A transcript of the president’s remarks at Trump Tower.
The following is a transcript of President Donald Trump’s remarks at a news conference on infrastructure at Trump Tower on Aug. 15 and the Q&A with the media that followed.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Hello, everybody. Great to be back in New York with all of our friends and some great friends outside the building, I must tell you. I want to thank all of our distinguished guests who are with us today, including the members of our cabinet: Treasury secretary Stephen Mnuchin and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney and the Transportation Secretary who is doing a fabulous job, Elaine Chao. Thank you all for doing a really incredible and creative job on what we’re going to be discussing today, which is infrastructure. We’ve just had a great set of briefings upstairs on our infrastructure agenda. My administration is working every day to deliver the world class infrastructure that our people deserve and frankly our country deserves. That’s why I just signed a new Executive Order to dramatically reform the nation’s badly broken infrastructure permitting process.
Just blocks away is the Empire State Building. It took 11 months to build the Empire State Building. But today it can take as long as a decade and much more than that. Many, many stories where it takes 20 and 25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway. Highway builders must get up to 16 different approvals involving nine different federal agencies governed by 29 different statutes. One agency alone can stall a project for many, many years and even decades. Not only does this cost our economy billions of dollars, but it also denies our citizens the safe and modern infrastructure they deserve. This overregulated permitting process is a massive, self-inflicted wound on our country.
Advertisement AdvertisementIt’s disgraceful. Denying our people much needed investments in their community, and I just want to show you this, because it was just shown to me. I think I’m going to show it to the media – both real and fake media by the way. This is what it takes to get something approved today. Elaine, you see that? So this is what it takes, permitting process flow chart. That’s a flow chart. So that can go out to about 20 years, this shows about ten. But that can go out to about 20 years to get something approved. This is for a highway. I have seen a highway recently in a certain state – I won’t mention it’s name, it is 17 years. I could have built it for $4 million, $5 million without the permitting process. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars, but it took 17 years to get it approved and many, many, many, many pages of environmental impact studies. This is what we will bring it down to. This is less than two years. This is going to happen quickly, that’s what I’m signing today. This will be less than two years for a highway, so it’s going to be quick, it’s going to be a very streamlined process, and by the way, if it doesn’t meet environmental safeguards, we are not going to approve it – very simple. We’re not going to approve it. So this is – maybe this one will say, let’s throw the other one away. Would anybody like it from the media? Would anybody like that long, beautiful chart, you can have it.
So my Executive Order also requires agencies to work together efficiently by requiring one lead agency for each major infrastructure project. It also holds agencies accountable if they fail to streamline their review process, so each agency is accountable. We’re going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively, relatively speaking and the permitting process will go very, very quickly. No longer will we tolerate one job killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hard working Americans. Now, I knew the process very well – probably better than anybody. I had to get permits for this building and many of the buildings I built. All of the buildings I built in Manhattan and many other places, and I will tell you that the consultants are rich people. They go around making it very difficult. They lobby congress, they lobby state government, city governments to make it very difficult so that you have to hire consultants and that you have to take years and pay them a fortune, so we’re streamlining the process, and we won’t be having so much of that anymore. No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay, while protecting the environment we will build gleaming new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels and highways.
We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true. Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world, and today, we are like a third-world country. We are literally like a third-world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best, and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation. And all over the United States, we will be proud again, so I want to thank everybody for being here. God bless you, God bless the United States. If you have any questions, Mick, you could come up here, please. Come on up. Mick Mulvaney. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
REPORTER: Why are the CEOs leaving your manufacturing council?
TRUMP: Because they are not taking their job seriously as it pertains to this country. We want jobs, manufacturing in this country. If you look at some of those people that you are talking about, they are outside of the country. They are having a lot of their product made outside. If you look at Merck as an example, take a look where – excuse me, excuse me – take a look at where their product is made. It is made outside of our country. We want products made in the country, now I have to tell you, some of the folks that will leave, they’re leaving out of embarrassment, because they made their products outside, and I have been lecturing them, including the gentleman that you are referring to, about you have to bring it back to this country. You can’t do it necessarily in Ireland and all of these other places. You have to bring this work back to this country. That’s what I want. I want manufacturing to be back into the United States so that American workers can benefit.
REPORTER: Why did you wait so long to denounce neo-Nazis?
