target, who we are not naming, and a lot of people in donald trump s inner circle. what s interesting about it is at this late stage in the campaign, a year and a half after the fbi began investigating this question of anybody in the trump campaign collaborated with the election interference evident, they are still looking at this because some of the names on the subpoena, carter page, paul manafort, these are not people with donald trump in the oval office. so they are unlikely to know much, if anything, about obstruction of justice, which is mueller s other main focus. but they know things about what role donald trump played in the russian leak of the e-mails. and we reported last week that witnesses before the grand jury are being asked questions about that whether they had any knowledge of trump s role, if any, in coordinating that. this remains an active part of the investigation at this late stage. let s talk about trade, which is further isolating the president from his closes
built in a year. let s talk about trade and the fact that he did stress america finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals. not that he is against free trade, it is fair and reciprocal trade. the fact is america is open for business, put america first, that does not mean america alone. he would not have been in dollars that the world economic forum if he was a protectionist and in the end he just wants to protect american jobs in the us and that benefits american people cracking down on unfair trade practices and he is doing a great job of that. they don t to turn around and buy our stuff back. thank you for coming on this
particular moment in the business cycle. confidence goes up, confidence goes down. that s the way of the world, that s how the american economy works. so we do see wages start to rise, we see black unemployment narrow with white unemployment. he s talked about about the stock market, business confidence, consumer confidence. these things are related to what he does. underneath the business cycle there are a lot of fundamental structural issues that he hasn t changed. those structural issues are some of the reasons he got elected. income inequality helped president trump get elected. he talked all about serving the forgotten american. you know who forgets the forgotten american? the stock market. the things that he touts don t serve the people who voted for him. let s talk about trade. he did bring it up. this was his signature issue. he figured it out on the campaign trail, that people were frustrated about trade. here is the problem.
it s already changing but it s changing fast. we brought back over $1 billion of contracts from asia. it was a very successful trip. now we re looking at nafta very seriously. we have bob lighthouse here, gary cohn. it s not easy with an election taking place, but we re going to be successful. we ll be talking about trade, tax reform that s so popular. i think something will be coming out of conference pretty quickly as opposed to long term. i think it will go pretty quickly. there is a great spirit in the republican party like i ve never seen before, like a lot of people say they ve never seen before. they ve never seen anything like this, the unity. so i think a lot of good things will happen and it will happen very fast. i want to thank you all for being here, and let s have a great lunch, and let s talk about trade and make great trade deals instead of the horrible
contracts from asia. it was a very successful trip. now we will look at nafta very, very seriously. we have gary cohen, and we re starting to negotiate. not easy with an election. i will be successful. we are talking about trade. we ll be talking about health care. we ll be talking about other subjects. the taxes, we are so thrilled about, so popular, and i think some things are going to be coming out a conference pretty quickly as opposed to long-term. i think it will go up very. we are all in the same page. great spirit and the republican party. a lot of people have said they ve never seen it before. they d never seen anything like this, the community. i think a lot of very good things are going to happen. it will happen very fast. i want to think you all for being here, let s have a great lunch, let s talk about trade, let s make a great trade deals. instead of the horrible trade deals that we got stuck with. thank you very much. thank you, everybody, .