Remarks transcript, Jul 27, 2026 (Donald Trump)

They've come a long way. It's amazing what tariffs will do for General Motors—right?—and what the election has done. They're doing great. General Motors is doing fantastically, the best year they've ever had. And I won't get into it, but there's a reason.

We've been very good to General Motors. And the rest of the world doesn't love me, but that's okay. It's called America first, right? [ Laughter ] It's been amazing.

Thank you, Mr. President.

That's fantastic.

You know Margo? She's been with me. Does anybody know Margo? Like, how well do you know Margo? She's been with me from day one, out of Oklahoma. Right?

So what else do you have?

Well, thank you. Wow.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Thank you very much.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to be back. I love this place. I won this place. This beautiful—this beautiful State, I won. We won by a lot.

Great to be back in Michigan, and hello to the men and women of General Motors.

And, before we begin, I have to say—so I have—I had a wonderful father, right? And he was a hard worker. He was in the real estate business. And for him, super luxury—this is all he wanted—he didn't want planes. They didn't have planes in those days, I don't think. [ Laughter ]

He didn't want anything. You know what he wanted? A Cadillac every 2 years. This was, to him—this was, to him, the sign of luxury. This was the greatest thing. And he got every 2 years like it's—you could count on it. You could set your clocks by it.

And by the way, speaking of that, let's get rid of daylight saving time stuff. Okay? We have a bill in. Hopefully, the Senate is going to approve that one. The House approved it, and we're going to get rid of that, just to mention.

You know, it's called the weave, right? I go from—[ laughter ]—we always get back to the right subject.

But—anyway, but I did. I had a father. His luxury, Mary—his super—that's all he wanted. He just wanted a brand-new Cadillac.

And I have to tell you a little secret: He had it stretched a little bit. This way, he could be his own chauffeur. He wouldn't have to hire a chauffeur. He could drive it himself, or he could have somebody else. But he could also drive it himself. Did you ever hear that? This could be a new concept for a car. [ Laughter ] But I had a wonderful father, and he loved Cadillac.

And I'm thrilled to be back in this beautiful State, and I'm honored to be the first sitting President to visit one of the most storied places in the history of American automaking, and that's the world-famous General Motors Proving Ground.

And we just got back. We watched some cars, and they are beautiful cars. But I was very also impressed with—that was the largest piece of asphalt I think I've ever seen. [ Laughter ] I've seen a lot of big asphalt, but I've never seen one that big. I said, "You've got to be kidding."

But over a hundred years, General Motors carved a 5½-mile test track out of Michigan earth and built a crucible for American cars that would change the world, and that's what happened. You have changed the world. And maybe more importantly, you have made a comeback like very few companies. You are doing really well.

And Mary and your whole group have done a fantastic job. They love their—they love their cars. One of the top executives I just met, he was showing—he says, "You know, sir, I just love the cars. I just love these cars." And I thought that was nice.

This land bears the tire marks of every model of the legendary Chevy Corvette. It bears the scars of the first auto safety tests, and that was probably pretty tough. And, ever since the Presidency of the late, great Ronald Reagan—who, in all fairness—who I liked, but he did allow our cars to disappear into Japan and other locations. We cannot do it. We love him, but on trade, Trump is much better. Much better.

But this facility has proudly designed, built, and tested the Presidential limousine affectionately known as the Beast. Have you heard of it, Mr. Mayor?

I want to thank the CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra, as well as the President, Mark Reuss, and the entire leadership team. Mark, really great job. The whole leadership team, the job that you've done over the last number of years especially, has been incredible, and it's a display of speed and skill. Horsepower goes into these cars, and everyone is talking about General Motors, including me. That's why I'm here.

And more importantly, thank you to the autoworkers, the technicians, the mechanics, the welders, the engineers of General Motors, because there's no finer group of people. And it was workers like you who built this country, and now it's the men and women like you who are making it bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before.

We are doing unbelievably well as a country. We're building more auto factories and more plants than at any time in the history of our country. And someday the fake news is going to be writing stories about it.

Boo!

They don't like to write those stories. That's why they call them the fake news.

But, for decades, the autoworkers and manufacturers of this great State were sold out and betrayed by globalist politicians and corrupt special interests who let other countries steal your jobs, pillage your factories, and loot the crown jewels of American industry from Detroit and all over our country.

They were ripping us off, not only in the auto business but in many other businesses. Every President before me promised to stop it, but none of them did anything. They did nothing. But now, at long last, Michigan finally has a President who stands up for Michigan autoworkers and puts America first.

You know, you had a leader—I don't know if he's still with you—Shawn Fain or something.

Boo!

This guy was bad news. I never spoke to him, never saw him. He was a Democrat. He thought that Biden or Kamala would be wonderful. They would have—you would have no—you would have—Mary, I hate to say it: You wouldn't have an auto industry right now if they got elected. You wouldn't have an auto industry.

But I don't know what happened to the guy. Somebody said he got fired. But I can tell you: The people that count, those people love Trump, because I've done more for you than your parents. Okay?

Your parents are good. I'm not going to knock your parents, but I have been better to you than your parents. That, I can tell you. To—and they would agree with me. [ Laughter ] Wherever they may be, they would agree.

Today I'm proud to say that the auto industry is back, and America is back, and it's pulling Detroit and Michigan along with it. Our country is so successful, it's pulling it along. But you have some great Representatives that are going to become Governor, Senator, Congressmen, -women. But you're going to—you have some great people. I'm going to mention them in a second.

Because under Sleepy Joe Biden—hold it. What's better: Sleepy Joe Biden or Crooked Joe Biden? Let's go. Sleepy Joe Biden. [ Applause ] Crooked Joe Biden. [ Applause ] They're both true. They're both very true. [ Laughter ]

The United States had the highest trade deficit ever recorded. So we had the worst trade deficit, and our country was losing more than $1 trillion a year on trade every single year, and it got worse and worse. And if they were in there now, that number would be close to $2 trillion.

The trade deficit in automobiles was more than $300 billion annually. That means outside countries and companies were coming in and just robbing us blind, and it was causing tremendous problems for your jobs.

But now all of that is changing because I placed historic tariffs on foreign producers and manufacturers——

——including a 25-percent tariff on foreign automobiles—something that no other President had the courage to ever do.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

He's a Communist. He's a Communist. [ Laughter ]

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Thank you. He's a Communist. We're running against Communists now. This is great.

What's going on? But we're going to win very big. No, I didn't even hear the guy, I think. I don't know.

You see what they want to do? You see what they want to do? They want to take your houses. They want to do things that nobody has ever even thought of before. They want to take your money. They want to raise your tax up to 80 percent.

I gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, so we'll keep it that way.

And I said this morning—I see this morning they also want to fire the police. They don't want police and they don't want prisons anymore. I think that's a great idea. Does everybody like that idea?

No!

No police. They want no police, and they want no prisons.

Boo!

Where are these people coming from?

But I also put a 25-percent tariff on all foreign trucks. So I called Mary about a year ago, and I said, "I hear that foreign trucks are killing us." She said, "That's true." I said: "Congratulations. I'm going to put a 25-percent tariff on the foreign trucks." And you are doing a phenomenal business now with trucks.

So they were killing us in trucks, and now we're killing them.

My policy is simple: If you make your truck or your car in a foreign country, you have to pay for the privilege of sending it into our market and making a lot of money. But if you build in a factory in Michigan or someplace in our country and make your automobiles or trucks right here in America, you pay zero tax and zero tariff. You pay zero. Zero tariff. There are no tariffs.

And we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars for the country aside from it, but we keep a lot—as an example, Europe is being taken over by the Chinese cars. You know that, right? Mercedes-Benz is being absolutely decimated. BMW—good companies—decimated. Volkswagen decimated. They don't do anything about it.

We don't have, to the best of my knowledge, Mary, one Chinese car in the country. They have a hundred-percent tariff, and our automakers are doing, I think, business like you've never done before. Right? Right? You're doing more business, better business, bigger business than you've ever done before.

In 18 months, we've slashed our trade deficit with China by the largest amount in history. Nobody can believe it. You know, if you get it down a half a point, it's a lot. We've got our trade deficit down by 71 percent—71 percent worldwide.

One year ago, our country was dead, and now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're the hottest country. Everybody is respecting us. You know, they respect us again. They respect the United States. I think they respect us more than they've ever—and we did this in a year and a half.

In 4 long years of Sleepy Joe Biden and his crazy administration—they're Communists. They were Communists. That was the beginning. He wasn't because he had no idea what the hell was happening. [ Laughter ] They said, "Joe, let's go communist." He said, "What is that exactly?" [ Laughter ]

They got less than $1 trillion. So think of it: In 4 years, they had investment of less than a trillion dollars. Four years, less than a trillion.

In 1 year, my administration secured commitments of more than $19.2 trillion from all over the globe. Think of that: One year, 19.2.

If they got in—and they were, essentially; they didn't think of themselves as Communists, but they were. But now you have down-and-out Communists. I mean, these people are down and out. And remember, you go communist, nothing good happens. That's been proven for a thousand years using different names.

But right here in Michigan, General Motors is expanding operations at its Factory ZERO—do you know what Factory ZERO is? What the hell does that mean, Mary? Factory ZERO. You're going to have to explain—in Detroit to produce some of America's most iconic vehicles, including the Chevy—well, I hear it's good—Silverado, right? The Silverado—really hot, right? It's going to be hotter after today.

The GMC Sierra. The world-famous Hummer. I got to look at some of these. In fact, I said to Mary, "How about sending me a couple?" [ Laughter ] And one and only, the Escalade.

You know, we ordered, I think, 250 Escalades, right? We ordered 250 Escalades. That's how we look sharp in those cavalcades. You know—[ laughter ]—we look sharp in those Escalades. Our guys are very spoiled. They're very spoiled. They like the Escalade. So do I. And they were great to deal with—General Motors. They're making, literally, 250 of them, and it was about time.

In 2026, GM increased truck and SUV production by 20 percent, and in the past 2 years, the company has invested $9 billion in bringing factories home to the U.S.A. They're coming back home because, frankly, when they build here, there's no tariff. It's really not complicated. A lot of people don't understand that. They—"Oh, what does it mean?" They have no idea. They don't have a clue. But Mary understood it. Her whole group understood it, and they're coming back home, and they're coming back home where they belong.

So I just want to congratulate General Motors. That's why I'm here today. I'm very proud of General Motors.

For years, you watched companies move production from America down to Mexico.

Mexico.

I love the way—there's a very nice President of Mexico. You know that. She's very nice, and she speaks beautifully, and she calls it "Mexico."

So I said to a group the other day, "And we will stop all business going to Mexico"——

——and they didn't know what the hell I was talking—[ laughter ]—it didn't come out as well, Sean. It didn't come out as well.

This is a great gentleman; heads up Transportation. He's also a world championship tree climber. Five-time champion tree climber. Can you imagine? I only hire these crazy people that do things like that. He was the lumberjack. He was the world champion, going up a tree 100 feet. Right? That's high. I saw an old picture of you doing it. I said, "He's crazy. That's why I like him." [ Laughter ] But he's a five-time world champion. You know who that is.

So—and his wife maybe is even superior. Big star of television—Rachel. She's doing all right? Sean Duffy. Rachel Campos-Duffy.

But you know, I liked him a lot. I always liked him. But when I heard he was a world champion of a tree—but any kind of world champion, I'm okay with. When you're a world champion of anything—but that's pretty good.

But down in Mexico—and they're coming back, and production is moving from Mexico, and companies are actually moving production from Mexico back to America. Before, they left; they went the other way. Now they're all coming back. Toyota, Hyundai, and others are relocating production back to the U.S.

Ford is investing $3 billion to build parts of its new pickup truck in Central Michigan. All these things I told you, but only Brian—where's Brian? My Brian. My—come here. Get up here, Brian. Will you, please? He's the only guy that believed me. But, boy, did he believe me. I wanted to—just hop over. Come on. Don't worry about it, Secret Service. He's okay. [ Laughter ]

Come on up here, Brian. See the way he can do that? Look at that. He evaded Secret—I'm sure they're thrilled. [ Laughter ]

Thank you, sir.

Come here. Say a few words.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Well, we can thank this gentleman right here for all these jobs coming back. And I hear it all the time from all my connections at all the different auto plants around the Metro Detroit area: Jobs are coming back to America.

You know, Kamala Harris was running against this guy when he ran for reelection. She wanted to get rid of the internal combustion engine, and crazy Shawn Fain endorsed her.

Boo!

So we've got to change the mindset. We've got to build—if they want to sell in our market, they've got to build it in our market, and that's what this guy told them.

So thank you, Mr. President. It's because of you. You saved our domestic auto industry.

Thank you.

Look at the arms on that guy. [ Laughter ] I don't know.

He's been—you know, he's been with me from day one. The first time he said—years ago. And I think I produced—Brian, would you say I produced even more than I said? Right?

Yes, sir.

Even more?

You've exceeded expectations.

Yes. "Exceeded expectations." [ Laughter ] It's true. We like that.

Thank you, Brian. He's a great guy, and he's got a group of followers that are unbelievable. Where are they? Oh, yes, there they are. He's got a great group of people.

But for decades, we were told that it was totally impossible to bring back American manufacturing. Obama would say it.

Remember Barack Hussein Obama? Obama.

Boo!

He was so bad for the auto industry. I don't know. You know, honestly, I don't know how you vote for Democrats because they are so bad for the industry.

But it turned out that all you really needed to get him back was a new President, somebody that understood business, understood what it was all about. I've been complaining about—I've been complaining about it for many years.

On day one, I ended Biden's insane electric vehicle mandate that would have crushed the U.S. auto industry forever. It would have never come back.

Remember that? Everybody was supposed to have an electric car within, you know, 15 minutes.

Boo!

And I don't want to say this in front of Mary because she'll change her mind, but it takes far fewer people to build an electric car. That doesn't mean they work better, but it takes—and if you want an electric car, they make electric cars too. But if you want to buy a combustion, if you want to buy anything you want, they make. We don't want to do that stuff, but right now, we've been right on that bet. I said, "No, it's not going to happen that way."

I terminated Biden's disastrous CAFE fuel standards. You know what that is? That was a short road to bankruptcy for every single car company in this country and a total disaster that would have killed the internal combustion engine.

They wanted it dead within 5 years. As long as I'm President, that will never happen.

But it's really—going in the opposite direction.

Remember, we have a thousand-year supply of gasoline. China doesn't. China doesn't. We have a thousand years. We have more gasoline. We have more oil.

Now, when you add Venezuela to it, we really have more oil.

One day. And Venezuela has been great. They've been doing a great job. We're working with them. Take millions and millions of barrels of oil, but they're doing well, and we're doing well. One day.

You know, a lot of people were against that war. "We don't want the Venezuela—why are you doing? What are you doing?" After we won in about 48 minutes, approximately—[ laughter ]—they said, "Oh, that was a good move."

Well, the same thing is happening in Iran. People just don't see it. We have destroyed their navy. We've destroyed their air force. We've destroyed their leadership. We've destroyed their anti-aircraft weaponry. Their drones are being made at a rate of about 7 percent. We destroyed most of their drone-manufacturing capability, their missile-manufacturing capability.

And right now they're talking to us about making a deal. But if we didn't do it tough, there would be no talk.

You know, for 47 years—which is really 50, because people have been using "47 years" for 3 years at least. But for 47 to 50 years, they have been talking, and all they do is tap everyone along. They were the bully of the Middle East, and they were the bully of us. And Obama came along and gave them tens of billions of dollars. He gave them $1.7 billion in green cash. Remember that?

Boo!

Put them on a Boeing 757, flew it to Tehran. One-point-seven billion dollars in green. He thought he could bribe them, and instead they thought: "What a stupid country this is. How stupid."

No, you can't bribe them. You've got to beat them, and we're beating the hell out of them. But—we'll see how it turns out. Right now they have very friendly negotiations going on.

And by the way, how good is our navy with the blockade? How good? Not one boat gets through. We have a blockade. They'd love us to—"Please, we don't want the blockade anymore." They're saying, "Please, please, no blockade."

And I approved the single largest deregulatory action in American history, repealing what is known as the "Endangerment Finding," which will save American families an average of almost $3,000 on new cars, SUVs, and trucks. What a difference.

And today I'm giving all American car companies the right to build what are known as tiny, little, tiny cars. You know what that is? These are little—because I go over to Europe, and I see these little cars all over the place, and I say, "Why aren't we making them?" They send some over.

But Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, has just cleared it. I was with him on the plane. I said, "Sean, did you clear that?" "No, sir. Not yet." "I want it done now." "Oh, it's done." [ Laughter ] He knows what to—he's very smart. He's a very smart guy.

No, but we—you're all cleared, Sean?

So your company, Mary, if you want—I mean, you have a choice. There's a tiny, little, beautiful, little car. I'm not sure I want to get hit by one of your Silverados—[ laughter ]—okay?—or one of your Cadillacs. But you'll make them as safe as possible, right? You put a cocoon. You put a little cocoon around them.

See, I would have been a wonderful automobile designer. [ Laughter ] But you have the right to do it, and they sell, you know, inexpensively. They're actually beautiful.

I don't know if I'm going to be using one. I'm not sure if Secret Service would love me driving around in one. But there's a tremendous market for it, I think. It really is tremendous market. They are quite something.

And thanks to our Republican majorities in Congress, we also made interest on auto loans fully tax deductible but only if the car is made in America. If it's not made in America—if it's not made in America, we have no interest in doing that.

And I apologize for the air conditioning, but this room was not built for thousands of people. This room was built for a few people making cars, not for thousands of people. And it is a little warm up here, but I love that because every time I make a speech, I lose weight. It's wonderful. It's a—[ laughter ]—it's a wonderful way to lose weight.

Under our leadership, investment is booming, incomes are rising, and the stock market has 73 alltime highs. Think of that: In a year and a half, we've had an alltime high, and your 401(k)s are up by $32,000 and more. In just a year.

And one statistic that I say because, you know, the fake news—the reason they're fake news—they're terrible. Terrible people, in many cases. Not in all cases. You have some professionals. But they refuse to say there are more Americans working today in the United States of America than at any time in history. How about that?

That's, to me—that's a stat that's hard to—hard to beat.

And it was just announced that inflation is dropping at the fastest rate in more than 6 years. We're dropping—you know, I inherited this mess. I inherited an open border where millions—25 million people came in. Many of these people were criminals, murderers, people from jails, people from mental institutions. I inherited that. We've got a lot of them out, and we're getting a lot of them out. We have to.

We have 11,888 are murderers, many of whom—they say more than 50 percent of whom killed more than one person. We don't want them in this country.

They allowed them to come in through the stupid open border. They came in like water. You've seen it. And right now it was just announced again—this is now the 15th month in a row—zero people have come through our border illegally. Zero.

But it all started—you know, I won the election. We won in a landslide, by the way, and won this State so big. You know, this is always a hard State for—I don't know why it's hard to win, but it seems to be for Republicans, but it probably won't be anymore. We have great candidates.

But you know, it's really amazing. They always try and blame me for high prices. I have my first news conference. I win; I have a news conference, like, a day later. And I say, "Any questions?" "Why are prices so high?"

You have to understand, I just got there. They say, "Eggs." I remember eggs. Eggs were like four or five times higher than they were a few years ago. There was—you couldn't get eggs. They wanted me to use plastic eggs for the Easter egg hunt because they were unable to get eggs. And I said, "We'll take care of it," and we got it taken care of quickly.

Now eggs are much lower than they were when we first started, and that's true with everything else. And you'll see how true it's going to be after we get rid of the nuclear threat of Iran, which will be very quickly.

But I had nothing to do with that. You know, and they have this term—so, here I am, I'm one day in office, and the fake news goes, "Affordability. Affordability." I said, "What's affordability? What's that all about?" "Prices are too high." I said, "I'm here for less than 24 hours."

But we've brought down prices. Last week, it was announced that inflation has gone down faster than at any time in the last 6 years. When the fuel comes down, which it did for a little while, then they didn't behave, and I had to go back, and now they're behaving again.

You know, it's like playing a banjo. But every day, we're fighting to put more money in your pockets, and that's what we're doing. And we're doing it better than anyone.

At the same time, we're making this country safe because we're not going to let lunatics have—we're not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.

You want to see disruption? You want to see some disruption?

But, with the help of our Republican majorities in Congress, I proudly signed the largest tax cuts in American history for the second time. Because in my first term, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country.

We got hit with COVID at the end, but we—and we did a great job on that—Operation Warp Speed and the whole thing. We did a great job. Didn't get credit, but that's okay.

But we had the greatest economy in the history of the country, and we're blowing it away this time. We're blowing it away. You're going to see the results very soon.

I'm a little bit upset because, in 2½ years, you may have a different President. May. And that President will be saying how great the economy is doing. Look at all the jobs that he produced—he didn't approve—we have more factories being built than at any time in our country's history. They're all going to be opening now and soon, and I got some guy or woman who is going to take credit for that. Will you please remember that I did it? Okay? I did it. I did it.

I'll be sitting home, I'll be reading the papers, I'll be watching television, and I'll be having some guy like last time—a real idiot—stand up, say: "We are doing record business. We are making more automobiles."

But by the way, don't worry about it, Mary. They'll screw it up. It won't take them long to screw it up.