Remarks at a Breakfast and Listening Session With Business Leaders

The President. Good morning, everybody.

Participants. Good morning, Mr. President.

The President. Nice to see you.

[At this point, the President greeted meeting attendees.]

Okay, sit down, please. Mark was so nice with the plant coming back, I wanted to sit next to him. That must be it. [Laughter] Thank you very much, everybody. This is really our first official meeting. And, Andrew, it's nice to have you set everything up so well, and I hear your company is doing well.

Dow Chemical Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Andrew N. Liveris. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.

The President. And I really do—I appreciate. We'll getting to know each other very well. We'll have these meetings every—whenever you need them, actually, but I would say every quarter, perhaps. You could say monthly, but then all of a sudden, monthly becomes repetitive, as we know. [Laughter] It sounds good, but then you have to do it, and it's like—gets a little repetitive. But I would say probably on a quarterly basis.

You are great people. You have done an amazing job and the biggest in the world. And this is a worldwide meeting. And what we want to do is bring manufacturing back to our country.

Vice President Pence, good morning——

Vice President Michael R. Pence. Good morning, Mr. President.

The President. ——is very much involved with me on that. It's one of my most important subjects. It's what the people wanted. It's one of the reasons I'm sitting here instead of somebody else sitting here. And I think it's something I'm good at. We've already had a big impact.

And I want to thank Mark and Ford, because you've been great. I think that—I think Marillyn is going to be terrific, but we're going to find out soon, right? [Laughter] That's Lockheed Martin. And we're going to—I think we're going to have a tremendous amount of business coming back.

If you read today's papers, you'll see what's happening with four or five different companies that announced that they feel much differently. Foxconn is going to spend a tremendous amount of money on building a massive plant and probably more than one.

So that's what we want. We want people—we want to start making our products again. And we don't want to bring them in, we want to make them here. And that doesn't mean we don't trade, because we do trade. But we want to make our products here. And if you look at some of the original great people that ran this country, you will see that they felt very strongly about that—got to make your products. And we're going to start making our products again. And there will be advantages to companies that do, indeed, make their products here. So we've seen it. It's going to get—it's going to be a wave. You watch, it's going to be a wave. And I've always said, by the time you put them in these massive ships or airplanes and fly them, I think it's going to be cheaper.

Now, what we're doing is, we are going to be cutting taxes massively for both the middle class and for companies. And that's massively. We're trying to get it down to anywhere from 15 to 20 percent, and it's now 35 percent. But it's probably more 38 percent than it is 35, wouldn't you say? That's a big thing.

A bigger thing—and that surprised me—is the fact that we're going to be cutting regulation massively. Now, we're going to have regulation, and it will be just as strong and just as good and just as protective of the people as the regulation we have right now. The problem with the regulation that we have right now is that you can't do anything. You can't—I have people that tell me they have more people working on regulations than they have doing product. And it's out of control. It's gotten out of control. I'm a very big person when it comes to the environment. I've received awards on the environment. But some of that stuff makes it impossible to get anything built.

It takes years and years—I have—you can look at some examples. I read one recently where a man has been trying to build a factory for many, many years, and his vote was going to be fairly soon, and he gave up because he wasn't going to win the vote. Spent millions and millions of dollars. Ruined his—actually ruined his life. And we can't have that.

So when somebody wants to put up a factory, it's going to be expedited. And you have to go through the process, but it's going to be expedited. And we're going to take care of the environment, we're going to take care of safety and all of the other things we have to take care of. But you're going to get such great service. There will be no country that's going to be faster, better, more fair, and at the same time, protecting the people of the country, whether it's safety or so many other reasons where regulations are good.

We think we can cut regulations by 75 percent—maybe more, but by 75 percent; have, in a certain way, better protections, but when you want to expand your plant, or when Mark wants to come in and build a big massive plant, or when Dell wants to come in and do something monstrous and special—[laughter]—you're going to have your approvals really fast.

Dell Technologies Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael S. Dell. Thank you, sir. [Laughter]

The President. Okay? And the one thing that surprised me, then I want to hear what you have to say, but the one thing that surprised me in going around and meeting with a lot of the people at this table and meeting with a lot of the small-business owners, if I gave them a choice of this massive tax decrease that we're giving for business—for everybody, but for business—or the cutting down of regulation, if I took a vote, I think I'd—the regulation wins a hundred percent.

Now, in one case, it's hard dollars, and the other case, it's regulation. You would think that the regulations would have no chance. It's, it's—I've never seen anything like it. Virtually everybody is happier with regulation than even cutting their taxes. So the regulations are going to be cut massively, and the taxes are going to be cut way down. So you're going to have now incentive—incentive—to build.

The one thing I do have to warn you about: When you have a company here, you have a plant here—it's going to be in Indiana or it's in Ohio or it's in Michigan or it's in North Carolina or Pennsylvania, anywhere in this country—when it decides, when you decide, if you decide to close it—and you no longer will have a real reason because your taxes are going to be lower. And by the way, if you go to another State, that's it, that's great. If you can go from Ohio to Indiana—[laughter]—or from Indiana to Ohio, that's fine. So you have 50 great, wonderful Governors to negotiate with. So it's not like we're taking away competition.

But if you go to another country and you decide that you're going to close and get rid of 2,000 people or 5,000 people—I tell you, United Technologies was an example with Carrier, and I got involved, you know, 2 years after they announced. So in all fairness, that was tough, but United Technologies was terrific, and they brought back many of those jobs. But if that happens, we are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in, which I think is fair. Which is fair.

So a company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States, that's not going to happen. They're going to have a tax to pay, a border tax, substantial border tax.

Now, some people would say, that's not free trade, but we don't have free trade now, because we're the only one that makes it easy to come into the country. If you look at China, if you look at many other countries—I don't have to name them—but many other countries, they can't believe what we do. So we take in things free, and yet if you want to take a plant or you want to do something, you want to sell something into China and other countries, it's very, very hard. And in some cases, it's impossible; they won't even take your product. But when they do take your product, they charge a lot of tax.

So I don't call that free trade. What we want is fair trade—fair trade. And we're going to treat countries fairly, but they have to treat us fairly. And if they're going to charge tax to our countries [companies; White House correction.]—if, as an example, we sell a car into Japan and they do things to us that make it impossible to sell cars in Japan and yet they sell cars into us and they come in, like, by the hundreds of thousands on the biggest ships I've ever seen, we have to all talk about that. It's not fair. It's not fair. Never was. I just can't believe it took so long for somebody to come along.

So that's the only thing I will tell you. So, essentially, I'm talking about no tax, because if you stay here, there's no tax. Somebody would say, "Oh, Trump is going to tax." I'm not going to tax. There is no tax. None whatsoever. And I just want to tell you, all you have to do is stay. Don't leave. Don't fire your people in the United States. We have the greatest people. And many other countries have the great people too. I mean, we all have great people. Okay? This isn't that kind of a competition. Everybody has great people. But if we're going to fire people and build a product outside, not going to happen.

Thank you. So with that, we'll take some questions. Marillyn, do you want to start? I've gotten to know Marillyn very well. We've been deep in negotiation. [Laughter]