Photo of Donald Trump

Remarks at Campaign Rally in York, Pennsylvania

August 19, 2024

[music: Lee Greenwood, God Bless the USA.]

TRUMP: Thank you very much. [cheers and applause] That's beautiful. This is quite a place. It's an honor to be here at Precision Custom Components, a company that has helped to build and defend America for over 150 years. That's really an extraordinary achievement.

I want to thank you, President Gary Butler and the members of the wonderful Butler family, members of Congress, Scott Barry, and GT Thompson. You're here someplace in this very big factory, wherever you may be. There you are. Great people, great warriors I will tell you.

My trade representative ambassador, Robert Lighthizer, who's fantastic at a thing called trade. We did very well at trade and you were fantastic. And I want to thank you, Bob, very much. And chair of the York County Commissioners, Julie Wheeler. [cheers and applause] Thank you, Julie, very much. Thank you. And a very special congratulations to all of the people of York County today who are celebrating the 275th anniversary of York County's founding. That's pretty good. [cheers and applause] That beats most of them out there.

But most of all, let me thank the exceptionally skilled and talented workers with us in this room. I know you well. I know them from all over the country they come and they are the most talented people and the most brilliant people in so many respects. So thank you all very much for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you. [cheers and applause]

For generations, the handwork of Precision Custom Components has strengthened the spine of America. Your products have gone into the Hoover Dam and atomic energy plants, nuclear submarines, and they currently are doing a lot of work.

I'm here today to deliver a simple message. When I'm back in the White House, America's future will be built right here in Pennsylvania. [cheers and applause] And it will be built by American workers like you. Be all over the country will be building, but Pennsylvania is always a big factor. And we've had great success, as you know, politically and otherwise in Pennsylvania. And we expect to have it again. We're doing very well here. Thank you very much.

With your vote, we will unleash explosive economic growth and vast due prosperity for all of our citizens. We will put more money into your pockets and create millions and millions of new jobs. Gonna do it like nobody else has ever been able to do it. Our plan will massively cut taxes, unlock American energy slash regulations, big factor, crack down on trade cheaters and stop outsourcing, rebuild our industrial base and bring back those beautiful words "Made in the USA." [cheers and applause]

And we were doing that four years ago and starting to do really well. And then we had to stop for an unknown reason. Together we will reclaim our nation's destiny as the number one manufacturing superpower in the world. We will do it and China won't even be close. Nobody will be. We had that going at a level that nobody's seen before and we're going to have it going again even better. And this firm and this people standing behind me and in front of me will be a big factor.

Every policy in Kamala Harris's radical Liberal playbook sends jobs and wealth to other countries. [booing] The jobs go to other countries and the wealth goes to other countries. Every policy in the Trump agenda is designed to bring the jobs and wealth back home to America where it belongs and where it's going to stay. Kamala puts America last. I put America first. [cheers and applause]

Some facts that are interesting. The year before I took office, the United States lost over 10,000 manufacturing jobs. Everybody said you'd never bring it back. But under my leadership, we created more than a half a million manufacturing jobs in less than three years. After decades of wage stagnation and income surged, we had a surge like nobody's ever seen before, but it surged for everybody during the Trump administration, every group, everybody, men, women. We had every household was at a level that they've never really experienced before. The typical American household saw their incomes grow by more than $4,200 per year. Everyone was better off when you had a gentleman named President Donald J. Trump at the helm. Does anybody know him,—[cheers and applause] whoever he may be? I kept every single promise I made to the workers of Pennsylvania and to every other place within our country.

On day one, I withdrew from the unfair job killing Trans-Pacific Partnership. And if I didn't do that, you wouldn't be open right now. You wouldn't have a job. That was a big thing. It was approved by another president who would've destroyed our manufacturing in this country still further.

I imposed historic tariffs on foreign aluminum and foreign steel and numerous other things that were unfair to our country and unfair to our workers. I ended the total disaster known as NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made by this country, and replaced it with the brand new USMCA. That's Mexico and Canada, the best trade deal ever made by our country, although I will tell you that I think the deal with China was probably even better. They had to buy $50 billion worth of our product, but after Covid, I don't even talk about that anymore, $50 billion they had to buy, and they were buying it too.

I stood up to China like never before, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars when no other president had gotten literally 10 cents from China, brought in hundreds of billions of dollars from China, never happened before. Nobody else literally got 10 cents.

We passed the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history, and built the greatest economy of the history of the world. We were at a level that nobody had ever seen before, and now we're going to do it again, but we're going to do it even bigger, better, stronger, and smarter.

When I left office, I handed Kamala and crooked Joe Biden a surging economy with no inflation. You had no inflation. You had—Everything was good, great wages, no inflation. Now, you have inflation at levels that I don't believe anyone's ever seen before.

The 30-year mortgage rate was 2.6%, but it was actually closer to 1.9 if you look at it the way that most people look at it. And gasoline had reached and was basically at levels of $1.87 a gallon, but we had months and moments where it was even less than that. Wouldn't that be nice, $1.87, Gary? [steps away from podium] That would be very nice. The family likes it more than Gary. Gary's been around too long. The family likes it more.

Our economic future, it never looked brighter. When Kamala and Biden came in, they quickly blew it all up. Destroyed. 350,000 Americans joined the unemployment rolls last month. Did you know that? I keep hearing about their economy. Their economy's terrible, and the inflation is eating everybody alive, and it's been doing that for three years.

The no inflation or almost no inflation, it kept going during the early part of this administration, this current administration, but it ended very quickly, and then it went to levels, and so quickly, it went so fast, and it was a shame. It was all blown up and destroyed, and jobs were lost. A lot of jobs were lost. Our country is doing really badly under them, and nobody wants to talk about it. The media doesn't like talking about it, because the Democrats, they really protect themselves. It's pretty amazing. Someday, the media is going to become real media instead of fake media, and you're going to see a big difference in the country. [cheers and applause]

Real incomes are down $2,000 a year since she took office. Kamala casts the tie-breaking votes that gave us the worst inflation in American history costing a typical family $28,000. Under Kamala, we have fallen into manufacturing recession with 13,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the United States since just the start of this year.

I don't know if you all know that, but that's what's happened. And it'll happen here, and it'll happen in this plant. It'll happen everywhere. If she gets in, if Kamala gets in, the United States will rapidly become a de-industrialized third-world nation like so many others have become.

She's running on socialist price controls, banning gas-powered cars and trucks, and private health insurance policies are gone. She wants to defund the police, abolish cash bail. She wants to abolish it immediately, cash bail. She wants to abolish ICE, get rid of the incredible brave patriots of ICE who take MS-13 gang members, probably the worst gang anywhere in the world, horrible situation. They take them out, and they take them out bravely. They're strong. They're fierce, and they love our country. She wants to give free healthcare for millions of illegal aliens, and give them all citizenship into the United States immediately.

She then wants to sign them up for Medicare and Social Security, and she wants them to vote illegally if possible, any way they can vote. They don't care if it's illegal or not, [booing] and they're signing people up as we speak. They're signing them up as we speak. They don't care. They don't care about the laws. Very simply, Kamala Harris is an economy wrecker and a country destroyer. Our country will be destroyed if she gets in. Her radical liberal agenda ruined San Francisco. It ruined California when she was the Attorney General. It crushed our middle class, demolished our border, set the world on fire, and now she wants to be promoted to the job killer in chief, but much more than job killer.

Everything else is going to go bad. She set the standard in California. Think of this. If you steal $950 or less, they're going to leave you alone. They can't be bothered. So, you see criminals going into stores with a little computer adding it up, everything they've stolen. They want to stay under the 950, but they don't get prosecuted for above that. The only one that gets prosecuted is somebody who would talk about the unfair election. They get prosecuted.

But when you steal and rob and kill and so many other things, when you sell drugs and destroy people's lives, nothing happens to you under Kamala, but we will not let this happen. We're not going to let it happen to our country. 78 days from now, Pennsylvania is going to tell her that we've had enough, that we can't take it anymore. Comrade,—[cheers and applause] comrade, Kamala, Harris, you are fired. Get out. You're not doing the job. Get out. [cheers and applause] You are fired.

While Biden and Harris have been impoverishing our country, they have been getting rich, very rich at your expense. Now, it just came out, just was reported today by a great young reporter, Brooke Singman at Fox. According to a 292-page report from the House Oversight Judiciary on Ways and Means Committees in Congress, just got out a little while ago just before I got here.

I said, "No, I want to talk about it just briefly." It's so sad, because he's going to be making his speech tonight, and they don't call him crooked Joe for no reason. They said, "President Biden engaged in impeachable conduct, and said he abused his office and defrauded the United States of America to enrich his family."

Republicans revealed that since 2014, the Biden family and its associates received more than $27 million from foreign individuals and entities. They also found that while Biden was serving as vice president, the Biden family got more than $8 million in loans from Democrat benefactors, and they said that those loans have never been repaid. Those are the best kind of loans, aren't they?

This report says in part that Vice President Biden actively participated in this conspiracy by, among other things, attending dinners with his family, foreign business, partners, and speaking to them by phone, often being placed on speakerphone by Hunter Biden. Republicans are calling out a 2014 dinner that Hunter Biden and his family attended with a Russian oligarch. They said that after that dinner, that oligarch wired $3.5 million to Hunter Biden's firm very quickly. It was a very quick wiring. I'm sure he worked very hard for the money. Several witnesses testified that Hunter Biden invoked his father in business dealings with Romanian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, and Ukrainian companies in addition to other companies and people, resulting in millions and millions of dollars flowing into the Biden family.

As everybody knows, $3.5 million was sent from the mayor of Moscow, the mayor of Moscow's wife. Remember, I brought that up in the debate I had. I said, "Why did this happen?" And the anchor wouldn't let me ask that question. They thought it was inappropriate, but then it blew up. $ 3.5 million dollars was sent by the mayor of Moscow's wife to the family. They were also calling out Biden for his handling of classified documents. They said during his tenure as vice president, Joe Biden removed highly sensitive classified documents from the White House, despite having no authority to do so.

And remember, comrade Kamala, she knew everything, and the senators knew what was going on. By the way, I had my own classified documents case,—and I was totally exonerated, totally. [cheers and applause]

It was a case brought by Joe Biden and Kamala. She was involved. They did that in order to interfere with the election, and it still goes on different cases, but that was according to most the big one, and we were totally exonerated. The case was won a month ago. Very little coverage of the case being won, I must say. I think that a lot of the media didn't even talk about it.

There's no way someone could have stolen that much money without Democrat senators knowing what was going on. He wined and dined them at Joe's houses. They saw his boats. They saw the way he lived. They saw his beautiful mansions.

I would've made billions of dollars in this job if I wanted to play that game the way they played it, but instead, I took the job very seriously and very importantly. And you can see from the recently announced financial reports, I don't need the money, and I'm proud to announce that doing and being president, I lost billions of dollars, and I knew that would happen. Maybe not quite as much as that, but I'm satisfied with that, because we want to make America great again. That's much more important. We have to make America great again. [cheers and applause]

Though, I could have played it the other way. I could have made so much. I see some of my friends over here. I could have made so much.

No, I didn't want to do that. This is too important. This is too big a thing. We got to save our country, because our country is really in big trouble. We're a nation in decline.

We're going down the drain. The drain is the swamp that you've heard so much about. They get rich, and in Washington, some of these politicians, what they're doing to our country is disgraceful, but he's one of the leaders of the pack. You have others.

The number one step we will take to launch a great American manufacturing renaissance will be to end Kamala Harris' war on American energy. It's a war, and you do know that inflation was caused by her cutback on energy. Then what they did is they, in a panic, move shortly thereafter when the numbers for gasoline, oil, and electricity and everything else that comes from energy and out of energy.

When they started going through the roof, they immediately went back to the Trump plan, but what they didn't go back to is my plan would've been doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled from the numbers I had four years ago. They didn't do that. They brought it back to a similar, because they were getting just absolutely destroyed by the numbers. It was going up, and you can bet that if we don't win, she takes over. Your energy numbers will be triple and quadruple, and you won't be producing a drop of oil.

They ended the largest oil reserve anywhere in the world, probably as large as Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia has this massive amount of oil. It's called ANWR in Alaska. They ended it on close to day one. They ended it. Ronald Reagan couldn't get it. No other president got it. I got it, and it's bigger than Russia, bigger than Saudi Arabia most likely.

They seem to think biggest in the world they've been after. They've been after getting that approved for many, many decades. Ronald Reagan worked so hard to get it. He couldn't get it. I got it, and then they ended it.

They were just set to start drilling. Everything was done, and he came into office. He ended it. On day one, I will tell the frackers and energy workers of Pennsylvania to drill, baby, drill, —[cheers and applause] and she's totally a non-fracker. You know that. Until a few months ago, she said, "Oh." It's just like on tips. We're not going to tax tips. All of a sudden, she comes out and she says the same thing, exactly the same words that I used months later, and other things she said, like trying to copy my policy, but it takes much more than copying a policy, because they're never going to produce it anyway.

Our country's going to be in serious trouble, but she was a non-fracker, no fracking under any circumstances. She's like 100 times saying, "I will not frack." Look at her debates. There will be no fracking. There will be no —

Then a few months ago, she said, "Oh, we'd love to frack with a politician." They go back to their original thought. There will be no fracking if she's elected in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. You'll have energy that will go up three, four, five times.

You'll be paying $10 a gallon for gasoline, and a lot higher than that. Unleashing American energy will reduce prices, launch record-setting economic growth, create millions and millions of jobs, and produce higher wages for the American worker.

You can't be a manufacturing powerhouse unless you have low-cost energy. We will have low-cost energy. [cheers]

Electricity rates for a Chinese factory are more than 50% lower than the price of electricity for an American factory, and we were working four years ago at really getting it along, and then we were hit with uh? The Covid came in. We focused on that. We did a great job.

If we didn't do a great job in that, we would've been in a depression like in 1929, which is where you're heading if she gets in. You're heading for the depression of 1929, that type. That's called the big league depression.

Since Kamala took office, electricity prices in America up much more than 30% nationwide, and here in Pennsylvania, they're expected to increase by another 30%. They think it's going to be actually unsustainable for your state if she gets in. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable for the country. That's why I've declared that a top priority for my administration will be to cut the cost of energy in half within the first 12 months of taking office. [cheers and applause]

So, we'll cut it in half. I think we'll be able to do better than that. We're going to be cutting it in half, guys.

That'll help you a little bit [inaudible].

CROWD MEMBER: Absolutely.

TRUMP: I think we'll do that very quickly. That includes heating, air conditioning, electricity, and gasoline. Your bills will be less than half. When you look at the New England area, they pay some of the highest energy anywhere in the world because they can't put a pipeline in. They've been restricted from putting a pipeline in through a certain section of New York that is desperately wanting it.

They need the job so badly. And if they did that in New England, the prices would come down half just with the pipeline alone. They were getting their gasoline and their energy from a place called Russia. Ships would pull up on the east coast, Russian ships, and that's where New England got it from, and they were paying a big price. And to this day, they're paying the highest prices, but we'll take care of that.

We think energy costs, all of it, air conditioning, heating, all of it, including gasoline, will drop by more than 50% within the first 12 months. [cheers and applause]

So remember that. That includes for factories. [cheers and applause]

This will help us quickly defeat inflation and make America affordable again. By contrast, Kamala Harris wants to ban fracking. She supports a national carbon tax, which is a horrible tax that will destroy many businesses, that will have a huge impact on this business, but that will destroy a carbon tax. Nobody even knows what it is. Nobody knows how to calculate it. And she imposed a natural gas export ban, all catastrophic things for Pennsylvania. [booing]

That means all the income coming in. For the most part, you'll have none of it. You'll lose 500, 000 jobs and you won't have the income coming up. That means Pennsylvania is going to have to pay, your commonwealth, your beautiful commonwealth is going to have to pay numbers that nobody ever thought even possible or worth discussion.

Kamala is also on a regulatory jihad to shut down power plants all across America. Now, Germany tried it just a couple of years ago and they ended up getting rid of their political leaders very quickly, and now they're building probably 50 or 60 power plants currently, and they're looking to build a lot more. But they got rid of everything and they wanted to go to wind and solar and lots of other things. Unfortunately, it didn't work.

They couldn't fire up the plants. The plants were closed and they couldn't get them going, and now they've gone to the other extreme. They've gone back to fossil fuel, I hope clean fossil fuel, clean coal. They do have clean coal. They have coal that actually has to make your electricity. And if you didn't have fossil fuel, you wouldn't have electricity because that's where it comes from originally. And you can have very clean and efficient natural gas.

At least 50 existing power plants have closed since she took office, Kamala took office. They're closing them all over the country. They're closing nuclear. They're closing coal. They're closing everything. We're not going to have —

That's why in California, you have blackouts all the time, constant blackouts, and yet they want to go to all-electric cars. Let's go to all-electric cars, even though we don't have enough electricity to give it ourselves some cool and some heat in the summers and the winters.

I'm announcing today that when I return to the White House, I will end the anti-American energy crusade and terminate Kamala's so-called power plant rule. It's a disaster for our country.

Our country will have no jobs by the time these communists and Marxists get rid of—I mean when they—when they destroy the country, probably can never come back either, just so you understand. Too much competition from other countries that are doing it right. We have a lot of competition out there. Not only China, we have a lot of other competition.

Instead of shutting down power plants, we will open dozens and dozens more, and they'll happen fast. Kamala stands for energy disappearance and factory obliteration. She will obliterate factories like this.

I stand for American energy independence and manufacturing dominance. We're going to be dominant in manufacturing. We're going to be dominant in energy too, not just um getting it to take care of ourselves. We're going to be selling it all over the world. We're going to be reducing our debt. We're going to be lowering your taxes still further.

Don't forget I gave you the largest tax cut in history. We're going to be lowering your taxes still further. Upon taking office, I will do rapid approvals for new energy infrastructure, and we will embrace all forms of energy including nuclear.

Nuclear is a great energy.

This plant is making some things that I just got to see, and it's incredible what you've done, what Gary and the family have done. The level of complexity, the level of detail, the power that we're talking about is incredible to power our country into the future, including the electricity demands of AI and cryptocurrencies, which is a very big subject. It's coming up more and more, and we have to stay at the top. We want to be right at the forefront.

Otherwise China and other countries will take it over. That's both of them, AI and crypto.

We will make a historic commitment to bring in advanced small modular nuclear reactors online, building these massive plants that cost $20 billion and don't even get built like we had recently in a couple of other states. I won't mention the states, but they had two plants that got so out of control with cost overruns, massive, massive nuclear plants. Now we're going to do small reactors, small nuclear, we call it.

France does that. France does very well with that. They do small. And if they need more, they build a second one, a third one, a fourth one. They hook them up together. With the help of companies like yours, these can be built ultra safe. They're ultra clean, and they're very low cost, but they are absolutely safe. Under Kamala's green new scam, billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are being sent to subsidize solar panel factories, windmill factories, battery production and car production all based in China.

We are subsidizing massive amounts of product for solar, for wind. It's all made in China.

Under the Trump administration, we will build American, buy American, and hire American. [cheers and applause]

That's what we're going to be doing. Kamala's economic agenda rewards outsourcers and punishes American workers by making it economically impossible to manufacture in America.

What I'm promising today is a total pro-American overhaul of our tax regulation and trade systems to promote domestic production and punish those who ship jobs and factories overseas or to places like Mexico, where right now, the head of the United Auto workers doesn't know this. They're building some of the biggest car factories, just started, anywhere in the world. The person I know builds car factories. That's all he does, build car factories.

He said the biggest ones in the world are being right now in Mexico. And they think they're going to bring those cars in, make them in Mexico, bring them in here, and sell them to our people and destroy Detroit and the rest of our car business. They've already taken 30% before I got there, 30%.

They did nothing against us when I was there. I told them, "If you want to build car factories, you're going to have to pay a 100% tariff to get the car into this country." They immediately said, "Well, I guess we're not going to build a car factory." Right? That's what happened, but now they're building the biggest in the world right in Mexico, and they think they're going to take our car.

They're not going to do that if I'm here because I will be putting massive tariffs on those cars coming across the border, and it won't make any economic sense. So I actually think they should stop building them unless they want to sell those cars to another country.

Kamala wants no taxes on Chinese producers, wants no taxes. What's that all about? While imposing the largest tax hike in the history of our country on factories in the United States.

Okay, so she wants a no tax policy on China, but she wants to tax factories like this and other factories at levels that they've never seen before. Under her plan, manufacturers will pay even higher taxes in America than in Communist China. By contrast, I will pass gigantic tax cuts for workers and keep their jobs here in the United States. They're going to stay here. [cheers and applause]

We're going to beat everybody. We're going to beat them like a drum. [cheers and applause]

And we were doing that against China. There was a long-time expression that China will take over the world's largest economy. It'll take it over in 2019. Well, in 2019 we were doing so well, 2018, 2017, that China never even came close. We were lapping them. They never came close.

And even President Xi said congratulations. They thought they would be—long time, this is 15, 20 years ago, they said, "2018, 2019, China will dominate." Nope, we were doing—It would never happen.

In fact, I said after we started really doing it, as long as we have smart presidents, they'll never catch us because they can't beat our system.

We will have big tax cuts for families and small businesses, and we will have no tax on social security and no tax on tips. [cheers and applause]

So they haven't copied Social Security yet, but they will. Don't forget, he's the one that destroyed our seniors with inflation. Inflation has destroyed our seniors. It's the worst thing that could happen.

The people that behaved the best that did it the American way, that saved their money, they got decimated because their money went down because they couldn't live. They were losing money. With me, they were putting money in the bank and making a lot of money. They were saving a lot of money. After I left, they were losing all of that money they saved.

Kamala wants to spend $1.7 trillion in wasteful spending, causing more inflation. And she says it's a mistake to ask her how she's going to pay for it.

"Please, it's a mistake." She just said it. She just said something that nobody has any idea what she said, but she said it's a mistake to ask how we're paying for it. Kamala Harris can't answer how she'd pay for any of her new radicalized liberal spending schemes that will bankrupt our country, and do it quickly, destroy social security, destroy Medicare.

She has no clue how'd she pay for $25,000 to every first-time home buyer, including illegals, just like they were going to pay the bills of college students. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and won't happen. They gave up that. Supreme Court gave it up because it was unfair to all of those people. One of the reasons, all of the people for years and years that paid back their loans, and now we're going to give something free, but it didn't happen. It was just talk. He knew it wouldn't happen too. Crooked Joe, he knew that was not going to happen.

No clue how she'd pay for free healthcare for illegals. She wants to give free healthcare to illegals.

Now, you want to stop people from coming into our country, the first thing you do, and you would have to do this immediately, no healthcare. We can't do that. We can't afford it. It's not sustainable, but they're doing it. Just the opposite. Come to America. Live the American dream. We'll give your children free schooling. We'll give you free healthcare. We'll give you pensions. We'll put you into social security. This is why people are pouring into our country—in the caravans. That's a very dangerous trip. Thousands and thousands of people are dying in those caravans coming up to our country, and they're coming up because the promises are being made to them that just can't be kept.

No clue how she'd pay for the $100 trillion, think of that 100 trillion with a T, dollar green new scam. It's a scam. Out of the $100 trillion, you wouldn't—There's not $1 of it that would help our country, not $1 of it.

It'll destroy our country. And no clue how she'd pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars in new foreign aid giveaways. We're giving away money at levels that nobody has ever seen before. No other country would do it. No other country would be so stupid to do it.

That's why it's so important to vote for Trump to stop the reckless spending and the destruction of our country. We will not have a country left. I will stop the special interest giveaways, cut waste, and restore common sense to our government. The Republican Party is the Republican Party of common sense. [cheers and applause]

That's what it is. Kamala will bury American workers in regulations. I will liberate our workers with the largest regulatory cuts ever recorded. We've already done some of them, but she put them right back. They put them right back. Repealing every single job killing regulation of the Biden-Harris administration. The electric vehicle mandate, which is absolutely so crazy, will be gone, and there will be no costly forced transition to all electric cars and trucks.

If you want a gasoline propelled car or a hybrid or an electric car, they're wonderful too, but not all. People need to go longer distances. They want to pay less money. Fantastic. Electric is fantas—Everything is great. You have to be able to buy everything.

They have a mandate. We don't have enough of electricity for ourselves, and now they're talking about putting all the cars on it. Well, it doesn't work because the cars don't go far.

If you'd like to go from here to, let's say Washington to look after we fix the capital up and make it safe again, which will take approximately like quickly,—but after we fix it up, and if you want to drive there, you don't want to stop five times, you want to be able to go there and you want to be able to enjoy it, and you don't want to be mugged or shot or killed in our capitol, which has become very unsafe. It's horribly run, graffiti stained, and we're going to fix it very quickly and beautifully. We're going to make it the most beautiful capitol anywhere in the world, and we're going to make it totally safe. Police are going to do a great job.

Simultaneously, we will modernize our trade policies. The United States has long been taken advantage of by other countries at levels that nobody has any idea. I would sit and look at these trade deals, many of which we renegotiated with Japan, with South Korea, with Canada, Mexico, many. But I'd look at these deals before we did the renegotiations and say, "Who would make deals like this?" I mean, they were either crooked or really stupid, one or the other, probably crooked for the most part because I don't think they're stupid. But we had the worst trade deals.

No country's ever had trade deals like. We fixed many of them, made some of them extraordinary. We lose jobs in revenue.

They gain everything. We lose jobs. We lose revenue. They destroy our country. They gain everything, and they wipe out our businesses, which is good for them because then they can supply us with whatever we were making. I stopped it four years ago and I will stop it very quickly again, and we'll be making the product ourselves with our labor.

We will not let countries come in, take our jobs, and plunder our nation into poverty. [cheers and applause]

The way they will sell their product in America without having to pay any substantial tariff for tax is to build their factory in America and build their product in America using only American help, and we have the help. [cheers and applause]

Kamala Harris says that a tariff is a tax on American consumers. She's wrong. It's a tax on a foreign producer. It's a tax on a foreign country, and I proved that better than anybody because I took in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs on different states, on different countries. And out of all of that money, we had no inflation. We had no inflation.

It also gives you power over that country. If they want to have wars with somebody, we can say no. If you do have wars, we're going to raise your tariffs. Oh sir, we won't have a war. We're okay with it when we've decided not to go after somebody.

One thing a little off this, everybody said, "Oh, we might have wars with Trump." We had no wars with Trump. First time in 78 years, we had no wars, other than I finished some like ISIS. [cheers and applause]

100%, defeated 100% of the ISIS caliphate.

What they did is Afghanistan, the most embarrassing day in the history of our country. And none of the generals got fired for the incompetence that they showed. Most embarrassing moment. We would've left with dignity and strength. We would've taken our $85 billion worth of equipment. We would've taken our hostages. We lost 13 great, great people.

We had 47 people obliterated the arms, the legs, the face obliterated. What a horrible day it was. What an embarrassment. What a horrible day to have death, to have such injuries. Nobody talks about the 47 people that lost their limbs that will suffer for the rest of their lives.

As I've said many, many times before, as tariffs on foreign countries go up, taxes on American workers and families come down. According to one recent study, a small 10% tariff on foreign-made products will allow massive tax cuts for working families. Create more than 3 million American jobs, raise household incomes by 6%. Think of that. [cheers and applause]

And the 6% equates to $4,200 a year for a household, and generate almost a trillion dollars in economic growth. And it will go very quickly. It will also get rid of a large portion of our deficit.

Because we don't want countries coming in here, stealing our jobs, hurting our country, killing our workers, leaving with everything, and we as usual end up with empty factory buildings that are falling down. We end up with nothing.

We want tariffs. If somebody wants to come in and take our jobs, if somebody wants to come in and sell us their product that's made in their country, that's okay, but they've got to pay tariffs. They've got to pay a price for that. We're going to bring down your taxes at levels never seen before. We're going to pay off debt of our country, because this country owes $35 trillion. But that rapidly can come down.

And remember this, we're sitting on the largest amount of oil and gas. We have, I call it liquid gold. We have more liquid gold than Saudi Arabia. We have more liquid gold than Russia, but we don't use it. We go out and we buy from other countries at ridiculous prices. We buy now from Venezuela, we buy tar. It's not really—It's tar.

And you know where we refine it? At a factory. Only one factory in the world can do it because of the nature of it. It's tar. It's not good stuff. It's in Houston, Texas. So all of that, if you're an environmentalist, all of that's going right into the air in our country. We bring in lots of tar, loads of it. We dump it in Houston, and they refine it.

We have pure stuff. We have the best and we have the most right under our feet. It's liquid gold. And we're going to use it, and we're going to reduce our deficit. We're going to reduce our debt, and we're going to reduce your taxes. We're going to do everything right, and it's going to happen quickly too. [cheers and applause]

And as we reduce burdens on US manufacturers, our workers can make goods better and cheaper right here in our own country, and right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

We don't need lectures on the economy from a candidate pushing communist price controls. Kamala has no idea what the hell she's doing. Her father is a Marxist professor, and I believe he taught her well. You know he's a Marxist professor. Can you imagine? Does anyone know that? I wonder if they knew that when they did an overthrow or a coup on Joe Biden. I wonder if they knew where she comes from, where she came from, what her ideology is. But you could see it a little bit by this whack job. You know, he said, we are weird. That JD and I are weird. I think we're extremely normal people, like you, exactly like you. He's weird. Did you ever see him go on the stage and go like crazy?

It's like between his movement and her laugh, there's a lot of craziness. I'd say a step further than weird. Weird is a nice word by comparison.

When I'm president, we're going to do things right. And when I was president, we imposed historic tariffs and prices, and we did it all. We did it all. Prices didn't go up. Everybody said, "Oh, if you do that, prices." No, the country made less money. That's what happened. Gave us tremendous political leverage over those countries too for things having nothing to do with economics. They heard China, not America. That's why the Biden administration had no choice but to leave them in place. They've left them in place. They wanted to take them off. But so much money comes in from China and other places with the tariffs that I put on, that Joe Biden, as much as he wanted to do his friends a favor, couldn't do him too much money. You couldn't justify it. There was no way to justify it.

And my next term, I will revoke China's most favorite nation trade status. It's very unfair. [cheers and applause]

And by the way, I have great respect for President Xi. I think China and the United States will get along well together. Until COVID came in, that was a step too far. But I had a great relationship with President Xi. I had a great relationship with most of the leaders.

I'll pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, so that if China or any other countries, not just China, the European Union treats us very badly. Nobody knows that. Very badly. We have a 250 billion deficit now with the European Union. But if China, or the European Union, if any other group of countries or country makes us pay a 100% or 200% tariff or tax, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff or tax of the exact same amount.

So it's basically, you hurt us, we hurt you. It's an eye for an eye, and it's common sense. [applause]

We will ensure that we have 100% domestic American supply chains of all essential goods.

Our supply chain has crashed. And you don't write about it now, but it still crashed. And all you have to do is say, "Where's the package that was supposed to be here three months ago?" People aren't getting them. It's very bad what's happened. They've destroyed our supply chain, which is something I didn't think could be done.

COVID proved that if we need it in a crisis, then we must be able to make it in America. We want to rely on ourselves. We have no choice. This is really a matter of national security.

We will bring back electronic production. We're going to bring up electronics too. Electronics, we buy everything —away. When you see the sophistication of the product I just saw at this place, electronics is peanuts by comparison, but pharmaceutical too, it's outside of this country. 95% we're reliant on various other countries, good countries, nothing wrong, but we want to do it ourselves.

They make a tremendous amount of money, and we lose our jobs. And we want to do it ourselves.

Mineral production, car production. We're going to bring back the auto industry. We can do that. We can do better than anybody in the world.

They've stolen 59% of our car making business. The union, the United Auto Workers. I think the people in that union are going to vote for me overwhelmingly, because I'm going to bring car industry back. They are destroying it. When they agreed to all electric cars, they're not going to be made in this country. We'll be making no cars in this country. And I was the one with South Korea, they got the tax put on and extended on the small trucks. And if I didn't have that tax, the most successful product made in this country is the small trucks.

If I didn't get that tax, South Korea and China would be destroying us now with additional product. We saved them. So I hope the autoworkers are listening, because they have a union boss that doesn't have a clue. He doesn't have a clue. It's sad. I wish he did. I don't have to like him. I wish he did. But he doesn't have a clue.

What he's done to the auto business in allowing this to happen, where all of those cars are going to be made in China and it's going to happen quickly. With the help of companies like this one, we will rebuild our hallowed out defense industrial base, ensuring that America is never in a situation where we don't have tanks, missiles, the raw materials to fight and win a war. We have to have those.

What would happen if we had a war? We won't, with me. But you will have World War Three, I believe, without me. But we won't have. But what would happen if we did?

And let's say it was with China, but they give us all of our steel? So we'll have to call China for steel so we can fight a war with them. How stupid are these people?

Upon taking office, I will invoke the Defense Production Act wherever it's necessary to quick—very quickly ramp up capacity of essential products. And I will stop Japan from buying United States steel. [cheers]

We have a foreign country that wants to purchase one of our greatest. If you go back 70 years, our greatest country, our greatest company by far was United States Steel Corporation. That was the big deal. And now we have Japan buying it. They shouldn't be allowed to buy it. We have to make it work. We have to make it work. You don't want to sell US Steel.

This is how we will rediscover the industrial heritage of our country. We will reclaim our manufacturing legacy. We will build up glorious American future fueled by Pennsylvania energy.

You're one of the largest in this country. You're one of the largest producers in the world. She doesn't know that. You're not going to produce. You're going to go from being one of the largest producers in terms of fracking, the energy produced into a non-factor.

Your state's going to be third world, like much of our country is being made third world by these people. They don't have a clue. But it's going to all be made with pride of the US and with Pennsylvania pride, and strengthened by strong, powerful Pennsylvania steel again.

With your vote, we will destroy inflation, bring down prices. And prices are going to come down very substantially.

Achieve incredible economic growth, make America wealthy again, and we will bring back, most importantly, we're going to bring back a thing called the American Dream. The American dream is dead. Right now the American dream is dead.

We're going to bring back the American dream. So vote for Trump on November 5th. We will be the most—[cheers and applause]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

CROWD: USA!, USA!, USA!, USA!

TRUMP: Thank you to Pennsylvania.

The reception coming here with the people outside waving, it was a beautiful site. The love that they have for what we're trying to do, and what we will do. I just leave you with this. Vote on November 5th or sooner.

November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country. We're going to turn our country around. We're going to make America great again. Thank you everybody. God bless you. [cheers and applause]

God bless Pennsylvania. God bless America. Thank you very much everybody. [cheers and applause]

[music: Lee Greenwood, God Bless the USA.]

NOTE: Former President Trump spoke at the Precision Custom Components in York, Pennsylvania as the Democratic National Convention opens. Trump's remarks began at 3:02 pm ET and ended at 3:54 pm ET.

Donald J. Trump (1st Term), Remarks at Campaign Rally in York, Pennsylvania Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/374960

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