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Trump Addresses World Leaders at World Economic Forum. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired January 23, 2025 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[11:30:00]

PATRICK POUYANNE, CEO, TOTALENERGIES: And they recommend a pause on these projects.

I would ask you the following question. What are your views about such a pause on investments on LNG in the U.S.? What would happen if you would observe an increased domestic gas price because of these exports? And final question, which is important for Europe, would you agree to guarantee security of supplies of U.S. and LNG to Europe?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, in the last part of your question, yes, I would. I would make sure that you get it, if we make a deal. We make a deal, you will get it, because a lot of people do have that problem. They make a deal and then it can't get supplied because of war type problems and other problems.

So we would absolutely do that. LNG is very interesting, because, when I took office for the first term, one of the first things I looked at was two -- there were two very massive plants in Louisiana, a state that has been very good to me, won it by many, many points.

And I felt strongly indebted to it, actually. And they said there are two plants that have been under environmental consideration for more than 10 years. And they were costing, as you say -- you know how expensive those plants are, but they were costing like $12 billion and I think $14 billion or $15 billion.

But they couldn't get their permits. It was -- they were in review for years, many, many years, like a decade or more. And I said, so ridiculous. I know so much about that because in the construction industry. I had to go through it too. But I got good at it after a while.

But I went, I saw the projects. And you're talking about a total investment of $25 billion to $30. Dollars and it looked like it was going to end. They couldn't get their permits. And I got them done in less than a week. It was done completely.

In fact, when they called them to announce that it was done, the countries, largely countries, Japan was involved and another country and some very big investors, they couldn't believe it. They actually couldn't believe it. And I said, just do yourself one favor. Don't pay any consultants, because the only one they got it done was me. I got it done because it was the right thing to do for the U.S. and for the world. But the consultants had nothing to do with it.

The consultants go in and they say, give us millions of dollars because Trump did it. Nobody called me about it. I just heard it was a problem for years. And I got it done because it was the right thing to do for the U.S. and the right thing to do for beyond. It had to do with energy, very important.

So I think it's very important. I think the -- I disagree with one. I think the more that you do, the lower the price is going to go. And what I'd like to see is rapid approvals. We're going to get very rapid approvals in the United States, like with the A.I. plants. Talking to many people who want to build them. That's going to be a very big thing.

We're going to build electric-generating facilities. They are going to build. I'm going to get them the approval. Under emergency declaration, I can get the approvals done myself without having to go through years of waiting. And the big problem is, we need double the energy we currently have in the United States, can you imagine, for A.I. to really be as big as we want to have it, because it's a very competitive -- it'll be very competitive with China and others.

So I'm going to give emergency declarations, so that they can start building them almost immediately. And I'm -- I think it was largely my idea, because nobody thought this was possible. It wasn't that they were not smart, because they're the smartest.

But I told them that what I want you to do is build your electric- generating plant right next to your plant as a separate building connected. And they said, wow, you're kidding. And I said, no, no, I'm not kidding. You don't have to hook into the grid, which is old and could be taken out. If it's taken out, they wouldn't have any way to get any electricity.

So we are going to allow them to go on a very rapid basis to build their plant, build the electric-generating plant. They can fuel it with anything they want. And they may have coal as a backup, good, clean coal. If there were a problem with a pipe coming in, as an example, you're going with gas, oil or gas, and a pipe gets blown up, or for some reason doesn't work, there are some companies in the U.S. that have coal sitting right by the plant so that, if there's an emergency, they can go to that short-term basis and use our very clean coal.

So that's something else that a lot of people didn't even know about. But nothing can destroy coal, not the weather, not a bomb, nothing. It might make it a little smaller. Might make it a little different shape. But coal is very strong as a backup. It's a great backup to have that facility, and it wouldn't cost much more money. And we have more coal than anybody.

[11:35:01]

We also have more oil and gas than anybody. So we're going to make it so that the plants will have their own electric-generating facilities attached right to their plant. They don't have to worry about a utility. They don't have to worry about anything. And we're going to get very rapid approvals.

BORGE BRENDE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. President.

We will now go to another CEO that very well, Brian Moynihan, the CEO and chair of Bank of America.

BRIAN MOYNIHAN, CEO, BANK OF AMERICA: Good afternoon, Mr. President, and congratulations and obviously an eventful week for you and your family.

If you remember, five years ago, you came here and we walked among 150 CEOs from all over the world, and you engaged with them about your policies and your procedures.

This year, you're not here. And yet this week was eventful from the orders that you mentioned earlier, literally a wave of orders coming out on immigration, on trade and many other matters. And so, as a representative of the United States here, we got a lot of questions about what does all this mean and how would the president square this with his clear focus on growth, prosperity, market growth, stock market growth, a good bond market, and bringing down prices.

So how do you think about the impact of all these orders and how fast they come out and how you're going to balance them with that scorecard of being successful in both continuing GDP growth, bringing down inflation and also having a good stock price appreciation for the American citizen?

TRUMP: Well, I think it's going to actually bring down inflation. It's going to bring up jobs. We're going to have a lot of jobs. We're going to have a lot of companies moving.

Brian, we're at 21 percent. It was at 40 percent. And I got it down to 21 percent, the corporate tax. And it was actually -- if you look at state and city, it was in many cases much higher than 40 percent. I got it down to 21 percent. And now we're going to bring it down from 21 percent to 15 percent if -- there's a big if -- if you make your product in the U.S.

So we're going to have the lowest, just about the lowest rate. It'll be -- the 21 is on the low side worldwide. The 15 is about as low as it gets and by far the lowest of a large country, a large rich, powerful country by far, not even a contest.

So we're going to bring it down to 15 percent if you make your product in the USA. So that's going to create a tremendous buzz. We're also probably going back to the one-year deduction where we deduct. We did that originally. And that was amazing what -- the impact that that had, the one-year deduction, which built up over a period of time and then it expires.

But we're going to go back to that when we do the renewal of the Trump tax plan. We have to get Democrats to approve it. But if the Democrats didn't approve it, I don't know how they can survive with about a 45 percent tax increase, because that's what it would be. And so I think they're going to be. We have been working along with

them pretty well. I think it's very hard for a political group to say, let's charge people 45 percent more. So I think we're in good shape, but we're actually doing a reduction for business and small businesses where you're going to bring it down to 15 percent, which is really something.

And, by the way, speaking of you -- and you have done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank. And that included a place called Bank of America, this conservative -- they don't take conservative business.

And I don't know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody, I hope you're going to open your banks to conservatives, because what you're doing is wrong.

MOYNIHAN: Mr. President, I will say that your friend Gianni was -- said hello, told me to tell you hello, and we look forward to sponsoring the World Cup when it comes both this summer for the club and next year.

So thank you for getting that for the United States.

TRUMP: Thank you very much, Brian.

BRENDE: Thank you, Mr. President.

We will now go to Ana Botin. She's the executive chairman of Bank Santander, one of the big European banks and also in the U.S.

So, Ana.

ANA BOTIN, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, SANTANDER GROUP: Mr. President, congratulations on a historic victory. I believe you don't know me as well as my fellow panelists, so a few words.

Santander is one of the largest banks in the world by number of customers, 170 million. That's more than my friend Brian or my friend Jamie have.

(LAUGHTER)

BOTIN: And those...

(APPLAUSE)

MOYNIHAN: If they fix the regulation, we will...

BOTIN: That's coming. That's coming.

BRENDE: That was cheeky.

(LAUGHTER)

BOTIN: We are a big investor in the United States. We have many million customers, 12,000 employees. We're one of the largest auto lenders. And we recently launched a fully digital bank called Openbank. We strongly believe banks have a pivotal role in the economy and we can accelerate growth and help many more customers. That's what we're doing in the United States.

[11:40:08]

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 and how fast is this going to happen?

Thank you very much.

TRUMP: I think it's going to be -- thank you, and congratulations. I know very much about your bank and you have done a fantastic job. Congratulations.

We are going to move very quickly. We have moved very quickly. We have done things in the last three days that nobody thought were possible to do in years. And it's all taking -- it's all taking effect. It's going to have a huge impact on the economy, a huge, positive impact. Money was being wasted on crazy things.

I mean, the Green New Deal was such a total disgrace, what -- how that was perpetrated. And it was conceived of by people that were average students, less-than-average students, I might add, and never even took a course in energy or the environment. It was just a game.

Remember, the world was going to end in 12 years? Remember that? Well, the 12 years has come and gone. It was going to end. It was going to all foam into earth. But the time has come. These people, and they really -- they really scared the Democrats large -- I can't say the Republicans. Republicans maybe could have fought harder to stop it, but it's been a tremendous waste of -- a tremendous waste of money.

During my four years, we had the cleanest air, we had the cleanest water, and yet we had the most productive economy in the history of our country. We had the most productive economy until COVID came. We had the most productive in the history of our country by far. And, actually, you can look worldwide. We were beating everybody from China to everybody else.

So -- and we think we really now, with what we have learned and all of the other things that have taken place, we think we can even far surpass that, actually, far, far surpass it. But we do -- one thing we're going to be demanding is, we're going to be demanding respect from other nations.

Canada -- we have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We're not going to have that anymore. We can't do it. It's -- I don't know if it's good for them. As you probably know, I say you can always become a state. Then, if you are a state, we won't have a deficit. We won't have to tariff you, et cetera, et cetera.

But Canada has been very tough to deal with over the years, and it's not fair that we should have a $200 billion or $250 billion deficit. We don't need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don't need their lumber because we have our own forests, et cetera, et cetera. We don't need their oil and gas. We have our -- we have more than anybody.

So, just as an example, with Mexico, we're dealing with Mexico, I think, very well. And we just want to be treated fairly with other nations, because there's hardly a nation in the world -- and I blame this on us, and I blame it on politicians that, for some reason, and, probably, it's mostly at stupidity, but you could also say other reasons, but mostly stupidity.

They have allowed other nations to take advantage of the U.S. And we can't allow that to happen anymore. We have debt. It's a very small debt when you compare it to value, the value of the assets that we have. But we don't want to do that. We want to just have debt be obliterated, and we will be able to do that fairly rapidly.

And a lot of good things are going to happen. And then, honestly, good things are going to happen for the world, and good things are going to happen for the people that are dealing with us, allies and beyond allies.

One thing very important, I really would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon and get that war ended. And that's not from a -- the standpoint of economy or anything else. It's from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted. Beautiful young people are being shot in the battlefield, the bullet -- very flat land, as I said, and the bullet goes -- there's no hiding.

And a bullet, the only thing going to stop the bullet is a human body. And you have to see -- I have seen pictures of what's taking place. It's a carnage, and we really have to stop that war. That war is horrible. And I'm not talking economy. I'm not talking economics. I'm not talking about natural resources.

I'm just talking about there's so many young people being killed in this war. And that's not including the people that have been killed as the cities are being knocked down building by building. So we really should get that stopped.

Likewise, in the Middle East, I think we have made a lot of progress in the Middle East, and I think that's going to come along pretty well.

[11:45:00]

Thank you.

BRENDE: Thank you, Mr. President.

So, we know that the most consequential relationship in the world is between the U.S. and China, U.S. 28 percent of the global economy, China close to 20. That's almost half of the global GDP.

And we know that you called President Xi Jinping last Friday. We heard that you had a good discussion. How do you see the relationship between the U.S. and China in the next four years under your leadership?

TRUMP: He called me.

But I see it very good. I think that we're going to have a very good relationship. All we want is fairness. We just want a level playing field. We don't want to take advantage. We have been having massive deficits with China. Biden allowed it to get out of hand. He's -- $1.1 trillion deficits, ridiculous. And it's just an unfair relationship.

And we have to make it just fair. We don't have to make it phenomenal. We have to make it a fair relationship. Right now, it's not a fair relationship. The deficit is massive, as it is with other countries, a lot of Asian countries, actually, but we have deficits that are very big. And we can't keep doing that. So we're not going to keep doing that.

But I like President Xi very much. I have always liked him. We always had a very good relationship. It was very strained with COVID coming out of Wuhan. Obviously, that strained it. I'm sure it strained it with a lot of people, but that strained our relationship. But we always had a great relationship, I would say.

And we look forward to doing very well with China and getting along with China. Hopefully, China can help us stop the war with, in particular, Russia, Ukraine. And they have a great deal of power over that situation. And we will work with them.

And I mentioned that with -- during our phone conversation with President Xi. And, hopefully, we could work together and get that stopped. We'd like to see denuclearization. In fact, with President Putin prior to an election result, which was, frankly, ridiculous, we were talking about denuclearization of our two countries.

And China would have come along. China has a much smaller right now nuclear armament than us or field than us. But they're going to be catching it at some point over the next four or five years. And I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear.

And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow. And China would have come along too. China also liked it. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear. And the destructive capability is something that we don't even want to talk about today, because you don't want to hear it. It's too depressing.

So we want to see if we can denuclearize. And I think that's very possible. And I can tell you that President Putin wanted to do it. He and I wanted to do it. We had a good conversation with China. They would have been involved. And that would have been an unbelievable thing for the planet.

BRENDE: Mr. President, when you're back here in Davos next year, will there be then a peace agreement with Ukraine and Russia by then?

TRUMP: Well, you're going to have to ask Russia. Ukraine is ready to make a deal. Just so you understand, this is a war that should have never started.

If I were president, it would never have started. This is a war that should have never, ever been started. And it wasn't started during my -- there was never even talk about it.

I knew that it was the apple of President Putin's eye, but I also knew that there was no way he was going in, and he wasn't going to go in. And then when I was out, bad things happened. Bad things were said, a lot of stupidity all around, and you end up with what you have.

Now you have all these bombed-out cities that look like demolition sites with many people killed. I think the thing that you will see about Ukraine is that far more people have died than is being reported. And I have seen that. But far, far more people have died.

When you look at a city that's become a demolition site, where big buildings have been collapsed by missiles hitting them and everything else, and they say one person was slightly injured, no, no, many people were killed. Those are big buildings. I was surprised at how -- that was my business.

I -- these are buildings that go two and three blocks long. They're 20 stories high. They're big, powerful buildings. And they were knocked down, and there were a lot of people in those buildings. And they announce that two people were injured. That's not true.

So I think you're going to find that there were many more people killed in Ukraine in the Ukraine war than anybody has any idea. But if you look now, so many of the people being killed are soldiers just facing each other with guns, rifles, and drones, the new form of warfare, drones. And it's a very sad thing to see.

[11:50:06]

And when you see pictures of the fields that I see, nobody wants to see it. You will never be the same.

BRENDE: Thank you very much, Mr. President, on behalf of all the 3,000 participants here in Davos.

We really, really underline that joining us the third day in your presidency live, taking questions here, it's so appreciated and. We are already ready for receiving you next year in person.

So thank you very much, and all the best from Davos.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: You just heard from President Trump speaking remotely to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

I want to go to our Phil Mattingly for analysis. A few things came out of this. You heard President Trump really put

the pressure on OPEC to lower the oil prices. He made the argument that he believes that could end the war in Ukraine. He said that he will demand interest rates to go down, which, of course, it's not so simple. The president can't just unilaterally do that.

And he talked about debt. He said he was going to obliterate debt. What do you think?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Look, from a big picture perspective, the message from the president to the business leaders that were there and were asking him questions was this: Come do business in the United States and I will give you low taxes, an even lower corporate tax rate than the current thing you have, 21 percent. He said 15 percent.

You will also have significantly reduced regulations, which we have seen as a critical element of his executive orders. And if you don't, I'm going to slap tariffs on your nation and all of the exports that you send towards the United States.

That's long been kind of his theory of the case, the specifics kind of underneath that. He can do tariffs unilaterally. He's made that very clear. He hasn't done them yet. He doesn't get to control unilaterally U.S. tax policy in terms of rates. He needs Capitol Hill for that. Your point about interest rates, saying explicitly he's going to demand interest rates come down, that's the prerogative of the Federal Reserve.

He's jawboned them before, has made very clear Jay Powell, specifically, who he appointed, he's more than willing to go after him on that, but he doesn't have control then, in and of himself, of that, also saying he wanted the rest of the world's central banks to follow his demand to lower the interest rates.

I think his call for OPEC to lower oil prices was fascinating to me, one, because he was on the phone with Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's leader. And Saudi Arabia is really the kind of lynchpin of that global oil crisis. They control 65 to 70 percent, I believe, of the world's barrels of oil.

He wants the United States to become -- to maintain its role as a major producer of oil. They're conflicting on some levels is what I'm trying to say here.

BROWN: Yes, because OPEC is a competitor of the U.S. oil industry, right?

MATTINGLY: And so -- and you can see it. I was watching the price of oil futures tick down.

BROWN: I was going to say...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: I think it was down about a little over 1 percent, maybe a little. It's been toggling back and forth right now.

But trying to figure out what he's going for economically on that, given what he wants domestically, I think is a very interesting thing people are trying to tease out. More fascinating to me, though, is how he was connecting it to the war in Ukraine.

BROWN: To -- yes, that was really interesting.

MATTINGLY: And there was a connective thread on that issue specifically from his economic proposals, from his tariff proposals, from his energy proposals, continually bringing it back to the war in Ukraine and Russia in a way that I don't know that I have necessarily seen before.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that was really interesting.

And, in fact, in terms of moving the ball forward and putting more meat on the bones, what really stood out first was what he said about Saudi, what he said about lowering the -- asking Saudi to lower oil prices, but also telling them to essentially pony up more money.

They had already committed some $600 billion in the past few days. He said, why don't you just round it up to $1 trillion? You saw the CEO of Blackstone there probably joking that that MBS was the happiest person today...

BROWN: Yes.

MARQUARDT: ... because here, on both counts, that's not something that's going to make him happy.

But I do think that the Ukraine part of President Trump's comments there really stood out the most because he wasn't necessarily just talking about it in economic overtones. He was talking about it quite graphically in terms of the death that we have seen on the battlefield there, but also quite emotionally about how that ends.

And he certainly, to your point, sees higher oil prices as benefiting Russia and able to continue the fight there. There have long been questions, as Trump has taken office, about how Donald Trump would bring President Zelenskyy and President Putin to the table.

And there's been a criticism of President Trump's soft approach to President Putin. Now we're seeing the stick. We're seeing the threats of more sanctions. We're seeing the threats of bringing down oil prices that will hurt President Putin.

And we're also seeing the outreach to him, saying that he wants to sit down with the Russian president. So, he really did move the ball forward there when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine.

BROWN: Yes, that was significant. And he also talked about President Xi, making it clear that he called him, and what China's role could be potentially ending the war in Ukraine.

[11:55:02]

Thank you all so much.

And thank you for joining us.

Before we let you go, I wanted to share some news. My wonderful, legendary colleague Wolf Blitzer will soon be joining me in the mornings for two hours of "THE SITUATION ROOM" 10:00 to noon. It is an honor for me to share the anchor desk with the hardest working person television, who is so widely respected. And we look forward to bringing you the news every morning.

You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok and X @PamelaBrownCNN.

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