Remarks by President Trump in a Cabinet Meeting | Eastern North Carolina Now

    We also want to streamline the permitting for the safe transport of LNGs, which is, again, vital to our country's energy independence, which Secretary Zinke talked about.

    So that is my report. Thank you.

    THE PRESIDENT: That is great. And I think one thing - very important - roadways and highways were taking forever to get approved.

    SECRETARY CHAO: Yes.

    THE PRESIDENT: And we've cut them down many, many years. And ultimately, maybe we'll get down to one, but we are getting very close to two.

    And in some cases, you know many stories where they're 21, 22 years - 18 years, 19 years to get just approvals. And in many cases, they don't get approved. After spending tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars on the approval process, in many cases they don't even get approved after so many years.

    So we're down to two years. We'll very soon be down to two years, and maybe we'll even do better than that. And they may not get approved, and that's okay, too, but at least you're going to know if it's not going to happen.

    Secretary Perdue, Agriculture, please.

    SECRETARY PERDUE: Yes, sir, Mr. President. As a businessman, you instinctively knew that the regulations that we had imposed upon our American economy had just deflated them and created a lack of hope and spirit that just killed the American entrepreneurial spirit. And that's what you did - you talked about tax policy, this deregulatory environment, and the trade policy that you've done.

    And agriculture has benefitted from that as well. Our American citizens own millions and millions of forestland out here with the U.S. Forest Service. We're making forests work again. Over the years, these communities have been depleted and decimated because we took away their jobs; we wouldn't let them cut their trees. And you've seen what happened; you've talked about the forest fires. Now we are permitting and cleaning up these forests so we will reduce the threat of forest fire, as well as creating jobs in these communities.

    We're all -

    THE PRESIDENT: And we have to do that in California, by the way.

    SECRETARY PERDUE: Yes, sir.

    THE PRESIDENT: California is a mess. We're giving billions and billions of dollars for forest fires in California. There's no reason for those fires to be like they are. They are leaving them dirty. It's a disgraceful thing. Old trees are sitting there rotting and dry. And instead of cleaning it up, they don't touch them; they leave them. And we end up with these massive fires that we're paying hundreds of billions of dollars for - to fix. And the destruction is incredible.

    So I think California ought to get their act together and clean up their forests and manage their forests, because it's disgraceful. What's happening should never happen. I go all over the country and I meet with governors. The first thing they say is, "There's no reason for forest fires like that in California."

    So I say to the governor or whoever is going to be the governor of California: You better get your act together. Because California, we're just not going to continue to pay the kind of money that we're paying because of fires that should never be to the extent - they were telling me in a couple of states - I won't even mention their name - it's like a flash. Some grass will burn; it'll be over in minutes. They'll lose two acres, three acres at the most. They won't even lose that. And here we are with thousands of acres and billions and billions of dollars. Every year, it's the same thing. Every year.

    And they don't want to clean up their forests because they have environmental problems in cleaning it up. It should be the opposite because you're going to lose your forests. You're losing them. But it's costing our country hundreds of billions of dollars because of incompetence in California.


    So the people - I'm speaking now for the people of California. They don't want to see this happen. They're getting destroyed. And it's hurting our budgets, it's hurting our country, and they just better get their act together.

    I'm sorry, go ahead.

    SECRETARY PERDUE: Director Mulvaney hit on a good point earlier. It's just a myriad of these kind of things that give the public the optimism for this economy that keeps fueling that.

    I'll tell you a cute story that you will appreciate. When you were elected, a childhood friend of mine was telling his granddaughter about that and the USDA, and what we did regarding school lunches. She said, "Good. I hope President Trump can make school lunches great again." (Laughter.)

    And so - and that's exactly what we're doing. We're not feeding the trashcan any longer -

    THE PRESIDENT: That's right.

    SECRETARY PERDUE: - but we're trusting these professionals to make -

    THE PRESIDENT: Big difference.

    SECRETARY PERDUE: - nutritious meals for these kids out here that they want to eat.

    THE PRESIDENT: I hear it's a big difference.

    SECRETARY PERDUE: It is a huge difference.

    So - and then obviously, another on nutrition: We're empowering able-bodied who can work, without small children, to remove these waivers that states are using to bypass the ability to work and provide for self-sufficiency for families in that regard, along with removing and creating entrepreneurial activities over new technology and agriculture.

    Thank you, sir.

    THE PRESIDENT: Great job. Thank you very much.

    SBA, deregulation - a woman who has done a fantastic job, and I appreciate it. Linda, please.

    ADMINISTRATOR MCMAHON: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I want to thank you for your leadership on the economy. You know, you have such a commonsense approach to job creation. The bold approach you've taken toward modernizing the regulatory system has been a priority in this administration from day one, and I'm absolutely convinced the sustained focus on eliminating outdated jobs and stifling regulations has been a major contributor to the economic growth that we're experiencing.

    You know, the regulatory environment for small businesses especially - you know, according to a report from the Council of Economic Advisers, small businesses pay more on a regulatory compliance basis per employee than large businesses do - $11,700 per employee, per year, for small businesses. That's money they'll never get back to invest in hiring more, raising wages, investing in their companies.

    So as the chief advocate here - and I'm pleased to be that for the 30 million U.S. small businesses - it's my job to listen to their concerns and to advocate on their behalf.

    You know, I can so appreciate all of the Secretaries this morning who have talked about all of the deregulations that are happening in each of their departments because I get to go out and visit with these small businesses all over the country. I've visited with hundreds of businesses over the last year and a half, in 43 states, and I get to personally see that enthusiasm that businesses have and how appreciative they are with tax reform, regulatory reform. And so they're hiring.

    This morning, I brought Chip Kovach, from Youngstown, Ohio. And he has a family business. His father was supposed to come this morning, but couldn't come for medical reasons. But 30 years ago, he started his business by putting a lien on his home. So today, he has a machine business that is benefitting from the deregulatory environment because he repairs rigs in the energy environment. So he can't hire enough people fast enough now for his business - you know, with the deregulation that's happened. So they are so grateful and appreciative.

    Last year, the administration ended a rule pertaining to overtime pay that many businesses opposed. The overtime rule, had it stayed in effect, was affecting about 44 percent of small businesses. And now, rescinding that overtime rule, we have - for instance, a small hotel in Colorado Springs that said, "Had that rule stayed in place, I'd had to reduce work hours, fired people. Now I've got more people on and we're running our business the way we should." I've got entrepreneurs in Texas who are opening franchises in Texas and Oklahoma because the overtime rule is no longer there. So eliminating that kind of a rule has really spurred on our small businesses.

    So I am grateful that the SBA also, in accordance with your executive order, we've reviewed all of our rules, and we will seek approval of eliminating about 7 percent of the regulations that SBA has.

    So I know that what we've done here at SBA has occurred many times across many agencies represented in the room. And, Mr. President, I do want to thank you for presiding over an administration that is committed to listening to the men and women who run our small businesses, for giving them the opportunity to start and to grow and expand.

    Thank you.

    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Linda. Appreciate it.

    USMCA - it's new, it's good. It takes the place of NAFTA, which was a total disaster. Thousands of factories and plants closed. The farmers were never treated properly by NAFTA. The USMCA is a whole different ballgame. It opens up Canada. It opens up Mexico for our farmers and for others.

    And I'd like to have Bob Lighthizer, who's really worked so hard - 24 hours, around the clock - for a long time, many months. Bob, maybe you could give a little briefing, please.

    AMBASSADOR LIGHTHIZER: Great. Thank you, Mr. President. So after - as you say, after 14 months of tough negotiations and a lot of work, we now have an agreement that is much better than its predecessor and it's great for America, but also great for Canada and Mexico.

    I would thank you for your leadership, except leadership isn't appropriate in this case, as the President was on the phone every day and involved in every detail of the agreement. So he was like a senior partner.

    But I do want to thank the Vice President, who was very much involved and was very helpful. Jared Kushner, of course, who I spoke about in the past, but - and my tremendous team at USTR.

    But I would be remiss if I didn't mention how many Cabinet members and Cabinet offices were involved in this negotiation. Because it really is - you think of Agriculture, and Congress of course, and Labor, and Treasury, but also Transportation, and Energy, and State, and HHS. There were every - we had teams that had people from virtually every one of our Cabinet offices who worked tirelessly over the course of this time.

    The first thing I should say is that this agreement needed to be renegotiated. NAFTA was not a good agreement. It started out bad, in my judgment, and grew worse over time. We saw huge trade deficits. It had no provisions at all for the modern economy. So it was a bad agreement that, in my judgment at least, was getting worse.

    Just as one point, I would suggest that if you look at just where auto plants were built in the last several years - of the last 11 auto plants made in North America, 8 of them were in Mexico, 3 were the United States. And to give you a point of reference, almost all of these cars ended up going to be sold in the United States.


    So we have redesigned the rules. It's not going to punish anybody. It's not going to make to it worse for any other country. But it is going to make it better for American manufacturing.

    Now, I would give this a point: Our agriculture also was, in my judgement, not treated fairly. So I would say this is the first total renegotiation of a trade deal. It's, by far, the biggest trade deal that we've ever done.

    Just to hit on a few points, and then I want to make a couple of additional points with slides.

    It has more provisions to help manufacturing than any other agreement we've ever done. Better rules of origin that are going to force more manufacturing in North America. Better access for U.S. farmers. Right across the board, it got rid of this dairy provision that Secretary Perdue and the Vice President harangued me about for a year and some months. (Laughter.) That's been cured.

    The most ambitious provisions on labor and the environment ever negotiated, and they're enforceable. I repeat that: These are the strongest labor and environment provisions ever negotiated. They're part of the agreement and they're enforceable.

    The most advanced language ever on digital trade, intellectual property, really paving the way for America to take advantage of its innate ability to innovate. Better disciplines on non-market economies. Really, we've never had those in agreements before. We now have them for the first time. And the best provisions, by far, on currency and currency manipulation that we've ever had in a trade agreement.

    Now, there's many other chapters on good regulatory practices and standards, biotechnology, telecommunications, financial services. So it goes across the entire economy.

    And there's one other chart that I want to see, because we really view this really as a model of what a Trump trade policy looks like. And we really analytically divide it into, sort of, three pieces. One is the American First parts, which is auto rules of origin and dispute resolutions. And, by the way, reviewing termination, so this is not a deal that's never going to be looked at again. We're not going to find ourselves in 24 years with a bad deal again.

    We're going to have labor provisions, great agriculture and dairy provisions. But then the 21st century, the new economy: digital trade, intellectual property rights, financial services. Better provisions on investment. I mentioned environment but also telecommunications.

    And then finally, a new and innovative approach, and that is combatting non-market practices - practices that take advantage of the U.S. economy in ways that don't promote market efficiencies. And then a whole variety of things in that area. I won't go through them all, but currency, stopping localization requirements in data, anti-corruption, and the like.