World Economic Forum Congress Centre
Davos, Switzerland
11:36 A.M. CET
PRESIDENT BERSET: So I want to welcome President Trump and his delegation here to Davos. It’s the first time that President Trump visits Davos and Switzerland. And it has been 18 years since the last visit from a U.S. President here.
And we appreciate the significance of the gesture, Mr. President. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you.
PRESIDENT BERSET: You chose to come to Davos, one of the most important, most significant international meeting we host in Switzerland. And you are also always welcome to Geneva, Mr. President, where major global decisions and deals are cut every day.
Switzerland and the U.S. — that’s a longstanding, excellent relationship. We share a deep, historic commitment to freedom, to democracy, to human rights, to free markets. And there is one more point I want to highlight to you, one aspect: our mutual economic footprints.
We have very strong economic relations. They are very strong, and they are growing very fastly. This is really interesting: More than 500 Swiss firms in United States and more than 3,500 business locations with a (inaudible) — creation of a half a million jobs.
And I think, I believe, we can even deepen these relations to strengthen our economies, and to build up, together, solutions to global issues.
So once again, welcome. Thank you for being here, and I look forward to a good discussion.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Mr. President, it is a great honor to be with you. Davos has been exciting. And in addition to that, I think we’re bringing a lot of things back to our country, including tremendous goodwill.
I yesterday and last night — dinner with some of the great business leaders of the world, as you know. And it was very interesting to see and hear. They’re very happy with what’s happening in the United States.
We’re setting records every day. We’re setting records, and we’re going to continue to set records. We actually — believe it or not, we have a long way to go. We have a lot of upside. Tremendous — we have a tremendous margin up. And a lot of people are saying, “Well, we’ve gone up a lot, but can you go up?” We really have a tremendous — I think we have a long way to go.
We’ve cut regulations, we’ve passed the tax bill, the likes of which our country has never seen. Included in that bill is ANWR. A tremendous potential in ANWR, in Alaska. You know, that’s a part of the bill which people don’t even talk about. They’ve been trying to get ANWR approved since the start of Reagan — President Reagan — and we got that.
And the individual mandate, which is — essentially, it’s a — at least a partial, but a pretty good repeal of Obamacare. It was a very important thing that we got that.
But we got the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country, and we also have major tax reform. It’s had a tremendous impact on our country. You see it, and everybody sees it.
And Switzerland is just a great place. So many friends in Switzerland. Great investors. And you have a lot of our stock in the United States. So I have helped to make Switzerland even richer, and I’m very happy about that.
But the stock market is up almost 50 percent. And I will say this with great conviction, that had the opposing party won, in my opinion — because they would have added additional regulation to already the tremendous regulations we have — I believe the markets would have been down anywhere from 25 to 50 percent, instead of being up almost 50 percent.
We’ve done a great job, and a lot of people are very happy about it. And in a little while, I’ll be speaking about it.
But I just want to thank you for honoring us. We have tremendous respect for you — and congratulations on the election — and tremendous respect for your country. And it’s an honor to be here. Thank you.
PRESIDENT BERSET: Thank you very much.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much.
END
11:40 A.M. CET
