THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you.
MR. TIMMONS: Mr. President, Jay Timmons with the National Association of Manufacturers. I had the great fortune yesterday of being able to announce the results of our first quarter 2019 Survey of Manufacturers with the Vice President present at our Board of Directors meeting. And as you know, that survey has been going on for 20 years. I was able to announce that we have had nine consecutive quarters of record optimism -
THE PRESIDENT: Great.
MR. TIMMONS: - for manufacturers. 91.8 percent. And that's no accident. That is because of the tools we've been given to invest, to hire, to raise wages on benefits through tax reform, through regulatory certainty. And that's created a bit of a challenge for us because now we have 428,000 jobs open in manufacturing. Our Manufacturing Institute predicts that that number will increase to 2.4 million in the next 10 years.
So this Board, this Advisory Board, it's perfect timing. Thank you for taking this on. Thank you to Ivanka for your passion on this issue. It really is going to matter for America's future. It's going to matter for our success in the global economy.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jay. And if you remember from past years, others said that manufacturing was not going to happen; those jobs were never coming back. And they are coming back. We have 600,000 -
MR. TIMMONS: Well, they're coming roaring back.
THE PRESIDENT: Right, they're roaring back. We have 600,000, and it'll be a lot higher than that when the next report comes out. And it's really been something, the manufacturing jobs. We're going to be up to - getting close to record numbers. Nobody thought they were coming back. And I said, "How does that not happen?" Right? If manufacturing jobs come back, does the country come back? And we're doing really well.
And I think you're also, in your numbers, it was the biggest increase in the history of your chart. And that's something that made me very happy. Your initial jump. Not you last jump, but your initial jump.
MR. TIMMONS: Yeah, it went from 56 percent, I believe, to 93 percent.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
MR. TIMMONS: It was a huge jump.
THE PRESIDENT: That's right. That's what I had heard. I had to bring that up because, to me, that was - that was the initial one. The last one was a nice jump, but, you know, we were competing against ourselves. But the intial, yeah, it went from like 56 to 93.
MR. TIMMONS: That's right.
THE PRESIDENT: So that was a pretty big jump. That shows optimism, which is a big part of what we're doing.
Thank you very much, Jay. Great job.
MR. TIMMONS: Thank you for your leadership.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Keep it up.
MR. LIDDELL: Mr. President, thank you for your focus on this area. I have the benefit of spending a lot of time with you, and I know your passion for the area. So thank you for the leadership.
We have an extraordinary group around the table, and we're coming up with some really practical and implemental action. So, thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Thanks, Chris. Thanks. Great job.
MR. PULSIPHER: Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Scott Pulsipher. I'm the President of Western Governors University. Ivanka, Secretary Ross, thank you for the honor and the opportunity to be here.
WGU was founded very simply on the premise and the purpose to change the lives of individuals and families. And we believe education is the single biggest catalyst to do so. We believe it's the surest path to opportunity in the form of a great job and a prominent life. We surely have a mission to expand access to high-quality education with great outcomes. We need more accessible, more affordable, more aligned pathways in education that lead to the workforce of the future.
And so it's a great opportunity to be here and work together with these colleagues.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Scott.
MR. PULSIPHER: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Very nice. Thank you.
MS. DUGGAN: Mr. President, Juanita Duggan, NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business. And we've been representing hundreds of thousands of small businesses across America for 75 years.
And thanks to you and the last Congress, you gave us the largest tax cut in history for America's small business, and the small-business economy has been on fire.
You also broke records for optimism in small business over the last two years. And for years, taxes and regulations were the biggest problems facing small business. The Vice President knows this as well. And now those are not the problems, but finding qualified labor is the biggest problem for small business.
Record numbers of small-business owners declared that they can't find any applicants for their open jobs. So this is becoming a crisis. And as good as the economy is for small business, it's not sustainable if we can't fix this serious labor shortage.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. I agree.
MS. DUGGAN: So thank you very much. It's an honor to serve on this committee. And thank you also for the whole administration's focus on small business over the last two years.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.
MS. DUGGAN: It's been extraordinary. Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: And I agree with what you just said. Thank you very much, Juanita.
MR. MENEAR: Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Craig Menear from the Home Depot. It is a privilege to serve the American workers here with the esteemed colleagues around this table. So I thank you for the opportunity.
We're passionate at Home Depot about helping our associates grow their careers. And to run a retailer the scale of Home Depot, you need everything from engineering, to data science, to folks who have outstanding people skills and a passion for customer service.
And we're privileged to serve on this committee to help drive this forward and continue to grow this economy. Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Great job you're doing.
MS. ROMETTY: Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, I, like everyone, am very honored to be on this committee. And I have to add just two other comments to those already made.
So to both Secretary Ross and Ivanka, I would add the word "unwavering" leadership. Because for as long as you've been in office, I can remember this has been a top issue. And it has been unwavering, through thick and thin, their support on this, and yours.
And I also am very optimistic about this in that I think we have a chance to not only say this is a very strong economy; it will be an inclusive economy. Because I think as a result of all this work, we have a chance to employ so many more people, and not always with a college degree. Less than a four-year degree will get a very good-paying job in the new economy.
And so, to me, that would be just a really wonderful contribution - both a strong and an inclusive economy. So thank you for the opportunity.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Ginni.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. President, Johnny Taylor from the Society for Human Resource Management, SHRM. Three-hundred thousand members across the globe. And I got to tell you, we share something, a common passion, and that's for workforce.
When I hear the Vice President say that - I know Ivanka is living it - it means a lot to our profession. You've created a different problem for us, though. We often - now businesses are telling us they don't have a problem accessing financial capital; they have a problem accessing human capital. That's a high-class problem. The human resources profession is committed to resolving it. But thank you for that opportunity.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Johnny. And we're going to be opening up the labor forces, because we have to. We have so many companies coming. People like Tim, you're expanding all over and doing things that I really wanted you to right from the beginning. I used to say, "Tim, you got to start doing it over here." And you really have. I mean, you've really put a big investment in our country. We appreciate it very much, Tim - Apple.
But we're opening it up. We have to bring people in. We want them to be people based on merit, and we want them to come in legally.
You see what's going on at the border. And we're doing a great job, whether it's Border Patrol, ICE, law enforcement, generally. We're all working together. We have our military sent to the border. We have 8,000 military personnel right now at the border. We are doing an amazing job considering it's really an onslaught very much. I call it "invasion." They always get upset when I say "an invasion." But it really is somewhat of an invasion.
And we're stopping drugs at a record level, but a record number of drugs are pouring up and coming up. And we're getting it done. Human trafficking is a disaster. Nobody knew too much about it until recently. It's been going on for a million years, actually. It's been going on for a long time. But we've seen it. We've spotted it. It's being slowed down, but we can't slow it down unless we have a very strong and powerful separation between us and whoever it is it may be. And in this case, it happens to be Mexico. And Mexico has helped us, but Mexico has a record number of murders this year - a number that's so large, it's actually hard to believe.
And we're working very hard on doing - actually having one of the safest we've ever been. We have some of the best numbers we've ever had, from the standpoint of crime, murders, killings included. One of our best years ever was last year. And we're down 6 percent from last year, so that's very important.
But we want to have a very strong border, but we're going to have a lot of people coming in. A lot of people don't understand that. They think we're shutting it out. We're not shutting it out. We want people to come in, but they have to come in through a process. So we have a process that's really moving along rapidly. Last year, we took in a large number of highly qualified, wonderful people. And they're - for the most part, they're working already in your companies.
But we also have a lot of companies coming in. I was with Prime Minister Abe the other day, and he said - we spoke the other day. And he said that Japan is going to be sending about seven - at least seven more big factories into this country. And it's got to do more than that; we have too big a deficit with Japan. We have for a long time.
