President Trump Participates in a Roundtable with Business Leaders, May 15, 2025

Thank you very much, everybody. I want to just thank you for being with us. And I assume the press is ready. We have a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer. Unfortunately, he gets it for a shot at the ear. Someday you'll get it for something nice. You'll get it for something nice, Doug. Well, I want to just thank everybody. It's been a very special trip, and I can tell you that our country is hot. It's hot as a pistol. I don't think. It's never been so hot. And if you go back six months, it was the exact opposite. We had a man that couldn't even stand up. He was so terrible. It's so terrible what he's done to our country. But we've turned it around so quickly. I did not expect to turn it around this quickly. I think we're the hottest country in the world right now. And six months ago, they were laughing at the United States, but they don't laugh anymore. This has been an amazing trip. And as you know, I'm going to UAE in a little while. We're going to first watch an air show that will be spectacular from our friend, the emir. He's done a great job. Done a great job, and I've met such great people. And as you know, that we're trying to give Yemen a chance, and we're going to give Syria a chance with Yemen. They have a tremendous Houthi problem. I believe that's a problem for them. You know, you never really know a tricky part of the world. But we were asked to stop firing at the Houthis, and that's something that they've never asked because they're tough and they're good fighters and all, but they're not going to be blowing ships out of the water anymore. So that's what we wanted, and we'll see how that works. But their emissaries were very, very strong on it. So that's giving, that's a good thing for Yemen because they, they want to try. They're trying to help themselves also. And we want them to get along with Saudi Arabia because that's been a. That's been a big fight. And the other, of course, is Syria. We took out the sanctions, and that's been. I didn't even realize it's been many, many years that they've had sanctions. And as you know, there was a very big change at the top. And I thought that we have to give them a chance. They really have no chance with the sanctions. They were very biting. They were top of the line. Nobody could even deal with them. You couldn't even. You couldn't make a phone call to Syria. So we did that, and I met the new leader of the country, and he's got a, you know, strong past. I'd be very nice. He got a strong past, but I liked him a lot. I think he'll be a great representative, and we'll see. You're going to have to have a strong past to put that one around. You can't. You cannot be a weak person. If you're a weak person, we would just be wasting time. So he's a strong guy, and I thought he was good, and let's see what happens. But we're going to give him a fighting chance by taking off the sanctions. So we've actually been praised for that. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia was very strong. Please do that. He wanted it done. President of Turkey wanted it done. President Erdogan called me, said, is there any way you could do that? Because if you don't do that, they don't have a chance. And so I did it, and it's actually been very popular. The emir liked it a lot. It's been very, very popular. So let's see what happens. But it's my honor to have done it. And with that, we're surrounded by the. Some of the greatest business people in the world. We just had a tremendous order of Boeing. This is Boeing, and this is General Electric. And General Electric, I hear, makes the best large airplane engine in the world by not even a contest. Maybe I'll have to change my engines one day in my plane because they're not General Electric, but, you know, it's one of those things. But I hear you make the best engines in the world, Larry. Larry's somehow his people at General Electric. First of all, it's one of the greatest turnarounds that you'll ever see in a company, because when you took it over, it was. I want to be respectful. General Electric was in trouble, to put it, I would say right, to put it mildly. And now it's a hot company doing great. And it's, I would imagine, the hottest thing is what's happened with the engine division, because this engine is incredible. Would you like to say a couple of words, Larry, about that? Because he watches when he sees Boeing. He gets. He's very excited because he supplies, I guess, for the most part, the engines. Would you like to say something?

Sure. Well, Mr. President, thank you, and it's an honor to be here. We're thrilled about the commitment that Qatar Airways has made to both Boeing and GE Aerospace with the largest wide body order really in our company's history, over 400 engines. Both our GE NX which powers the 787, the fastest selling high thrust engine in history, and our new 9X will power the 777X which will be the largest commercial engine in the world.

Will that be the same engine other than size or is it different?

It's a step forward and a generation forward as well.

So even beyond, yes, the large one, Very much so.

And we think that really helps both Boeing and GE Aerospace continue to support not only our investment in domestic manufacturing, but in turn everything that we're doing to drive the $75 billion annual trade surplus that the aerospace industry enjoys in the US today. So we're excited. I know Kelly and the Boeing team have been great partners, but Badr, our thanks to you for your trust and your commitment to both GE Aerospace and Boeing. We're gratified.

Yeah, thank you very much, Kelly. Go ahead, please. Well, Mr. President, first of all, thank you for your support. This is a major order for us. All of these aircraft will be built in the United States, creating significant number of jobs. And I know that's a key mission of yours and this order will help us accomplish that. Partnership with GE has been great. They do power exclusively our engines and they're doing a great job here. And we're very pleased to be selected by Qatar for this largest aircraft, wide body aircraft order in the history of Boeing. Major, major accomplishment for us and thanks to the administration for your support. That's the largest order you've ever had. Yeah, for whiteboard. So one of the largest orders in history. But it almost has to be, if it's the largest order you've had, has to be pretty close to the largest order ever made, right? Yeah, that's correct. And you also, Boeing also got the jet fighter. We selected Boeing for the jet fighter. The state of the art, highest level. It's an amazing looking plane. If it functions as well as it looks, I think we're going to have a big, we're going to have a big winner. But we're also looking at some additional jet fighters. We have some really good ones that we have. We're taking a look at strong look from one of your competitors, I must say. And we're doing something very special. But it's a special country. You know, we were losing the Middle east because the past administration didn't handle the relationship properly, didn't show the kind of respect that they deserve. And me, I have a lot of respect and I have a lot of liking. I like the crown prince a lot. I've known him a long time in Saudi Arabia and the emir is fantastic. And we're going to another country in a little while, uae A fantastic man, fantastic leader and they have great leadership talents in this part of the world and that's why they're doing so well. And you probably read today the story about Iran has sort of agreed to the terms. They're not going to make, I call it in a friendly way, nuclear dust. We're not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran. And we've been strong. I want them to succeed. I want them to end up being a great country, frankly. But they can't have a nuclear weapon. That's the only thing. It's very simple. It's not like I have to give you 30 pages worth of details. There's only one sentence, they can't have a nuclear weapon. And I think, I think we're getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this. There's two steps. There's a very, very nice step and there's a violent step. Violence like people haven't seen before. And I don't, I hope we're not going to have to do this. I don't want to do the second step. Some people do, many people do. I don't want to do that step. So we'll see what happens. But we're in very serious negotiations with Iran for long term peace and if we do that, it'll be fantastic. And for this country in particular, because you're right next door, you're a stone's throw away. Not even right, you're a foot away, you can walk right into Iran. Other countries are much further away. So probably it's not quite the same level of danger. But we are going to protect this country. It is a very special place with a special royal family. And the head of the royal family is two heads of the royal family, really, if you think great, it's great people and they're going to be protected by the United States of America. And I think we're not going to have to do it because I believe very strongly in peace through strength. Now, we just gave out in the budget a $1 trillion budget, which is the biggest we've ever done. A trillion dollars, never, never came close to a number like that. We'd be at 800, would be at 800 billion, we'd be at maybe 900, 910. We never got anywhere close to a trillion, but we're doing it. Hopefully we will not have to use these weapons. We make the greatest weapons in the world. We make the greatest fighter jets. We make the greatest. I guess Larry would know better than anybody, but we, we make the greatest planes in the world. The greatest missiles and defense systems. The Patriot system is the best acknowledged to be. I mean, this isn't from me. And we have a lot of it now. It's under order and we're coming up with new systems and we're coming up with a new system of drones because drones are really, if you look at the war that's going on, it's horrible, but we are watching it very closely. And drones really seem to be taking over that war. And so I hope you're going to come up with some nice inexpensive engine for a drone so that we don't have to spend so much. I asked one of the companies, I said I want a lot of drones and you know, in the case of Iran, they make a good drone and they make them for 35, $40,000. So I said to this company, I want to see. They came in two weeks later with a drone that cost $41 million. I said, that's not what I'm talking about, $41 million. I'm talking about something for 35, $40,000. We sent thousands of them up and that's a great way. And they're very good too. And fast and deadly. Horrible. Actually, when you look at what's happening with Russia and Ukraine, the drone is killing tremendous numbers of people. You hide behind a tree and the drone comes down and it circles you with fire. You don't have a chance. The tree comes down also, by the way. It's so intense. I mean, you see these trees being knocked down like they're being sawed down by a top of the line timberman like, you know who. Sean Duffy. Do you know that? Sean Duffy, the head of the transportation department who's working right now in the airports and getting a system because Biden didn't do a thing for four years and Pete Buttigieg was the head and he goes bicycle into work. He takes a bicycle to work. Can you believe he's running the biggest air system in the world and he takes a bicycle to work. What a. And they say he's going to run for president. I don't see it. Who knows, right? But I don't see it. But when I look at what they've done, it's so horrible what they have done. And the work they did do, they wasted billions of dollars. They're trying to hook up air systems to copper, and they tried to hook up copper to glass, and the glass doesn't work with the copper. And they had 30,000 different contractors doing 30,000 jobs. And when they put it all together, they spent billions of dollars. It didn't even come close to working. And we're going to be giving out a brand new system. It's very important. We'll have the best system. And we think we know who that system is. But we have a lot of. A lot of bidding. But we want one check. We want a unified system. We don't have 5,000 contractors in all different places, some digging ditches and some not doing ditches, because you want to go by satellite. Satellite seems to be the way to go, but. So we're going to be giving that out pretty soon. But what people don't know about Shaun, because I mentioned lumberjacks, that Sean, you probably didn't know this, that I'm not talking about this Sean. This Sean. No, not. This is not. This is a different Sean. Sean Duffy, the head of transportation, he's a great Sean, though, I have to tell you. But Sean Duffy was the world champion for five years, climbing trees. And down, up and down. World champion. So that's what you call a serious lumberjack. And he's doing a fantastic job, too. Really respected guy and terrific guy. And I mention the champion because when somebody is a champion, he's the world champion. For a long time. He came down. When you come down those trees, coming down at a rapid, he said that started getting you back. You will often break, break your back. You miss a shot and you're coming down a lot faster than the human body was meant to come down. But he's doing a fantastic job at transportation. But this has been a very historic trip. I watched some of the people talking about it and even what I would perceive as enemies of ours, people that are not fair from the press are saying it's been amazing. We've raised trillions of dollars in investments. It's been. There's never been anything like it. And just to finish, we have a country that now has, I think, Howard, we can say that at least $10 trillion of investment and potential investment. And if the past administration did a half a trillion dollars, it was like a lot. But we did it in two months because it's actually a little more than three months. But I always say the first month I had to get a little bit acclimated. So I didn't really do this the first, but when we started. So we've really been doing it. Susie Right. For two months. So in two months we're going to have over $10 trillion. Nobody has ever come. No country has ever come close to that. No country. And I want to thank the Amir because he put up a lot. And in terms of investment, it could amount to 2 million, 3 million, maybe even 4 million jobs in the United States. And more importantly, it's really important stuff. It's tremendous refining capabilities, it's capabilities for very high end. AI is a big subject. And it's a big subject over here too. I always say, what are you investing in? It seems one thing everybody seems to have in common is AI. So I don't know if that's a good thing or bad. Maybe you shouldn't do it because too many people are doing it. Or maybe you should follow the crowd, fellas. Okay, so you'll, you're going to figure it out. We have a man who's here who has been unbelievable, Scott Bassent, who's our Secretary of the treasury and who's so respected when he speaks on television, it's like everyone just says, oh, okay. I had somebody the other day said, well, Scott Bessant said. I said, well that's pretty good, Scott, you know, so I'm a believer, I'm a believer. But when he speaks, the markets really listen. And the big thing is that we have. To me, the most important thing of all is that forget about the recent stock market being so good. Much more importantly, we have hundreds of different big companies pouring into America now, creating jobs like we have never seen before. Now the bad news, it takes a little while for that to, you know, when you build your factory and it takes a year and a half, two years, and they're going to build them very fast. And they don't need financing. That's the nice part. They don't need any financing. They have plenty of it. But they're building factories at levels we've never seen anything like it. And these are, you know, 10 billion, 12 billion, 50 billion. I said, how do you spend 50 billion on a factory? We have the chip companies coming in from Taiwan. We have Jensen, as you know, coming in with 600 billion. We have actually the biggest company of them all, you know, all about it. Eight company coming in. That was a big Mr. Way. I said, Mr. Way, you're a smart man, aren't you? I never met him. And I said, because I understand you control 99% of the chips. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I do. I said, that's. That's pretty good. I said, is there any way of breaking that grip? They said it would take you many years. So I said, you know what? If you can't beat him, you join him. But he's going to be building the biggest factory anywhere in the world and Arizona, and spending over $200 billion. And we have Apple, as you know, that's coming in. And I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday. I said to him, tim, you're my friend. I've treated you very good. You're coming in with $500 billion. But now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India. You can build in India if you want to take care of India, because India is the highest, one of the highest tariffs nations in the world. It's very hard to sell into India. And they've offered us a deal where basically they're willing to literally charge us no tariff. So we go from the highest tariff. You couldn't do business in India. We're not even a top 30 in India because the tariff is so high to a point where they have actually told us. I assume you too, Scott, you were working on that also, that there will be no tariff. Right. Would you say that's a difference? They're the highest. And now they're saying no tariff. But I said to Tim, I said, tim, look, we've treated you really good. We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years. Now you got to build us. We're not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves. They're doing very well. We want you to build here. And they're going to be upping their production in the United States. Apple. So Apple's already in for 500 billion, but they're going to be upping their production. So it will be great. So I really think we have. We've gone from a laughing stock six months ago to the hottest country anywhere in the world. And that's not just in business. That's in everything else. And it's psychologically hot, too. And I just want to thank everybody for being here. I want to thank the media. The media, I have to say, has been very fair. They've been very fair. They've been terrific. Actually, I was watching some of our. Normally they would not say good things, but they're having a hard time saying bad because this is a record tour. There's never been a tour that will raise it could be a total of 3.5, $4 trillion. This just in this four or five days. And it's from great people. And our relationship now is very strong with Saudi Arabia. Nobody's coming. Nobody is going to be bothering that relationship. Nobody would be able to break that relationship because, because of my relationship with the crown prince and the family, the relationship is really strong. And when you talk about Qatar, the relationship is equal. I mean, it's just like nobody's going to break that relationship. We've never. We have never had a relationship with Qatar as strong as it is now. You know that better than anybody. And they're very happy. And we're going to protect you. We're going to protect you. That's the one thing you need, maybe, but I don't think you're going to need too much of that. And I said last night, it was a great meeting, great everything. They brought in Lee Greenwood to sing. It was a beautiful. It was a beautiful evening and I appreciate it. But I said last night that Iran is very lucky to have the emir because he's actually fighting for them. He doesn't want us to do a vicious blow to Iran. He says, you can make a deal. You can make a deal. He's really fighting. And I really mean this. I think that Iran should say a big thank you to the emir because the emir is fighting very much that we don't. And there are many people that want me to go the other route. They say just knock it out, because nobody can beat us. We have the strongest military in the world by far. Not China, not Russia, not anybody. We have the best military equipment in the world and we have the strongest military in the world. If you remember isis, General Raisin Cain, Right. We knocked it out in three weeks. Remember, they said it would take four years to knock out isis. We did it in three weeks. That's because you had the right leader with a stupid person. You'll, you know, do it in. You'll do it in four or five years. You won't even do it. You'll fight for four years and then you'll leave. You know, like we always do. You fight, fight, fight, fight. We had a president that blew up half the Middle east and then he left. That was it. You know, it was like spent $10 trillion on blowing up the Middle east. And then he left. Just said, let's leave now. We're left with nothing. And we don't do that. We. We take care of our friends. And so you have a great ally in us and there's nobody even close in terms of military power. There's nobody close. And I'm not only talking about nuclear. I don't like to mention the word because the nuclear is so destructive that, you know, it brings you into a different category. But we're number one in nuclear. I rebuilt our military, by the way, in my first term. We had a really successful first term. Then the election was rigged, and I had to wait. And it became more historic. And I was able to watch and see. And the good news is they. Although it's bad news in another way, but the good news is that Biden was so bad. Worst president we've ever had by far. There was never a president like this. This man was grossly incompetent. And now that's been proven. But people were able to see how bad it is, and it gave me a mandate. We won all seven swing states. We won the popular vote by a lot. We won the counties by 2,725 to 505. That's why the map is completely red. When you look at the map, it was an obliteration this election, and we got 312 electoral votes. So it was just an obliteration. And that means mandate. And we have a mandate that nobody has had. They said, the most consequential election, and this was a enemy paper. The most consequential election in 129 years. So it's been a tremendous trip. I've really liked it. You know, this is going. We're going 20 hours a day. And people say, how do you do it? And I said, I do it because I like it. I like it. I like the people I'm dealing with. I said, last night I stood on the line for, it seemed like hours. I said hello to Larry. I said hello to Kelly. I said hello to your 250 competitors. I said hello to everybody. And that was a long. That was a long sucker. Want to tell you, they say, how do you do it? I said, I do it because I like the man standing on my left. And I said it two nights before about the crown prince. But last night I had the emir, and he's fantastic. And I said, it's really not hard, you know, when you like the people and when you are doing something. We have a term. Maga. Make America Great Again. Very simple term. And I remember Biden saying, we will not let MAGA take over this country. I said, no, no, you stupid person. It says, make America Great Again. It's okay if it takes over the country. It's called Make America Great Again. And that's where we are right now. It's America. We'll put America first. But because we're putting it first, we're doing so well, there's going to be plenty left over to help the world. And we can help the world psychologically. So we think we're going to do well with Russia, Ukraine. 5,000 soldiers have been being killed every single week, on average. 5,000. And they're not from here and they're not from the usa. They're from Ukraine and Russia. So some people would say, why are you bothering? Because these are 5,000 young people. Well, they're getting older because they've gone through so many that they are actually getting older. But these are 5,000 people that leave their home, wave goodbye to their parents. Their parents are so proud of them, their sisters, their brothers, and that's the last they ever seen them. They were wiped out. And if you would see the satellite pictures. I get satellite pictures of that battlefield, and I want to tell you, I've never seen anything. I wish I never saw it. You have heads and arms and legs strewn all over the field. And you just take a look at that. And you know when you think 5,000 a week on average, and that's actually a low number. So we're going to see if we can end that. I was thinking about going, but it's very tough because of what we're doing today and tomorrow. But, you know, if something happened, I'd go on Friday if it was appropriate. But we have people right now negotiating. And I think that. I just hope that Russia and Ukraine are able to do something, because it has to stop. Not only the money. We spent $350 billion there, just hand it. Nobody even knows where the money. They just send him a check. There's no accounting. There's no one just give him money. Every time this. Every time he came, I have to hand it to him. I think he's the greatest salesman maybe in history. Every time he came to the United States, he'd walk away with $100 billion. You know, that's a good salesman, right? Even by your standards? This is a big standard right here. But that's a. That's a pretty good no. He'd walk in, leave with $100 billion. Last time, he didn't do as well. He only got $60 billion. And it was so easy. It was like taking candy from a baby. That was the last administration. This administration has been a little bit tougher. But we'd like to see it end. And I think we're going to have a chance at doing it. And we'd like to see if we could solve the Iran problem in an intelligent way as opposed to a brutal way. There's only two intelligent and brutal. Those are the two alternatives. So I want to thank everybody for being here very much. And we're going to take some questions and perhaps now we'll ask the press to leave and we're going to see you at the airfield. We're going to have a display of American equipment. Okay. Yeah, Jennifer, go ahead.