Transcripts For CSPAN President Trump Meets With Business Leaders 20170802

Members of congress and so many incredible entrepreneurs to the white house to celebrate the work of the Small Business administration as it enters its 65th year. I would like to just say that senator jim is here. Marco rubio, a strong competitor, i will tell you that. [laughter] President Trump senator joni ernst, who has been my friend for a long time, and we appreciate you being here, joni, and they love you in iowa, dont they, huh . And mike kelly. We appreciate it. I want to thank administrator Linda Mcmahon for doing a tremendous job helping Small Businesses across our country. She has been incredible. I have known her for a long time, and her husband and herself built an incredible business. She is determined to transform america and American Dreams into reality. We also want to thank my daughter, ivanka, for her incredible work on behalf of Small Businesses and women entrepreneurs. And this is really a fact, and i have read some of these stories, but they demonstrate what it takes to succeed. You thrive because you found something that you love to do, pursued it with all of your heart, and never, ever gave up. It is so important. You do not give up. America is on the verge of a golden age in Small Business. We are ending jobkilling regulation. These folks know that very well. And we are and again at a record rate, right . We are eliminating the tremendous, the massive regulations on american energy, and numbers are going to be released next week that are going to be earth shattering as to what we are doing with energy and the amounts of energy we are producing, far greater than ever before. And pursuing bold tax cuts, so companies can thrive and compete. Our stock market has reached an alltime high today. Alltime high. Think about it. Nobody talks about it. They do not talk about it. I keep telling general kelly, general, lets go, you are chief of staff. They do not talk about the alltime stock market. [laughter] President Trump and they do not talk about another factor, that unemployment just hit a 16year low. They do not talk about it. And i think to me, maybe the biggest is that gdp for the quarter, justreleased, at 2. 6 , so that is so much higher than anticipated. Remember i was saying we were going to hit 3 time in the next three years, but 2. 6 , and we are going to be near 3 in the nottoodistant future. Were setting economic records and we are very proud of it. That is a great big thing. The jobs are coming pouring back, factories are coming pouring back into our country. You saw foxconn last week. He is one of the great businessmen of our time, and i think the numbers are going to be 30 million, and he told me he is going to go off the record, 30 billion investment, but he told me off the record, so i promised i would not tell anybody. [laughter] President Trump that is called big business, by the way. You will be big business. You got to start off small, but will be big like that. He started off small. Now he is about the biggest. But i wanted to thank foxconn and the group who is spending a generous amount of money in wisconsin and other places. Today we are unleashing a new era of american prosperity, perhaps like we have never seen before, and you see it day by day. You do not hear too much from the media, but the media will be forced to cover it pretty soon. They will have no choice. I am inspired to be in the company of such motivated people, as i know what it takes. Believe me, i know what it takes. You have the dreamers and innovators who are powering us into the future. It is exactly what you are. And my administration will be there with you every single step of the way, and so will these people right here. Every single step of the way. So thank you. And thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] i think we are waiting for jenny no. Were going to have you start with opening remarks. Then take questions. So, that was pretty powerful. Were in the white house. Small Business Owners, entr epreneurs, and you heard from a Large Business owner. We are sitting here on stage with administrator mcmahon who has such an incredible entrepreneurial history. But it is very empowering. It is very inspiring. And really this administration is steadfast in its commitment to jobs and job creation. And you as Business Owners are really feeling that and really driving them. Are looking to unleash you so you can bring your full potential and create more jobs. I believe 60 million jobs in this country are direct result of Small Business entrepreneurs such as yourself. It is tremendously impactful on the ecosystem of job creation. We are doing everything we can and look forward to your input on how we can do even more. Through comprehensive tax reform to enable you to have more money to reinvest in the growth of your businesses. There are 800 regulations put on the books by the Previous Administration that really many of which stifle your ability to grow and continue to create and produce. We are committed to addressing those things, creating increased access to capital, mentorship, as the sba does through its transformative and innovative programs. Access to networks, to markets to trade with across state lines. We are committed to supporting the American Worker and the american job creator. We are excited to be here to celebrate an agency doing just that. And an incredible director as she commences her 65th year of the sba. Not quite your 65th. [laughter] i will turn it over now to administrator mcmahon. She will tell us about initiatives and how they can support your businesses. Then we will takes and questions from the audience. Mrs. Mcmahon is this working . Ok. Great. Thank you for sharing the stage with me today. I must apologize in advance for my voice. My voice keeps going in and out. A little bit of laryngitis on the road. Im so delighted to be here this afternoon. As the administrator for the Small Business administration. We will celebrate our 65th anniversary next year. We are kicking off this year of reimagining the sba. We might even cheat a little bit. Small business week year. Because, i found out about the second week i was in office sba is one of the bestkept secrets in the country. You think sba, what do you think . You think loans. So much more than loans. Its counseling. Access to capital, which businesses need to start. Cash is king. Then i found out that the counseling and mentoring aspect that comes along is as important or almost as important as the cash. We have components of access, government contracting, which grows many small as mrs. Our Small Businesses. Then we have Disaster Relief. What happens when a disaster hits an area . Homes are lost. Its one of the few times sba is involved in the Home Mortgage market as well as business loans. Its our goal to give businesses up and running. They are not only the engine of our economy, but they are the glue for their communities. Those communities need to come back online. Sba is there working with fema, the first people on the line. We want to get everybody back up, paying taxes. It is an allencompassing organization. Its my goal to make sure a year from now, if not sooner, sba is no longer a secret. [applause] ivanka thank you you have such great champions of the Small Business community along with President Trump. We want to hear from the community. If you have a question, please raise your hand. You can ask a question to the administrator or ivanka. Im a firefighter from wisconsin. I have been a firefighter for 20 years. I recently invented a new style of compass to save firefighters lives. What im struggling with is the ins and outs to run that business. What advice do you have to get over that hurdle . Mrs. Mcmahon i think one of the things i have been talking about, the mentorship, we have so many services. There is score, offices manned by retired executives, or executives lending their time to advise on business programs, web design, to kind of walk you through how you can expand and scale your business. Small Business Development centers are also available. You can go to any of those district offices, 68 around the country. Those are even more bountiful in the district offices in every state. You can go to sba. Gov and look at the different modules. You can selfstudy. Lots of tools are available. Ivanka one of the things i got excited about in early discussions with ms. Mcmahon about the capacity of sba, most people think of it along the lines of capital. Availability of capital, and how they can support businesses in that regard. These mentorship opportunities are very impactful. As i meet with entrepreneurs, consistently they talk about what is the Biggest Barriers to scaling a business is lack of mentorship opportunities. That is what made the difference in terms of execution on their ideas. First of all, congratulations on now being a Small Business owner and job creator. Thank you for your Service Prior to that as a firefighter. My advice to you would be to look at the whole ecosystem as you think about how to start this business for the first time. Listen to a lot of people, including people who say your ideas are bad. Internalize that feedback. Ultimately, i think that thinking through and bringing on partners, and people that can complement your skill set and help you to think about the execution of your Business Plan is critical as you think about scale any meaningful way. In addition to utilizing resources, getting feedback, from people about the idea and the concept, think about how you can supplement your team to complement the skill set that you have. Any other questions . Ok. My name is sherry. Im from ohio. Im a proud owner of a trucking company. Second generation, womanowned. Our Family Business is 50 years in the making. One of our challenges after becoming with one truck, now close to 100 drugs, and 150 and 150rucks employees, some of our challenges are hiring qualified workforce. Truck drivers and technicians, those are our challenges. Finding skilled workers to fill those jobs, and the training they need, it is surprisingly difficult. Do you have any thoughts on how we could solve this problem together as a nation to fill these good jobs . Mrs. Mcmahon you have raised an incredibly great point. Ivanka an enormous problem. This is something that really has the administration been informed by the private sector. When they tell us one of their single Biggest Challenges is the skills gap. They have available jobs they are unable to fill because people dont have adequate training. Time and time again we hear this. It is all the more problematic for the smaller employers who dont have the benefits and cant be as competitive, competing for those same jobs that limited people had to fill. We have been in or mislead been enormously focused on technical education, skillsbased education. The president signed an executive order where he is going to dramatically expand apprenticeship in this country. It has been successful around the world. In giving people skillsbased education, creating industrywide certification and credentialing so people like in the industry like yours can have a recognized credential that is portable and they can take with them, that recognizes they are trained in the areas employers need them. One of the things we found that is successful, the teeming of the teaming of industry and the Community Colleges and technical schools. Many employers are working with Community Colleges, helping them develop curriculums that train their students. They employ them on the other side. That is something that has been working on the private sector and we are looking to fuel and scale at a national level. This young lady over here. I started a Company Called blueblood. This is for you. I created an online marketplace for professional Truck Drivers when they are in need of work to match with a motor carrier who needs a driver. We are just rolling out. My concern is the regulations. My concern is for all industries, what can we do with the regulation issued to help us through these phases . You heard the president when he started off. He has rolled back already so many regulations to make it possible to move forward. He was only less than a dozen days in office when the executive order stated for every new regulation you want to create youve got to get rid of 2. I think that is bringing down the Regulatory Environment. I hear the same message when im touring the country. Im visiting every district office. Theres 68 of them. I hold business roundtables. The Regulatory Environment is clearly one that is crippling a lot of Small Businesses as well as Large Businesses. I believe that it is a trillion dollars a year a cost for all businesses to comply with regulations. That is a time of money. A little example, just now i was in portland and seattle, and alaska. Then i came back to milwaukee. When i was at a small brewery, the owner said the regulations that bothers him, let me give you one example. He said i want to launch a new beer. We had the body in the formula. He sent in the label and it was kicked back. The label was wrong. We resubmitted. It kicked back again. I finally found out it was a, missing in the text on the label because a comma was missing in the text on the label of the description of the product. We were delayed six months launching our product. You are a Small Business person trying to reclaim that six months. Those regulations we dont need. Good afternoon. Im the president and ceo of pda drywall. We are based in raleigh, north carolina. One of the biggest setbacks in the last 12 years has been tax regulations. As we are embarking on tax forms discussions, what are you going to do for Small Businesses to help change those regulations in favor of Small Businesses . Many of the same things we have been discussing, comprehensive tax reform. Mr. Gary co. In the here has been spearheading this charge at the white house. You can definitely pick his brain about tax reform. It is high on his mind these days. Lowering the corporate rate, encouraging business to grow, encouraging businesses based here to stay here, bring their capital back that has been trapped overseas will have an enormously positive impact within our country and free up dollars that can be reinvested. In conjunction with Regulatory Reform, we have come out of the gate swinging. Its a major focus. My fathers particular sensitivity to this issue is having been a successful person in business himself. He understands the limitations, whether businesses he was looking to buy or grow, dealing with suppliers and smaller businesses that services companies. He very much understands how the Regulatory Environment, while important has grown to a place where it is the unintended consequences is stifling entrepreneurial spirit. We are going to bring that back. We have started doing it. Tax reform is going to be incredibly important for every american. We are optimistic about those things. And continued progress. I would like to add, Small Businesses will say to me any tax reduction will be great. Just let me know what it is. What is going to be my percentage. Tell me what the rate is going to be so i can plan. Without fail, every single one of those businesses tell me they will take that money and reinvest it in their business and hire more people. That will grow our economy. We will see that growth when we see tax rates go down. Especially those in the llcs, all that money flows through. Are you a subs corp . You know exactly how that works. We are working on it. Next question . My name is richard daphne. I have over 30 years in different size businesses, with many ups and downs. My question is for ivanka. What do you feel has been your biggest challenge, most exciting success . Ivanka as an entrepreneur you try to balance your own time, energy, focus, especially when you think big. You sometimes have to slow yourself down. To impose the discipline on yourself to enable you to achieve the growth you want, especially in the early days, you have limited people. You are just launching a product or a service. You hopefully feel that early momentum. When you are an entrepreneur you have to be a visionary. We also have to be an secured an executor. Successful entrepreneurs are both. They dream big. They think big. They also are highly pragmatic, able to execute at the task at hand. Sometimes there is an imbalance. I think for anyone to be successful, they have to reconcile those things. Ultimately we were talking about it, in terms of recruitment, you are as good as your people. Investing in your teams, your employees, making sure you have cultivated a group that complements you, that pushes you, that will enable you to succeed. For me, success that is scaled and done tremendously well is because they have a great team and great people. Thank you for doing this work today. We are a marketing Public Engagement firm. We are a Service Veteran Small Business. We have been based in Northern Virginia for many years. Virginia is the number one state for veteran owned businesses. Our right to pursue the American Dream is something i hold dear to my heart. Im curious, im sure you have had the opportunity to meet great entrepreneurs. Is there one story that is the most inspirational story . Ivanka it has been incredible to hear so many stories. During the two years prior campaigning, traveling around the country. One of the unique things about this experience, my father was running for president. People would come up to you wherever you were and tell you their stories. With such tremendous detail, and tell you of their hardest challenges, and share with you things in a way they neither never would have. They would never open themselves up to you in the same way they do during the process of a campaign. Now today, being part of this administration. I feel blessed for the candor in which people share their ideas and personal stories. Linda and i were together in baltimore just days after the inauguration. We did a roundtable with Small Business owners, predominantly female, hosted by the National Urban league. One of those women who actually i brought her to the white house a few months later is named lisa phillips. She had a Small Business. She told me her story and i think we were all crying. It was so amazing. She started out homeless. She is now engaged. This spring she got her masters degree. She has a small but thriving Small Business and party planning. She is volunteering with Homeless Youth in baltimore. These types of stories forever change you. It is unbelievable to hear the perseverance, the grit, the energy. I know she is going to make an enormous impact not just in her business but her community. We talk about Small Business, how it is going to grow our economy and benefit American Workers, but the amount of philanthropy being done on the local level by Small Business is a norm is enormous. Im sure each of you can share your own stories just about how you are able to give act and you do in such a tremendous way. Lisas story was moving to me. Mrs. Mcmahon last year, this year, during National Small Small Business week there was a company just outside of austin, texas. Their company was all about electronics and small Circuit Boards. You have a warehouse of all of these intricate Circuit Boards and electronic equipment. The river flooded and came in and just flooded their entire operation. Water was deep. Mud. I think it destroyed a third of their inventory. Everything they had processed. The gentleman who was the proprietor of this company said what was so amazing, sba was able to come in with a 2 million Disaster Relief loan. He talked about how his employees would come and work all hours. They had to take cloths and white down all of the wires and cables and clean the Circuit Boards that were salvageable. They spent hours doing this. In six weeks they were back up and running. Many couldnt come in and work during that time. He continued to pay his employees and their benefits through that entire time and helped with donations in the community as well. It lets you know the heart of entrepreneurs. They are risk takers but they are on 24 7. That is why they will always have a special place in my heart. I know what that is like. We all started small. Wonderful stories just like many in this room. We have time for one more. Im the owner of the Newtown Athletic Club in pennsylvania. Im also cochair of the largest trade organization for fitness industry, and an advocate through my business of the right to try bill. I would like to ask both of you, what are the experiences you have had that you would like to share, some of the dos and donts that would be beneficial to us today . Mrs. Mcmahon every entrepreneur goes into business knowing they are taking a risk. You have to manage the downside risk. One of the ups and downs, i have been bankrupt. My house was auctioned in my car repossessed. Seven months pregnant with our second child. When i talked to entrepreneurs with failing businesses, some referred to it as a bad patch. They are determined to come back. One of the most inspirational things to me is to listen to entrepreneurs, how they get through the tough times. Ive often said it is not how you fall, it is how you get back up. [applause] ivanka ive had an interesting experience. Im an entrepreneur, having started my own business, also worked in the context of a Family Business that was highly entrepreneurial. Ive had both, working in a large Family Business, that grew to be a rather Large Business. I think for me, one of the challenges was managing the competing demands of raising a family and, and running a business, working in a Family Business. And then politics got layered on top of that. Then i got pregnant with my third child in the midst of that. One of the things, there is no right answer. People ask about balance a lot. I dont think you can plan for balance. You can structure your schedule to avoid work travel, coming home and having an event or you have to be out. You can manage things like that. We are one kid illness away from losing balance. Theres no way you can plan for certain things. I have found every time i think a challenge is large and will be hard to overcome that has been put in my path, if you grind through it, you look back in retrospect and it feels much more manageable than it was in the moment. This perspective, staying in the moment, keeping a laser focus on what your priorities are. I tell people not to architect their life for balance, but aligned with what their priorities are. And fully measure yourself against priorities to ensure you are where you needed to be in the long term. Give yourself a little slack in the short term. I will say as an administration, we are focused on thinking about how we empower the american working family and empower people to achieve a balance through policies around making child care more affordable and accessible, advocating strongly for paid family leave. To support the reality of of the dual income modern working family. Thinking through policies that support the family is informed by what i have seen and what i have witnessed. Thank you so much for your questions. This has been a pleasure. I want to congratulate you on embarking on the 65th year at the sba. We have no doubt that the agency will do incredible things. It has been a pleasure to meet each and every one of you. Youre the realization of the American Dream. This has been a lot of fun for us. Thank you. Thank you for sharing the stage with me today. I would like to thank the president , who started this administration. He talked about the economy and jobs. Small businesses. The backbone of our economy. He has shown himself to be such a supporter of Small Businesses. Gh is going to push through tax reform and Regulatory Reform because it well benefit all of our businesses. As i travel all over the country, the themes are the same. They know we are in their quarter. To smallm out talking businesses as the administrator of the sba, i want them to know they have an advocate in washington, not only in me but in the administration but the strongest advocate they have is the president of the united states. He have lived his own American Dream. He believes in it, as do i. ForAmerican Dream he exists all of us and Small Businesses will continue to drive it home. So, thank you all so very, very much today. [applsue] ause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [applause] on thursday, the president travels to huntington, west virginia, for a rally at big sandy superstore arena. Live covers starting at 7 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, a discussion on efforts to stabilize a various Affordable Health Care Insurance markets with aei Health Care Scholar joseph antos and sabrina corlette, at georgetown university. Recently elected National Commander of the disabled American Veterans talks about health care and employment issues affecting veterans. Cspans washington journal a. M. Thisning at seve 7 morning. Join the discussion. Kellyanne conway spoke at the 2017 National Conservative student conference in washington. She talked about her time in the trump campaign, hard time is an activist and her transition into political polling, analysis and campaign work. This is about 40 minutes. [applause] ok, im beside myself but am so excited about this. I have the pleasure of introducing to us someone who is a good friend of mine that i have admired for decades. When it was announced that this lady was going to take over running the trca