• 32 minutes ago
Vice President JD Vance and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler speak to workers at Vantage Plastics in Bay City, Michigan.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript


Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Transcript
00:00Wow. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Kelly Leffler, administrator of the U.S. Small Business
00:10Administration. I'm so thrilled to join so many hardworking Michiganders to talk about
00:16how President Trump is bringing American manufacturing back. I couldn't be more honored to do so
00:27alongside a true champion for blue-collar America, Vice President J.D. Vance. I also
00:41want to recognize Paul Altman. He's the president of Vantage Plastics and one of the millions
00:49of small business owners who have used the SBA to supercharge their growth. Let's give
00:54a hand to Paul. Now you know, Vantage is an American success story. And right now, however,
01:10there are protesters who are upset that we have come here to celebrate American industry
01:16while I've got bad news for them. This administration will never apologize for standing behind the
01:23hardworking Americans who power this great nation. Now 99% of all manufacturers in America
01:37are small businesses. They create good-paying jobs. They keep foreign adversaries like China
01:44out of our supply chains. They build infrastructure that keeps us strong, safe, and competitive
01:50from weapons to drones to semiconductors and cars. Now after four long years, we're
01:56excited to say Made in America is back. Now earlier this week I announced SBA's new Made
02:10in America initiative. Not only will it bring back the strong blue-collar boom of the first
02:16administration, it will send a clear signal that America is no longer willing to sacrifice
02:22its economic dominance by bowing to trade deals that are unfair and a woke, bloated
02:29bureaucracy. This administration is putting American jobs, products, and national security
02:35first. Now you may have seen in just a few short weeks, President Trump already delivered
02:4710,000 manufacturing jobs right here in America. He secured over $2 trillion in investment
02:55to build manufacturing, and he has driven small business confidence to historic highs.
03:01The SBA is proud to support this pro-growth agenda by cutting $100 billion in regulatory
03:09red tape that strangles small businesses just like this one. We are going to help manufacturers
03:14expand and hire by improving access to capital, and we will work alongside President Trump
03:20to support tax cuts and fair trade deals, because he is fighting for the American worker.
03:30Now I'm so proud that this administration is a force multiplier for job creation and
03:40American industry, and it is clear that the age, the golden era of manufacturing in America
03:48is not behind us, it's in front of us. And so I am so proud that the SBA stands with
03:54President Trump and Vice President Vance to build a future where the American workers
03:59and business lead the world by making Main Street great again.
04:06Now, I am incredibly humbled and have the honor to introduce our nation's 50th and
04:16greatest Vice President, who is helping lead the charge to bring this golden age of manufacturing
04:22in America back. So please join me in welcoming to the stage Vice President J.D. Vance and
04:27his incredible wife, Usha Vance. Thank you all.
04:46Hey, guys. Well, thank you. It's great to be back in Michigan. You know, I've missed
05:07it a little bit. We haven't spent so much time in Michigan since the election, but it's
05:12good to be back in God's country. And I've got to tell you, every opportunity I get to
05:17get the hell out of Washington, D.C., that is a good day. That is a good day. I want
05:23to thank Kelly Loeffler for that incredibly kind introduction. You know, Kelly is doing
05:27a great job at the Small Business Administration. You all would be shocked if you realized how
05:33much fraud we found, even at the Small Business Administration. I'm talking about, like, dead
05:38people getting loans from the SBA. We don't want dead people getting loans from the SBA.
05:43We want American workers and American businesses getting loans from the Small Business Administration.
05:48And Kelly is doing a great job making sure that we do exactly that. I want to say thank
05:52you to Paul. It's great to be here at Vantage Plastics, a great American company with great
05:58American workers. So thank you to Paul Altman and thank you to the entire team here at Vantage
06:10Plastics. It's great to be here. It's great to be with American workers. And again, like
06:15I said, it's great to be out of the bubble in Washington, D.C. Now, as Kelly mentioned,
06:20I was I was listening to her backstage. You know, we came in. We've got this great event,
06:24this great facility, great business and, of course, great workers. And I'm sure all
06:28of us saw there were a few protesters outside. And I can't be the only person wondering,
06:33you know, it's a little after noon on a Friday. And don't you all have jobs? Who are the people?
06:47And I think that's that's one of the reasons why we've got to rebuild American manufacturing
06:52and support great companies like Vantage Plastics, because we want those people to
06:55get off the streets and back to work. It'd be good for them and it'd be good for everybody
06:59else, too. Now, you all don't hold it against me, of course, you know that I'm from that
07:09state, just one state south. But we know we know in the we know in the industrial Midwest
07:16that companies like Vantage give Great Lakes states the reputation that we know it is the
07:22powerhouse of American industry and that makes it the powerhouse of world industry. I'm grateful
07:28for the good paying jobs this company brings to the area and for the incredible job this
07:34business does, generating economic opportunity in this region of our country. And I really
07:41do believe that America's success depends on the success of companies like Vantage Plastics.
07:47And I don't mean that in some abstract, poetic sounding sense. I mean it literally. If we
07:52do not protect our nation's manufacturers, we lose a fundamental part of who we are as
07:58a people. Making things, building things, working with our hands is America's heritage
08:05and that heritage is alive and well in this facility. Now, our frontier spirit would have
08:18done us little good in conquering the continent if we couldn't manufacture the railway track,
08:24the steamboats, the dynamite and everything else needed to do so. American industry, American
08:30workers famously won the Second World War. American industry took us to the moon and
08:36enabled the Silicon Revolution that created the most precise and sophisticated jobs imaginable
08:42in any field, demanding mechanical expertise on the scale of nanometers, which is so small
08:49you can't even see it. But over the years, I hate to say, we have squandered that heritage
08:54in the United States of America. Not in Vantage Plastics, thank God, but all across our country.
09:00Between the 1990s and the election of Donald Trump the first time back in 2016, this country
09:06lost 5 million good manufacturing jobs and we saw over 90,000 American factories, great
09:15American factories shut their doors. And as I know I don't have to tell anyone here today,
09:21when we lose the ability to make our own stuff, we abandon a way of life, one that has sustained
09:26towns like Bay Cities and countless other communities from Middletown, Ohio to a ton
09:32of communities all across the Midwest. Being able to make things is good because it creates
09:37self-sufficiency as a nation and it creates self-sufficiency in our people. And more importantly,
09:44manufacturing jobs are good for our workers. Now we know this, you all know this, they
09:49pay a premium of 10% compared to wages in other fields and other roles. They often come
09:54with the good benefits and the good job creation that drives the kind of economic opportunity
10:01that we want to see in our country. When we de-industrialize, when we lose those good
10:06jobs that allow us to support families, those are the kinds of things that we lose. And
10:12I think that we need a president, and thank God we have a president, that thinks we're
10:16going to bring it back, and we are.
10:25So, I've got, you know, I've got some bad news and I've got some good news. Do we want
10:30to hear the bad news first or the good news first? Okay, that's good. You all said bad
10:36news and that's good because if you had said good news, that would have totally screwed
10:39up the flow of this speech. I've got to start with the bad news a little bit, then we talk
10:44about the good news. But here's the simple truth. The very simple truth is that unfortunately,
10:51the last administration left us with a terrible economy. They left us with sky-high prices.
10:58They left us with home values that had doubled in just four short years, meaning a lot of
11:04American families couldn't afford to buy or to rent a home. They left us with a historic
11:10debt crisis. Did you know that in the history of the United States of America, we have never
11:15had deficits and debt so high as we had under Joe Biden's leadership? And what did all
11:22that peacetime debt and deficit, what did all that spending, what did all that waste
11:27and fraud get us? It got us an economy where Americans couldn't afford to buy a home, our
11:32families couldn't afford to buy groceries, and our people felt like the American dream
11:37was slipping away. Now, that is the bad news. But now, we can talk a little bit about the
11:43good news, because I'm proud to say that thanks to all of you, on January 20, 2025,
11:50we started a great American comeback.
12:03Last November, America re-elected a president with a simple goal, to power our nation's
12:08industrial comeback and once again, make the U.S. the world's manufacturing superpower,
12:14and that is exactly what President Trump has sought out to do. Now, I have to be honest
12:19with you, the road ahead of us is long, but we are already, in just seven short weeks,
12:24starting to see early indications of the president's vision becoming our shared American reality.
12:32This February, the president's first full month in office, America gained 10,000 American
12:38manufacturing jobs. Now, compare that to last year, when under the Biden administration,
12:43we were losing an average of about 10,000 manufacturing jobs per month. That's over
12:49100,000 jobs and manufacturing lost in a single year under Joe Biden. And we got to ask ourselves,
12:57what has driven the turnaround? Well, first of all, President Trump has been clear about
13:02his plan, about our administration's plan. Our goal is to make it easier and more affordable
13:09to make things again in the United States of America. If you invest in America, in American
13:15jobs, in American workers, and in American businesses, you're going to be rewarded. We're
13:20going to cut your taxes, we're going to slash regulations, and we're going to reduce the
13:24cost of energy to build things right here in this country that all of us love. But if
13:29you try to undercut us and build outside of our borders, the President Trump's administration
13:36has got nothing for you. If you want to be rewarded, build in America. If you want to
13:42be penalized, build outside of America. It's as simple as that.
13:49So, if you've gotten rich the last few decades by ripping off U.S. companies and preying
14:02on American workers, well, the President is simply telling you the jig is up. If you want
14:07to manufacture in China, which has the worst and most punitive economic policies towards
14:12us anywhere in the world, then you are going to have to pay the consequences. And what
14:17we're seeing already is that the world is starting to listen. They appreciate that we're
14:22in a new era in the United States. So, as a result, we're nearing $2 trillion in new
14:28investments announced just since President Trump took office. That's not bad. In seven
14:33weeks, $2 trillion. From auto companies and chip makers to paper and electrical product
14:41manufacturers, companies from all over the world have announced new plants and big expansions
14:48of existing plants in the United States of America. We've seen car factories say two
14:54years ago, two months ago, that they were going to ship American jobs off to Mexico,
14:59and seven weeks ago, they started singing a different tune. Now, part of our comeback
15:05means unleashing America's energy and making it cheaper and making it more affordable for
15:12American businesses and workers to do what they need to do. So, day one in office, President
15:17Trump ended the Green New Scam and ended Biden's war on American energy.
15:22And, of course, we're already seeing the results. Gasoline, its price for consumers,
15:35is finally starting to come down. Last month, it went up by 30, excuse me, last term, it
15:42went up about 35% under Joe Biden's leadership, and we've already seen it fall to significant
15:48lows again. That's just in seven weeks. In its first month, President Trump declared
15:53a national energy emergency and established the National Energy Dominance Council. He's
15:59reopened 625 million acres offshore for drilling and ended Biden's disastrous ban on liquefied
16:07natural gas exports, which risks ending 90,000 American jobs and costing $250 billion for
16:14our country over the long run. It's over. We stopped it.
16:21Now, in doing so, the President paved the way to approve two new massive projects in
16:30the United States. And I've got to say, it's kind of funny to see some of our Democrat
16:34governors in various parts, I won't mention which states exactly, coming to the Oval Office
16:40and begging for economic development under Trump's leadership that they knew they would
16:44never get under Biden's leadership. And I've got to tell you, I carry a word from the President
16:49of the United States that we don't care Democrat, Republican, or Independent, we want to build.
16:54Build, baby, build. That is the slogan and that is the motto of the Trump Administration
16:59and that's exactly what we're going to do.
17:07And most importantly, given where we stand here in Vantage, the Trump Administration
17:10is working hard to slash regulations left and right. And I think, Paul, you'd admit
17:15the regulations, we've got to get that stuff out of here. We've got to make it easier to
17:19build stuff in our own country. We can't have people telling our great builders that if
17:23they want to start a factory or if they want to expand a factory, they're not allowed to.
17:28And that is the biggest thing I think the Trump Administration is working on when it
17:32comes to renewing American manufacturing. This Wednesday, as a matter of fact, the Administration
17:37announced a historic regulatory rollback at the EPA, which will provide relief from all
17:43sorts of heavy-handed rules. These include the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which
17:48costs U.S. factories and power plants hundreds of millions of dollars and that money is now
17:54going to be reinvested in American workers. And we remember the Clean Power Plan 2.0,
18:00which has imperiled America's grid by creating impossible restrictions on coal and natural
18:05gas plants that account for 60% of our power. You can't tell people to build in America
18:11while at the same time destroying American energy. That's what Joe Biden did. What Donald
18:16Trump is doing is saying, build in America and we're going to help you. We're going to
18:19make it more possible and we're going to make it more affordable.
18:23But, you know, I think it's really simple here and I have to say, you know, I'm thrilled,
18:36of course, to have everybody here, thrilled to have Paul hosting us, but I'm especially
18:40thrilled to have my lovely wife here behind me. And I think she's doing a great job as
18:51Second Lady of the United States and I'm so proud to have her by my side. And here's
18:55the thing, because the cameras are all on, anything that I say, no matter how crazy,
19:00Usha has to smile and laugh and celebrate it. So, I'm going to be good though, honey.
19:05I'm going to keep to the script here. But I think that what we're really after here,
19:10and you see so many people attacking the President's economic programs and attacking the progress
19:16that we've made over the past seven weeks, you hear people saying, well, how dare Donald
19:21Trump impose tariffs on foreign countries that have been taking advantage of us for
19:2640 years. And the answer is that unless you're willing to use American power to fight back
19:32against what those countries have been doing for a generation, you are never going to rebuild
19:36American manufacturing and you're never going to support the American worker.
19:40President Trump is done with leaders who talk, talk, talk. We are an administration
19:51that is going to do things for the American people and for American workers. Just think
19:56about this. When foreign countries make it impossible to ship American cars into their
20:02countries, why have we had leadership that refuses to fight back? When we have foreign
20:08countries that use slave labor that undercuts the wages of American workers, why have we
20:13had American leadership that has refused to fight back? When you let literal slaves make
20:19stuff cheaply and then bring it into our country, we all know, you all know, that destroys the
20:25wages of American workers. And so now we have an American media that says, how dare Donald
20:30Trump stand up for the American worker. I think I speak for the American worker when
20:34I say, thank God for President Trump for finally standing up for the American worker.
20:46Enough is enough. For 40 years, the people of this country, the businesses, the workers,
20:51everybody, have been neglected, they have been ignored, and they have had a leadership
20:56that refuses to stand up for them. And that changed just seven short weeks ago. And that
21:01basic change, that basic idea that the purpose of the American presidency is to fight for
21:07the American people will guide our policy for the next four years. And I have to say,
21:12yes, this is not always easy and it doesn't happen overnight. We came into office, again,
21:18with the largest peacetime deficits in American history, $2 trillion. We've never seen
21:25deficits like that ever, and certainly not outside of a time of war. And we ought to
21:29ask ourselves, what did Joe Biden buy with all of our borrowed money? And the answer
21:35is not a damn thing. So we have got to take this country in a different direction, and
21:39that is what President Trump's economic policies aim to do. We are done selling out
21:45the American worker. We are done over-regulating American businesses. We are going to be guided
21:50by a very simple principle. Build in this country, we cut your taxes, we reduce your
21:55regulation, we reduce your energy costs. Build in this country, make American manufacturing
22:00great again, and we are going to fight for you, and the President will, too.
22:04APPLAUSE
22:13So let me conclude, again, by saying thank you. Thanks to Paul for hosting. Thank you
22:18to your incredible facility and for what you do every single day. But as a kid who grew
22:23up in a working-class family, let me just say this, that when I was growing up in Middletown,
22:28Ohio, everybody who worked hard seemed to be able to find a good job. And something
22:34changed. I don't know when I was a teenager or maybe a little bit later, but when that
22:38great steel mill that supported the town was the lifeblood of the town that I grew up in,
22:44when it went from 10,000 jobs to 2,000 jobs, the American working people started to get
22:49destroyed in the process. We can't keep doing that. We can't keep running the same exact
22:55playbook over and over again, expecting different results. We've got to run a different playbook.
23:01And seven weeks ago, President Trump started to run that different playbook. We are not
23:06going to borrow from future generations to buy stuff that the Communist Chinese make
23:11for us. We are not going to put people on welfare instead of giving them good, middle-class
23:17American jobs. We are not going to drive housing through the roof. We are going to make it
23:21affordable again to afford an American home. That is what we're trying to do. And yes,
23:27my friends, it's not going to happen overnight. We're not going to be able to fix everything
23:33that Joe Biden broke. But I think after seven weeks, the progress is pretty good. Egg prices
23:38are lower than they were when we took office. That's good.
23:43We've got gasoline is much lower than it was when we took office. We've got inflation
23:50at the lowest level that we've seen in many years for the American people. So we're making
23:55very, very good progress. But we know that seven weeks is not enough. What we need to
24:01really rebuild American manufacturing, to really invest in the American worker, is not
24:06just seven weeks of solid progress. It is four years of President Trump fighting for
24:12the American people every single day.
24:22Let me say, this is not going to be my last stop in Michigan by any means, but as I leave
24:28here to go back to Washington, I feel invigorated. I feel invigorated by what you're building
24:33at this facility. I feel invigorated by the incredible opportunities that this plant,
24:39this facility provides to American workers. I feel invigorated by the fact that you guys
24:44are dedicated to your communities, that you're working hard every single day, you're playing
24:49by the rules, and you're providing a good life for your families. And I feel invigorated
24:53that we finally have a president who is turning his back on 40 years of failed policy in Washington,
25:00D.C., and is getting back to investing in and fighting for the American worker. God
25:05bless you guys. Thank you all. Thank you for having me.

Recommended