simple approval that Ireland gave me in a period of literally not much more than a week. And I realized right then -- that was the first time I really was involved with the E.U. But I realized right then that's a problem.
And I didn't even bother applying to do it. And -- or if I did, I pulled it very quickly. I don't want -- I have to be very accurate because I don't want to be criticized. He did apply, actually. No, I want to be very accurate. So I don't think I did. But if I did, I pulled it very quickly.
It was just something you couldn't wait five years or six years to get an approval. So, a lot of -- in a very big business sense, a lot of people are claiming that's the problem. From the standpoint of America, the E.U. treats us very, very unfairly, very badly.
They have a large tax that we know about and a bad tax. And it's a very substantial one. They don't take our -- essentially don't take our farm products and they don't take our cars. Yet they send cars to us by the millions. They put tariffs on things that we want to do.
Like, for instance, I think they actually, in terms of -- these are noneconomic or nonmonetary tariffs. And those are very bad. And they make it very difficult to bring products into Europe. And yet they expect to be selling and they do sell their products in the United States.
So we have hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits with the E.U. And nobody's happy with it. And we're going to do something about it, but nobody's happy with it. So I think the E.U. has to speed up their process. Friends of mine that are in some of the nations within the E.U., great people, they want to be able to compete better, and you can't compete when you can't go through the approval process fast.
There's no reason why it can't go faster. So I'm trying to be constructive because I love Europe. I love the countries of Europe, but the process is a very cumbersome one. And they do treat the United States of America very, very unfairly with the VAT taxes and all of the other taxes they impose.
One other -- just to finish up, I got a call from the head of a major airline, one of the biggest airlines in the world. And he said, sir, could you help us? What -- landing in Europe is brutal. They charge us fees for everything and it's so unfair. I said, how does it compare to China? He said, it's much worse.
And the other thing, as you know, they took court cases with Apple and they supposedly won a case that most people didn't think was much of a case. They won $15 billion or $16 billion from Apple. They won billions from Google.
I think they're after Facebook for billions and billions. These are American companies. Whether you like them or not, they're American companies. And they shouldn't be doing that. And that's -- as far as I'm concerned, it's a form of taxation.
So we have some very big complaints with the E.U. Thank you.
BRENDE: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
We will now go to one of your friends in the E.U., Patrick Pouyanne. He's the chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies.
I guess you have a question ready, Patrick, for the president.
PATRICK POUYANNE, CEO, TOTALENERGIES: Mr. President, as we understand, energy is at the top of your agenda, and it's an honor for me to represent the energy industry tonight in this panel.
TotalEnergies is indeed the fourth largest oil and gas and electricity company in the world. I will not ask you a question about the oil price. It's quite clear what you expect from us.
I will go to gas more. And we -- our company is the largest, number one exporter LNG from the U.S. company. We are a strong contributor to and we invest in mammoth energy projects in Texas, $20 billion. It's far from 200, but it's $20 billion.
And we contribute with that to security of supply to Europe, as we export this LNG to Europe. Some experts fear that, if there are too many projects developed in the U.S. on LNG, this could have an inflationary impact on the U.S. domestic gas price. And they recommend a pause on these projects.
I would ask you the following question.