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State of the Union: Donald Trump gives his first address – live updates State of the Union: Donald Trump gives his first address – live updates
(35 minutes later)
Here’s the bit where Trump talks about economic strength: Trump might be getting applause in the room, but he got a very different hand gesture on his way to the Capitol. MSNBC captured a protester along Trump’s route from the White House appearing to thrust a middle finger in Trump’s direction.
And together, we are building a safe, strong, and proud America. America welcomes Trump to his State Of The Union by flipping him off. pic.twitter.com/mF6tLJgPp2
Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages. Of course, it’s not the first time this has happened.
Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low. And something I’m very proud of: African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded.. Trump calls for paid family leave, then turns to the Democratic side and puts his hands to his ears, as if to ask, where’s the applause?
Somebody screams, audibly and somewhat coarsely, Hooray! as Republicans stand to clap. Let us open great vocational schools so our future workers can learn a craft and realize their full potential. And let us support working families by supporting paid family leave.
...and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.” Then he calls for prison reform. As his attorney general restores mandatory minimum sentencing and private prisons boom:
That gets both sides clapping. As America regains its strength, this opportunity must be extended to all citizens. That is why this year we will embark on reforming our prisons to help former inmates who have served their time get a second chance at life.
This settles it, it’s a textbook SOTU: America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our nation’s wealth.
Over the last year, the world has seen what we always knew: that no people on Earth are so fearless, or daring, or determined as Americans. If there is a mountain, we climb it. If there is a frontier, we cross it. If there is a challenge, we tame it. If there is an opportunity, we seize it. Trump has fulfilled his promise to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact the Obama administration hoped could strengthen ties between nations such as Japan, Vietnam and Australia and curb Chinese influence in the Pacific. He has not abandoned the North American Free Trade Association (Nafta), however, or had much success negotiating one-on-one trade deals around the world.
So let us begin tonight by recognizing that the state of our Union is strong because our people are strong. Free trade has affected US manufacturing, though in a mix of pros and cons that make it all but impossible to use the sweeping language as the president does here. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the US has massively increased cheap imports from China, according to the Census Bureau, and lost 2.4 million manufacturing jobs, according to a report by Economic Policy Institute (EPI), for example.
Ironically this was Hillary Clinton’s campaign song: But trade deals are only part of the story. Manufacturing jobs started declining in 1997, years before China’s entry into the WTO (though three years after its trade status changed with the US), and researchers have questioned EPI’s conclusions. Despite the decline in jobs, manufacturing has become more productive, suggesting that automation and not trade deals were the cause of most job losses. In other words, few agree about how many jobs moved for which reasons. The same goes for Nafta, though a Congressional Research Service report concluded it “did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters”. Its net effect “appears to have been relatively modest.”
Trump transitions from stories of emergency response to a description of the work ahead: America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in just one year – isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take ten years just to get a permit approved for a simple road?
In the aftermath of that terrible shooting, we came together, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as representatives of the people. But it is not enough to come together only in times of tragedy. Tonight, I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people we were elected to serve. Almost. The Empire State Building was built in one year and 45 days.
That line gets uniform Republican applause and some clapping from Democrats. It’s not clear what part of the country the president believes it takes 10 years to obtain a permit for a road, but he appears to have drawn the notion from a Brooklyn-based group that has urged the White House to slash building regulations, especially those set by the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now the first real applause for the night, for Rep Steve Scalise, who was shot last summer at a congressional baseball practice. Trump has been speaking for about 35 minutes.
Some trials over the past year touched this chamber very personally. With us tonight is one of the toughest people ever to serve in this House – a guy who took a bullet, almost died, and was back to work three and a half months later: the legend from Louisiana, Congressman Steve Scalise. Be advised that, according to a quick scroll through his prepared remarks, he has a long way yet to go.
“I think they like you Steve,” Trump quips. In our drive to make Washington accountable, we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.
It’s true that the Trump administration has steadily tried to roll back regulations, but there is no clear way to measure his success compared to previous presidents – regulations are made through a messy process of rule-making and budget maneuvers, court cases, Congress and enforcers.
Trump’s claim to have eliminated more regulations than “any administration in history” also collides with the broad pushes to deregulate airliners and trains in the 1970s and 80s, and several presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, tried to use budgetary measures to neuter regulations without necessarily battling to erase them completely.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, Trump has withdrawn fewer regulations in his first year than Bill Clinton, George W Bush, or Barack Obama did during their presidencies. Earlier this month, the White House claimed that the Trump administration “withdrawn or delayed 1,579 planned regulatory actions”; according to the OMB, Clinton withdrew 1,824; Bush 2,632; and Obama 1,814.
Nor does ordering regulations gone actually erase those regulations. Sometimes presidents must enact a new rule to replace an existing one, opening the door to court battles, and there is a complex review process behind regulations to make sure they fit with laws. Trump’s attempts to repeal environmental rules, for instance, have already landed him in court over a debate that he is acting recklessly and without scientific evidence.
The Trump administration has, however, has worked with Congress to use an obscure 1996 law, the Congressional Review Act, to rescind more than a dozen rules enacted late in the Obama administration. The law had only been used once before.
Trump:Trump:
To everyone still recovering in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, California, and everywhere else– we are with you, we love you, and we will always pull through together. Always. I am asking both parties to come together to give us the safe, fast, reliable, and modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve.
Trump describes “incredible progress” and “extraordinary success” in the last year. He notes floods, fires and other trials. Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment that our country so desperately needs.
But through it all we have seen the beauty in America’s soul and the steel in America’s spine. Every Federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with State and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment -- to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit, and we can do it.
Trump describes acts of American heroism including the “cajun navy” saving flooding victims and “strangers shielding strangers from the hail of gunfire on the Las Vegas strip.” The applause for those lines was more lackluster. The Republicans kind of teeter to their feet. The Democrats sit blinking.
Here it comes, Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address. We have ended the war on American energy -- and we have ended the war on clean coal. We are now an exporter of energy to the world.
He starts as usual. Mr speaker, Mr vice president, members of congress... Thanks to a natural gas boom over the last 15 years, the US has become a global energy power to rival oil states around the world. This success of natural gas – cheaper, more accessible and comparatively cleaner than coal – has marginalized the coal industry, limiting Trump’s efforts to save the industry.
He starts out with a subdued tone. He notes he was no the rostrum less than a year ago. As automation has spread across many US industries, coal jobs and production declined for decades, collapsing 33% from 2011 to 2016, according to studies by Columbia University and the Department of Energy, largely due to competition from natural gas and a shift away from coal in Asia.
“A new tide of optimism was already sweeping across our land. Each day since we have gone forward... to make America great again, for all Americans.” Trump has tried, however, to resurrect coal’s fading fortunes. With Republicans in Congress he rescinded a rule that tried to keep coal mining waste out of waterways; he ordered a revocation of Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which put strict new regulations on mining and favored renewable energies; and he lifted a ban on mining leases on federal land. And in 2017, coal exports hugely increased compared to 2016, according to the Energy Information Association. Still, there has only been about 1% growth in coal jobs over the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Republicans stand and applaud. The Democrats sit and stare. The phrase “clean coal,” coined by the coal industry and briefly taken up by Obama, is itself controversial. The term applies not to any coal itself but power plants that remove heavy metal pollutants in the burning process and bury carbon emissions in the earth. Even such “clean” coal-fired plants still emit large levels of pollutants, however.
Ryan gavels the assembly to order and introduces Trump. There is a “hooray” and more applause. In Detroit, I halted government mandates that crippled America’s autoworkers -- so we can get the Motor City revving its engines once again.
The applause from Trump is respectable. It gets him to the rostrum. Up he goes, and a cheer goes up too. He shakes hands with Pence and Ryan and picks up a couple copies of the speech, handing them to those men. Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, but the US auto industry was one of the first American sectors to bounce back from the 2008 financial crisis, enough so that Barak Obama was touting its revival in 2010.
The applause continues. Trump claps too, and points into the audience, and smiles. Many car companies are now building and expanding plants in the United States -- something we have not seen for decades. Chrysler is moving a major plant from Mexico to Michigan; Toyota and Mazda are opening up a plant in Alabama. Soon, plants will be opening up all over the country. This is all news Americans are unaccustomed to hearing -- for many years, companies and jobs were only leaving us.
“Mr Speaker!” raises the cry. “The president of the United States.” Chrysler is not moving any plant from Mexico; it is keeping the Mexican factory and investing in a Michigan one. Toyota-Mazda have planned for a $1.6bn factory in Alabama, to open in several years. Several of the plans Trump is touting have been in development for several years and the US has steadily increased jobs since 2010, according to the same Bureau of Labor Statistics figures the president earlier cited.
Trump’s haircut is visible in the scrum at the door, and then he begins to make his way down the aisle, shepherded by House majority leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Rep Steve Scalise is in the mix, too. Guess which line of those below was a Trump improvisation?
Also spotted: Rex Tillerson, Steve Mnuchin, Ryan Zinke and Jim Mattis. America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our wealth.
Here comes the cabinet. The nations has lost its wealth but we’re getting it back so fast.
There’s Ben Carson, the Hud secretary, and Mike Mulvaney the budget director. Nikki Haley. Betsy DeVos. Rick Perry. Who else. Scott Pruitt. Jeff Sessions, Elaine Chao. The era of economic surrender is over. From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair and more importantly reciprocal.
Trump says he has “directed my Administration to make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one my our top priorities for the year.”
“And prices will come down substantially, watch.”
Trump says “we have ended the war on clean coal.”
The reaction to this seemingly endless stream of purported triumphs is repetitive and reflective of the political split at large. One side stands to applaud, the other sits and glares.
Trump keeps going:
We have ended the war on American Energy -- and we have ended the war on clean coal. We are now an exporter of energy to the world. ...
Many car companies are now building and expanding plants in the United States -- something we have not seen for decades. Chrysler is moving a major plant from Mexico to Michigan; Toyota and Mazda are opening up a plant in Alabama. Soon, plants will be opening up all over the country. This is all news Americans are unaccustomed to hearing -- for many years, companies and jobs were only leaving us. But now they are coming back.