We Have Ended the War on American Workers

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Whitehouse.gov

New York Hilton Midtown
New York, New York

12:09 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you very much, Barbara.  So sad that this is live.  She said it’s live.  (Laughter.)  It’s always live.  There’s always somebody with a phone.  It becomes live.  Ask a lot of politicians that are no longer in politics.

I want to thank Marie-Josée Kravis for your incredible leadership of the club.  It’s an honor to be here.  It is wonderful also to be back in New York with so many friends and distinguished leaders in business, in finance, academia, and, I have to add, in real estate.  All my real estate friends are here.

I’m especially grateful for, and to, your longtime club members, because it’s a club with a tremendous reputation.  And somebody doing a absolutely incredible job as Director of the National Economic Council, a friend of mine who I got on — I’ve been hearing this voice for 35 years; it’s driving me crazy: Larry Kudlow.  (Applause.)  Always calm.  Always cool.  And he’s just Larry, and he’s terrific — I’ll tell you that.

Three years ago, I came to speak before this storied forum as a candidate for President.  And at that time, America was stuck in a failed recovery and saddled with a bleak economic future.  And it was bleak.  Under the last administration, nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs had been lost; almost 5 million more Americans had left the labor force, and jobs were not exactly what you would call plentiful; and 10 million people had been added to the food stamp rolls.

In 2016, the Department of Labor predicted that Americans would continue dropping out of the workforce in record numbers.  They predicted and projected a decade of sluggish growth, and they expected unemployment over 5 percent — and, really, 6, 7, and even, in some cases, 8 percent — for many years to come.  The so-called experts said the Americans had no choice but to accept stagnation, decay, and a shrinking middle class as the new normal.  That was said all the time.  In short, the American people were told to sit back and accept a slow, inevitable decline.

But I never believed for one moment that our magnificent nation was destined for a diminished future.  I knew that our destiny was in our own hands; that we could choose to reject a future of America and, really, look at a future of American decline unacceptable, and to build a future of American dominance, which is what I wanted.  It couldn’t be any other way, or I would have never done this.  I refused to accept that Americans had to lower their expectations or give up on their dreams.  America is the single greatest country in the world, and I knew that working together we could make it even greater.

In 2016, I stood before you supremely confident in what our people could achieve if government stopped punishing American workers and started promoting American workers and American companies.  Our middle class was being crushed under the weight of a punitive tax code, oppressive regulations, one-sided trade deals, and an economic policy that put America’s interest last, and a very deep last at that.