We've slashed 30,000 pages of job-killing regulations from the Federal Register. That's an all-time record in the history of the United States, even by Presidents there for eight years, and in one case more. We passed the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history. (Applause.) And we got rid of the individual mandate, which was a big deal. (Applause.) Which should lead to the ending of the disaster known as Obamacare. (Applause.) It should.
The great state of Texas has a case, and it was literally based on the individual mandate. Now that it's gone, I don't know how they rule against it. Now we'll have to find out. But that'll soon be up in the Supreme Court of the United States, I hope. And we're going to see what happens. And then we're going to get together with the Democrats and come up with really great healthcare, okay? Really great healthcare. (Applause.)
And of the other things we did in our tax package is ANWR. Perhaps the largest field in the world - oil and gas. (Applause.) I got it approved. And I didn't want to get it approved for a certain reason, because I thought somebody treated me very badly. Very badly. Don't get that vote very often. And I said, you know, I don't want to get it.
Then I get a call from a friend of mine, and he's in the oil business. He's not asking for anything. He said - but he really is a knowledgeable guy when it comes to oil and gas. He said to me, "Hey" - and they all call me "Mr. President." I have friends that, for 35 years, "Hey, Don, how you doing? Hey, Donny. I love you, Donny." For 35 years. Now they call, "Mr. President, sir." (Laughter.) "How are you?"
I have a friend - a very rich guy - Richard LeFrak, in New York. A builder. A good builder. He calls me all my life, "Hey, Don, how you doing?" I've known this guy so long - from kindergarten. (Laughter.) It's true. "Hi, Don, how you doing? How's everything?" And now I get a call the other day, "Mr. President, how are you, sir? How are you?" I said, "Richard, lighten up. Lighten up." (Laughter.) "Call me 'Donald'." (Applause.) "Richard, call me 'Donald'." You've known me for - I don't want to say, because I don't want my wife to hear the number." (Laughter.) But - it's true. Actually, that's true. That's actually true.
Richard came up; he said, "I've known your husband for 65 years." I said, "Don't say that." (Laughter.) I say, "Say 25, 30. Don't say 65 years." But I said, "Richard - Richard, call me 'Donald', like you always do. Call me 'Don'." "Okay." "Okay, Don. Okay." He gets his breath. "Uh-huh." Two minutes later - "Mr. President..." (Laughter.) That's called respect for the office, right? Maybe that's a good thing, right? (Applause.) Many - many of my friends.
And that wasn't in the script either, Mark. (Laughter.)
But we're renegotiating, right now, horrible trade deals that we're cracking down - and we are really doing a number - cracking down on countries that cheat, and standing up for the American worker for the first time in many, many decades. (Applause.) Many decades.
Our workers have been treated horribly. A country announces they're closing their plant in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Ohio - they're closing. They're closing a plant; they're going to move to Mexico. They're going to move to China. They're going to move someplace else. They fire all their workers. And then they sell their cars, no tax; just make them in Mexico, sell them back to here. No tax, no nothing. Those days are all gone, folks. They're all gone. (Applause.) They're all gone.
And in the new deal with Mexico and Canada, called the USMCA, it's very, very hard - prohibitively hard - for a company to fire its 4,000 workers and move to Mexico or some other location. It's now a very costly - they can do it, I guess, if they want. But it's costly. It's painful. It used to be almost - I said - I used to - I've been talking about this for a long time. I used to say it's almost like we're giving them an incentive to leave our country. Again, I'm for America first. That wasn't for America first. (Applause.)
And we have great companies that are now moving back to our country. They're coming back in. (Applause.) They're coming back in. And, by the way, you know I'm building the wall. We're finishing the wall. We got a lot of money. (Applause.) It's in the thing.
AUDIENCE: Build that wall! Build that wall! Build that wall!
THE PRESIDENT: But - and there will be some people in the room that don't like this. We're down to 3.7 percent unemployment - the lowest number in a long time. But think of this: I got all these companies moving in. They need workers. We have to bring people into our country to work these great plants that are opening up all over the place. This was not necessarily what I was saying during the campaign because I never knew we would be as successful as we've been. Companies are roaring back into our country, and now we want people to come in. We need workers to come in, but they've got to come in legally, and they've got to come in through merit, merit, merit. (Applause.)
AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA!
THE PRESIDENT: They've got to come in through merit. They have to be people that can help us. They have to be people that can
love our country, not hate our country. We have people in Congress - right now, we have people in Congress that hate our country.
AUDIENCE: Booo -
THE PRESIDENT: And you know that. And we can name every one of them if they want. They hate our country. It's sad. It's very sad. When I see some of the things being made, the statements being made, it's very, very sad. Very, very - and find out, how did they do in their country? Just ask them, how did they do? Did they do well? Were they succeeding? Just ask that question. Somebody would say, "Oh, that's terrible that he brings that up." But that's okay, I don't mind. I'll bring it up. (Laughter.) How did they do in their country? Not so good. Not so good.
But we need workers. We have to bring in workers. One other thing - because we have a lot of people here that are important people in terms of votes. We have some senators. We have some congressmen. When a senator tells us that he's a free trader, so am I. I'm a fair trader. I'm a free trader. But when a senator said we can't do tariffs, where we make a fortune, or at a minimum, we're able to use this tremendous power that I found - tremendous - old stuff. Nobody even knew it existed. I'm able to use it, at a minimum, to negotiate great and fair trade deals. They wouldn't even be talking to us because it's so one-sided.
Last year, we lost eight hundred - this for many years - almost $800 billion on trade. It's not sustainable. You can't do that. And now we're making great trade deals. But when some of the senators - good people; I think they're good people. I just don't understand the thinking. So I say, India is a very high-tariff nation. They charge us a lot. When we send a motorcycle to India, it's 100 percent tariff. They charge 100 percent. When India sends a motorcycle to us, we brilliantly charge them nothing.
So I want a reciprocal tax, or at least I want to charge a tax. (Applause.) It's called a mirror tax, but it's a reciprocal tax.
Now, here's what I don't understand: I've had a lot of people - Lindsey Graham. I said, Lindsey - it's not his thing necessarily. It's not the thing that he's most adept at. But he's adept and he's smart. I said, "Lindsey, if they charge us a hundred, I'd like a reci-..." If they charge us, we charge them. He goes, "That makes sense to me." (Laughter.) And then he gets on to judiciary and things that, frankly, he likes and finds very interesting. But he's a smart guy, and he said - I'll never forget. It took me about a minute, which is a long time. I did a bad description. It's so easy. They charge 100; we charge nothing. Now we have reciprocal, so it's 100.
But what happens now, for those that really think about tariffs and don't like tariffs for whatever reason might be - and that's okay. What's going to happen is, in many cases, instead of 100 and 100, you're going to have zero and zero, so you won't have any tariff. Okay? (Applause.) It's going to happen. That's going to happen.
But you have to - you have to start working on some of the senators that say "I can't approve this deal." I say, "You know what? I want to just charge India" - as an example, I'm using it. But India is a very high-tariff nation. I mean, nobody - nobody knows it because nobody knows what they're doing in Washington. (Laughter.) But India is a very, very high-tariff nation, and they charge tremendous - tremendous numbers.
So they charge 100. So I say, "I'm not going to charge 100, but I'm going to charge 25 percent." And I hear this turmoil in the Senate because we're charging 25. So I call a couple of the guys up. I say, "Fellas, listen, they're charging us 100 for the exact same product. I want to charge them 25." And I feel so foolish charging 25 because it should be 100. "But I'm doing 25 only because of you. I want to get your support." "Sir, that's not free trade."
Where do these people come from? (Laughter.) Where do they come from? Where? Where do they come from? I need your help. I need your help - the voters' help. Where do they come from?
So it can only be one of two or three things. Number one, I know they're very smart people. I know they are. And I even like some of them. (Laughter.) But they're smart. So we take that out of the equation. So even - and I know they don't have evil intentions. And the other thing could be, I guess, maybe - you know, these companies are all owned by people, and these people are very generous. Campaign contributions - they're very, very generous people. Can that be possible? I don't think so. I hope not. Because we're talking about our country. We can't allow a country to charge 100 percent and we get nothing for the same exact product.
For one thing, they don't respect us. They think we're "stupido." They don't respect us. (Laughter.) But let me tell you something: The world respects our country again. (Applause.) They respect us. (Applause.)
And America is now booming like never before. Other countries are doing very poorly. Other countries are doing very poorly, and that makes it even harder for us to be successful.
Plus, we have a gentleman that likes raising interest rates in the Fed. We have a gentleman that loves quantitative tightening in the Fed. We have a gentleman that likes a very strong dollar in the Fed. So with all of those things - and we want a strong dollar, but let's be reasonable. You understand that. With all of that, we're doing great.
Can you imagine if we left interest rates where they were? There's no inflation, essentially. There's no inflation. (Applause.) Can you imagine if we left interest rates where they were? If we didn't do quantitative tightening, taking money out of the market? If we didn't do quantitative - and this would lead to a little bit lower dollar. A little bit. I want a strong dollar, but I want a dollar that's going to be great for our country, not a dollar that's so strong that it is prohibitive for us to be dealing with other nations and taking their business. (Applause.)
Since the election, we've created a number that if I would have said during the campaign, the fake news just back there would have said this is crazy. 5.3 million new jobs, including over, now, 600,000 beautiful, brand-new manufacturing jobs that were never going to come back to our country. (Applause.) These are jobs that were never coming back to our country. Remember? Not to talk badly about the other administration, but if that theory went forward with Crooked Hillary winning the election, instead of being up almost 50 percent with the stock market, you would have been down 50 percent. It was heading down. It was going to be a disaster.
We have nearly 5 million Americans that have been lifted off of food stamps. Nobody ever thought that was possible. (Applause.)
The unemployment rate has reached the lowest in over 51 years. And African American - and you've heard me say this many times - Hispanic American, Asian American unemployment rates are at their all-time historic lows. (Applause.) And African American income has reached an all-time high.
So when I'm on the debate stage with one of these maniacs - (laughter) - I mean, trains to Hawaii. "How do you get to Europe?" "We haven't figured that one out yet. We don't use airplanes anymore." (Laughter.)
You saw what I'm doing in California, right? They have a fast train. The fast train goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It's over budget by hundreds of billions of dollars, so they have a great idea - the new governor; nice guy. Yeah, he's a nice guy. When I'm with him face to face, nice. When he speaks about me, not so nice. But face to face, he loves me. (Laughter.) He called me up. He said, "You're a great President. You're doing a great job." He actually did, two weeks ago, three weeks. So he'll probably deny it, but check the phone records at the White House. Everybody else does. (Laughter.) Check them. Check them. (Applause.) Check them.
Called me up three or four weeks ago. I think they need some forest money, because honestly, the management of the forests is very bad and that's one of the problems they have. I said, "You got to get those forests." We can't keep spending billions and billions and losing hundreds of lives, more importantly. Got to clean it up. It's called management. When a tree falls, you can't let the environmentalist say you can't take that tree out. It becomes like a matchstick, that tree. It hits a flame, it goes up. The leaves - every once in a while, you have to remove the leaves because they are so - a guy smoking a cigarette, he throws it away, he doesn't mean it. The thing catches on fire and we lose 400,000 acres and people are killed. You got to have management.
