LISTEN TO TRUMP
Trump was interrupted several times by protesters, he stopped until the protester was removed. Never took the bait, said thank you and continued speaking.
Read Trump’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
Thank you for the invitation to
speak to you today. It’s wonderful to be in Detroit.
We now begin a great national
conversation about economic renewal for America. It’s a conversation about how
to Make American Great Again for everyone, and especially those who have the
very least.
The City of Detroit Is Where Our Story Begins
Detroit was once the economic
envy of the world. The people of Detroit helped power America to its position
of global dominance in the 20th century.
When we were governed by an
America First policy, Detroit was booming. Engineers, builders, laborers,
shippers and countless others went to work each day, provided for their
families, and lived out the American Dream.
But for many living in this city,
that dream has long ago vanished.
When we abandoned the policy of
America First, we started rebuilding other countries instead of our own. The
skyscrapers went up in Beijing, and in many other cities around the world,
while the factories and neighborhoods crumbled in Detroit. Our roads and bridges
fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at
taxpayer expense.
Today, Detroit has a per capita
income of under $15,000 dollars, about half of the national average. 2 3 40
percent of the city’s residents live in poverty, over two-and-half times the
national average. The unemployment rate is more than twice the national
average. 4 5 Half of all Detroit residents do not work.
Detroit tops the list of Most
Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime – these are the silenced victims
whose stories are never told by Hillary Clinton, but victims whose suffering is
no less real or permanent.
In short, the city of Detroit is
the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. Every
policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by
Hillary Clinton.
She supports the high taxes and
radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community…and the crime
policies that have made you less safe…and the immigration policies that have
strained local budgets…and the trade deals like NAFTA, signed by her husband,
that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries… and she supports the
education policies that deny your students choice, freedom and opportunity.
She is the candidate of the past.
Ours is the campaign of the future.
This is a city controlled by
Democratic politicians at every level, and unless we change policies, we will
not change results.
Today, I will outline my economic
vision. In the coming weeks, we will be offering more detail on all of these
policies, and the ones we have already rolled out can be viewed on my campaign
website.
Our opposition, on the other
hand, has long ago run out of ideas. All Hillary Clinton has to offer is more
of the same: more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, more restrictions
on American energy and American production.
If you were a foreign power
looking to weaken America, you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s
economic agenda.
Nothing would make our foreign
adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and
our jobs out of existence.
The one common feature of every
Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you for working and doing business in
the United States. Every policy she has tilts the playing field towards other
countries at our expense.
That’s why she tries to distract
us with tired political rhetoric that seeks to label us, divide us, and pull us
apart.
My campaign is about reaching out
to everyone as Americans, and returning to a government that puts the American
people first.
Here is what an America First
economic plan looks like.
First, let’s talk tax reform.
Taxes are one of the biggest
differences in this race.
Hillary Clinton – who has spent
her career voting for tax increases – plans another massive job-killing $1.3
trillion-dollar tax increase. 9 Her plan would tax many small businesses by
almost fifty percent.
Recently, at a campaign event,
Hillary Clinton short-circuited again – to use a now famous term – when she
accidentally told the truth and said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle
class.
I am proposing an
across-the-board income tax reduction, especially for middle-income Americans.
This will lead to millions of new good-paying jobs.
The rich will pay their fair
share, but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs, or undermines our
ability to compete.
As part of this reform, we will
eliminate the Carried Interest Deduction and other special interest loopholes
that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and people like me, but
unfair to American workers.
Tax simplification will be a
major feature of the plan.Our current tax code is so burdensome and complex
that we waste 9 billion hours a year in tax code compliance.
My plan will reduce the current
number of brackets from 7 to 3, and dramatically streamline the process. We
will work with House Republicans on this plan, using the same brackets they
have proposed: 12, 25 and 33 percent. 14 For many American workers, their tax
rate will be zero.
While we will develop our own set
of assumptions and policies, agreeing in some areas but not in others, we will
be focused on the same shared goals and guided by the same shared principles:
jobs, growth and opportunity.
These reforms will offer the
biggest tax revolution since the Reagan Tax Reform, which unleashed years of
continued economic growth and job creation.
We will Make America Grow Again.
In the days ahead, we will
provide more details on this plan and how it will help you and your family. It
will present a night-and-day contrast to the job-killing, tax-raising,
poverty-inducing Obama-Clinton agenda.
The State of New York has already
lived through Hillary Clinton’s failed leadership. The Washington Post just
published a devastating article on Hillary Clinton’s broken promises. She
pledged 200,000 jobs for upstate New York as Senator. But what happened? The
Washington Post writes, and I quote: “upstate job growth stagnated overall
during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent…the former
first lady was unable to pass big ticket legislation… Many promised jobs never
materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first
presidential run…data shows that upstate actually lost jobs during Clinton’s
first term.”
Compare that to my record. In a
recent New York Post article by Steve Cuozzo, “How Donald Trump Helped Save New
York City,” the paper writes that I – and this is a direct quote – “waded into
a landscape of empty Fifth Avenue storefronts, the dust-bowl mugging ground
that was Central Park and a Wall Street area seemingly on its last legs as
companies moved out…almost by force of will — [he] rode to the rescue.
Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kick- starting the
regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.”
This is what I want to do for our
country – I want to jumpstart America.
Now let’s look at what the
Obama-Clinton policies have done nationally.
Their policies produced 1.2%
growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression, and a
doubling of the national debt. 18 19
There are now 94.3 million
Americans outside the labor force. 20 It was 80.5 million when President Obama
took office, an increase of nearly 14 million people.
The Obama-Clinton agenda of tax,
spend and regulate has created a silent nation of jobless Americans.
Home ownership is at its lowest
rate in 51 years. 21
Nearly 12 million have been added
to the food stamp rolls since President Obama took office. Another nearly 7
million Americans were added to the ranks of those in poverty. We have the
lowest labor force participation rates in four decades.
58 percent of African-American
youth are either outside the labor force or not employed.
1 in 5 American households do not
have a single member in the labor force. These are the real unemployment
numbers – the five percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern
politics.
Meanwhile, American households
are earning more than $4,000 less today than they were sixteen years ago.
The average worker today pays
31.5 percent of their wages to income and payroll taxes. On top of that, state
and local taxes consume another 10 percent.
The United States also has the
highest business tax rate among the major industrialized nations of the world,
at 35 percent. It’s almost 40 percent when you add in taxes at the state level.
In other words, we punish
companies for making products in America – but let them ship products into the
U.S. tax-free if they move overseas.
This is backwards. All of our
policies should be geared towards keeping jobs and wealth inside the United
States.
Under my plan, no American
company will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. Small
businesses will benefit the most from this plan. Hillary Clinton’s plan will
require small business to pay as much as three times more in taxes than what I
am proposing, and her onerous regulations will put them totally out of
business. 32 I am going to cut regulations massively.
Our lower business tax will also
end job-killing corporate inversions, and cause trillions in new dollars and
wealth to come pouring into our country – and into cities like Detroit. To help
unleash this new job creation, we will allow businesses to immediately expense new
business investments.
No one will gain more from these
proposals than low-and-middle income Americans.
My plan will also help reduce the
cost of childcare by allowing parents to fully deduct the average cost of
childcare spending from their taxes.
We are also going to bring back
trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas. 33
Our plan will bring that cash home, applying a 10 percent tax. This money will
be re-invested in states like Michigan.
Finally, no family will have to pay
the death tax. American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they
should not be taxed again at death – it’s just plain wrong. We will repeal it.
Next comes regulatory reform
As with taxes, I will have one
overriding goal when it comes to regulation: I want to keep jobs and wealth in
America.
Motor vehicle manufacturing is
one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. The U.S. economy
today is twenty-five percent smaller than it would have been without the surge
of regulations since 1980.
It is estimated that current
overregulation is costing our economy as much as $2 trillion dollars a year –
that’s money taken straight out of cities like yours.
The federal register is now over
80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued
close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a
cost to the American economy of $100 million or more.
In 2015 alone, the Obama
Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a
hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American
economy.
It is time to remove the anchor dragging us down.
Upon taking office, I will issue
a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations. My running mate, Mike Pence,
signed a similar order when he became governor of Indiana. This will give our
American companies the certainty they need to reinvest in our community, get
cash off of the sidelines, start hiring for new jobs, and expanding businesses.
I will also immediately cancel
all illegal and overreaching executive orders.
Next, I will ask each and every
federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on
Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which
needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.
We are in a competition with the
world, and I want America to win. When I am president, we will.
One of the most important reforms
of all is trade reform As Bernie Sanders has said, Hillary Clinton has bad
judgment. We’ve seen this bad judgment overseas, in Libya, Iraq, and Syria.
We’ve seen it in Iran. We’ve seen it from President Obama, when he gives $150
billion to Iran, the number one terror state, and even gives them $400 million
in money-laundered cash as a ransom payment.
But we’ve also seen the terrible
Obama-Clinton judgment right here in Detroit.
Hillary Clinton has supported the
trade deals stripping this city, and this country, of its jobs and wealth.
She supported Bill Clinton’s
NAFTA, she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, she
supported the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and she supports the
Trans-Pacific Partnership. Let’s talk about South Korea for a moment, because
it so perfectly illustrates the broken promises that have hurt so many American
workers.
President Obama, and the usual
so-called experts who’ve been wrong about every trade deal for decades,
predicted that the trade deal with South Korea would increase our exports to
South Korea by more than $10 billion – resulting in some 70,000 jobs.
Like Hillary Clinton’s broken
promises to New York, these pledges all turned out to be false. Instead of
creating 70,000 jobs, it has killed nearly 100,000, according to the Economic
Policy Institute. 51 Our exports to South Korea haven’t increased at all, but
their imports to us have surged more than $15 billion – more than doubling our
trade deficit with that country.
The next betrayal will be the
Trans-Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton’s closest friend, Terry McAuliffe,
confirmed what I have said on this from the beginning: if sent to the Oval
Office, Hillary Clinton will enact the TPP. Guaranteed. Her donors will make
sure of it. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for TPP – and it’s also a vote
for NAFTA.
Our annual trade deficit in goods
with Mexico has risen from close to zero in 1993 to almost $60 billion. Our
total trade deficit in goods hit nearly $800 billion last year.
This is a strike at the heart of
Michigan, and our nation as a whole.
According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in
Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.
Detroit is still waiting for
Hillary Clinton’s apology. I expect Detroit will get that apology right around
the same time Hillary Clinton turns over the 33,000 emails she deleted.
Hillary Clinton’s Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) will be an even bigger disaster for the auto industry. In
fact, Ford Motor Company has announced its opposition
to the deal.
According to the Economic Policy
Institute, the U.S. trade deficit with the proposed TPP member countries cost
over 1 million manufacturing jobs in 2015. By far the biggest losses occurred
in motor vehicles and parts, which lost nearly 740,000 manufacturing jobs.
Michigan ranks first for jobs
lost as a share of state workforce due to the trade deficit with TPP members.
Just imagine how many more
automobile jobs will be lost if the TPP is actually approved. That is why I
have announced we will withdraw from the deal before that can ever happen.
Hillary Clinton will never withdraw from the TPP. She is bought, controlled and
paid-for by her donors and special interests.
Because my only interest is the
American people, I have previously laid out a detailed 7-point plan for trade
reform, available on my website. It includes strong protections against
currency manipulation, tariffs against any countries that cheat by unfairly
subsidizing their goods, and it includes a renegotiation of NAFTA. If we don’t
get a better deal, we will walk away.
At the center of my plan is trade
enforcement with China. This alone could return millions of jobs into our
economy.
China is responsible for nearly
half of our entire trade deficit. They break the rules in every way imaginable.
China engages in illegal export subsidies, prohibited currency manipulation,
and rampant theft of intellectual property. They also have no real
environmental or labor protections, further undercutting American workers.
Just enforcing intellectual
property rules alone could save millions of American jobs. According to the
U.S. International Trade Commission, improved protection of America’s intellectual
property in China would produce more than 2 million more jobs right here in the
United States.
Add to that the saved jobs from
cracking down on currency cheating and product dumping, and we will bring
trillions of dollars in new wealth and wages back to the United States.
Trade has big benefits, and I am
in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create
more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option,
only great and well- crafted trade deals are.
Also critical to our economic renewal will be energy reform
The Obama-Clinton Administration
has blocked and destroyed millions of jobs through their anti-energy
regulations, while raising the price of electricity for both families and
businesses.
As a result of recent Obama EPA
actions coal-fired power plants across Michigan have either shut down entirely
or undergone expensive conversions. The Obama-Clinton war on coal has cost
Michigan over 50,000 jobs. Hillary Clinton says her plan will “put a lot of
coal companies and coal miners out of business.”
We will put our coal miners and
steel workers back to work.
Clinton not only embraces
President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions but wants to expand them,
including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10
million Americans.
According to the Heritage
Foundation, by 2030, the Obama-Clinton energy restrictions will eliminate
another half a million manufacturing jobs, reduce economic output by $2.5
trillion dollars, and reduce incomes by $7,000 dollars per person.
A Trump Administration will end
this war on the American worker, and unleash an energy revolution that will
bring vast new wealth to our country.
According to the Institute for
Energy Research, lifting the restrictions on all sources of American energy
will:
• Increase GDP by more than $100 billion dollars annually, add over
500,000 new jobs annually, and increase annual wages by more than $30 billion
dollars over the next 7 years;
• Increase federal, state, and local tax revenues by almost $6 trillion
dollars over 4 decades;
• Increase total economic activity by more than $20 trillion dollars
over the next 40 years.
The reforms I have outlined today
are only the beginning. When we reform our tax, trade, energy and regulatory
policies, we will open a new chapter in American Prosperity.
We can use this new wealth to
rebuild our military and our infrastructure.
As part of this new future, we
will also be rolling out proposals to increase choice and reduce cost in
childcare, offering much-needed relief to American families. I will unveil my
plan on this in the coming weeks that I have been working on with my daughter
Ivanka and an incredible team of experts.
Likewise, our education reforms
will help parents send their kids to a school of their choice.
We will also give our police and
law enforcement the funds and support they need to restore law and order to
this country. Without security, there can be no prosperity. We must have law
and order.
In the coming days, we will be
rolling out plans on all of these items. One of my first acts as President will
be to repeal and replace disastrous
Obamacare, saving another 2
million American jobs. We will also rebuild our military, and get our allies to
pay their fair share for the protection we provide – saving us countless more
billions to invest in our own country. 82
We also have a plan, on our
website, for a complete reform of the Veterans Health Administration. This is
something so desperate l needed to make sure our vets are fully supported and
get the care they deserve.
Detroit – the Motor City – will
come roaring back. We will offer a new future, not the same old failed policies
of the past.
Our party has chosen to make new
history by selecting a nominee from outside the rigged and corrupt system.
The other party has reached
backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday – who offers only
the rhetoric of yesterday, and the policies of yesterday.
There will be no change under
Hillary Clinton – only four more years of Obama.
But we are going to look boldly into the future.
We will build the next generation
of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports and airports that our country
deserves.
American cars will travel the
roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol
the seas.
American steel will send new
skyscrapers soaring.
We will put new American metal
into the spine of this nation.
It will be American hands that
rebuild this country, and it will be American energy – mined from American
sources – that powers this country.
It will be American workers who
are hired to do the job.
Americanism, not globalism, will
be our new credo.
Our country will reach amazing
new heights.
All we have to do is stop relying
on the tired voices of the past.
We can’t fix a rigged system by
relying on the people who rigged it in the first place.
We can’t solve our problems by
relying on the politicians who created them.
Only by changing to new
leadership, and new solutions, will we get new results.
We need to stop believing in
politicians, and start believing in America.
Before everything great that has
ever happened, the doubters have always said it couldn’t be done.
America is ready to prove the
doubters wrong.
They want you to think small. I
am asking you to think big.
We are ready to dream great
things for our country once again.
We are ready to show the world
that America is Back – Bigger, and Better and Stronger Than Ever Before.
Thank you, and God Bless You.
