President Trump in Davos, Switzerland, at a meeting of the Western world’s elites. Excerpts from Trump’s speech:
For the first time in decades, we are no longer simply concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. We’re concentrating and creating the most inclusive economy ever to exist. We are lifting up Americans of every race, color, religion, and creed.
Unemployment rates among African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans have all reached record lows. …
Wages are rising across the board. And those at the bottom of the income ladder are enjoying the percentage, by far, largest gains.
Workers’ wages are now growing faster than management wages. Earnings growth for the bottom 10 percent is outpacing the top 10 percent — something that has not happened. Paychecks for high school graduates are rising faster than for college graduates. …
In the eight years before I took office, over 300,000 working-age people left the workforce. In just three years in my administration, 3.5 million people have joined the workforce. Ten million people have been lifted off welfare in less than three years. …
This is a blue-collar boom. Since my election, the net worth of the bottom half of wage earners has increased by plus-47 percent — three times faster than the increase for the top 1 percent. Real median household income is at the highest level ever recorded. …
We have created 1.2 million manufacturing and construction jobs — a number also unthinkable. After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations — hard to believe when you hear “60,000 factories” — America has now gained, in a very short period of time, 12,000 new factories under my administration. …
Every decision we make — on taxes, trade, regulation, energy, immigration, education, and more — is focused on improving the lives of everyday Americans. We are determined to create the highest standard of living that anyone can imagine, and right now, that’s what we’re doing for our workers. The highest in the world. And we’re determined to ensure that the working and middle class reap the largest gains. …
We’ve also launched the most ambitious campaign in history to reduce job-killing regulations. For every new regulation adopted, we are removing eight old regulations, which will save an average of American households about $3,100 per year. It was going to be, “for every one, we do two,” but we were able to lift that to eight, and we think that’s going to go quite a bit higher. We still have a way to go.
Today, I urge other nations to follow our example and liberate your citizens from the crushing weight of bureaucracy.
I don’t think he was trying to woo the rich or the bureaucrats gathered at Davos!
Trump decries the climate ‘prophets of doom’:
Trump threw down the gauntlet before Europe’s governing classes, standing up for free enterprise, limited government, and an administration that cares about all of its citizens, not just plutocrats and bureaucrats.
In a better world, the assembled elitists would say, “Wow! What President Trump does is really working. We should try it in our country!” But that, of course, is not the world we live in.
