Remarks Honoring the Small Business Administration

Well, thank you very much. Great honor to be here, this magnificent house known as the White House. We're pleased to welcome 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—believe it or not—65th year.

I'd like to just say that Senator Jim Risch is here. Jim, thank you very much. Marco Rubio, a strong competitor, I will tell you that. [Laughter] Senator Joni Ernst, who has been my friend for a long time now, and we appreciate you being here, Joni. And they love you in Iowa, don't they? Huh? Steve Chabot—where's Steve? Steve and Mike Kelly. Good, Mike. Thank you very much for being here, all of you. We really appreciate it.

I want to thank Administrator Linda McMahon for doing a tremendous job helping small businesses all across our country. She has been incredible. I've 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.

Your stories—and this is really a fact, and I've 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. So important: You just don't give up.

America is on the verge of a golden age for small business. We're ending job-killing regulation. These folks know that very well, and we're really ending it at a record pace, I tell you. [Applause] Right? We're eliminating the tremendous, the massive restrictions on American energy—and numbers are going to be released next week that are going to be earth shattering as to what we're doing with energy and the amounts of energy we're producing, far greater than ever before—and pursuing bold tax cuts so that our companies can thrive, compete, and grow. [Applause] Thank you.

Our stock market has reached an alltime high today. Alltime high, think of it. Nobody ever talks about it. They don't talk about it. I keep telling General Kelly: "General, come on, let's go. You're Chief of Staff. They don't talk about the alltime high stock market." [Laughter] And they don't talk about another factor: that unemployment just hit a 16-year low. They don't want to talk about it.

And I think, to me, maybe the biggest is that GDP for the quarter just released at 2.6 percent. So that's so much higher than anticipated. Remember I was saying we're going to try and hit 3 percent sometime over the next period of 2 years? Well, 2.6 is getting closer, Gary. Closer than we thought and a lot faster than we thought. But don't worry about the 3; we're going to be higher than 3 in the not-too-distant future too.

So we're setting economic records, and we're very proud of it. And that's, you know, a very big thing. And the jobs are coming pouring back, factories are coming pouring back into our country—into our country. Jobs are coming back. You saw the Foxconn last week. They're going to spend $10 billion. But he is one of the great businessmen of our time, and I think the number is going to be $30 million [billion; White House correction.]. So he told me, off the record, he thinks he may go $30 billion. Think of this. He may go $30 billion investment. But he told me that off the record, so I promised I wouldn't tell anybody. [Laughter]

That's called big business, by the way. Okay? [Laughter] That's big business. You'll be big business. You've got to start off small, but you're going to be big like that. He started off small, now he's about the biggest. But I want to thank Foxconn and the group. They're spending a tremendous amount of money in Wisconsin and other places, and they have been fantastic.

Together, we're unleashing a new era of American prosperity, perhaps like we've never seen before. And you see it day by day. You don't hear it too much from the media, but I think the media is going actually to be forced to cover it pretty soon. They're going to have no choice.

I'm very inspired to be in the company of such motivated entrepreneurs, people: people that I really respect because I know what it takes. I've been there and, believe me, I know what it takes.

You are the dreamers and innovators who are powering us into the future—that's 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 strep of the way.

So thank you, and thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody.