Press Secretary

    We have reached a historic consensus to establish the U.S. Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. This is a first-of-its-kind economic partnership for the reconstruction and long-term success of the Ukrainian economy that will significantly benefit the United States and Americans. This partnership reflects the United States’ financial interest in securing Ukraine’s free, peaceful, and sovereign future. This partnership establishes a fund that will receive 50% of royalties, licensing fees, and other in-kind payments from natural resource projects in Ukraine. President Trump has been clear from the beginning. He wants to end the killing in this brutal war. This agreement shows how much the President cares about achieving lasting peace. To mark President Trump’s triumphant first 100 days, we have been sharing all week how President Trump has worked hard to fulfil the promises he made to the American people. And yesterday, the President once again showed why he is the most transparent and accessible President in American history when he held his fourth open cabinet meeting. Each cabinet secretary shared how their respective agencies are making life better for American families and businesses. President Trump’s entire agenda is based on one thing: common sense. While the Democrats were overreacting and increasingly insanity, President Trump promised to restore common sense to the United States. In over three months, that is precisely what he has done. He recognized that America is a sovereign nation that cannot survive without protecting its borders. So, he secured the borders in record time and ended the mass invasion of tens of millions of illegal immigrants into our homeland.

 

In our communities, that threatens our public safety. It is unacceptable for President Trump to allow rampant waste, fraud, and abuse of the American people’s precious technology tax dollars, which is why the President championed the historic Doge effort that has saved nearly 200 billion. President Trump knows America is blessed with abundant liquid gold beneath our feet in the form of fossil fuels. So, he is ending Joe Biden’s reckless war on American energy and restoring America’s energy dominance to lower costs and strengthen our national security. President Trump believes Americans should be free to drive whatever car they want. So he ended Joe Biden’s disastrous electric vehicle mandate and promoted real consumer choice. President Trump defended the Constitution’s promise of equal rights before the law regardless of skin colour. So, he ended radical DEI preferences and federal contracts and directed federal agencies to combat discrimination in the private sector relentlessly. DEI seeks to divide and pit Americans against each other based on characteristics that cannot be changed. President Trump knows that America’s children are our future and will never stop fighting for them. That’s why he ended the anti-American indoctrination that is eradicating children by eliminating support for radical, divisive gender and equality ideologies and why the President is protecting fundamental parental rights. And finally, the President believes in fundamental biology. Isn’t that something? That’s why he made it official policy of the United States Government that there are only two sexes, male and female. And because men and women are biologically different, President Trump ended the unfair and degrading practices that forced women to compete against men in sports and robbed them of their personal space.

 

 

 

One of the most significant crises that President Trump inherited upon taking office is a wave of racial discrimination and so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that have taken over public and private sector entities across the United States. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is that our air traffic controllers are hired and promoted based on race and gender, not on their ability to direct our nation’s air traffic. President Trump has ended all hiring, retention, promotion, and training in the Federal Government based on race and gender. This includes our law enforcement agencies. So once again, when we take office, even in the sensitive areas of law enforcement, national security, and intelligence, we hire individuals not based on their ability to carry a gun, not on their ability to guard the protection of American citizens, not based on their ability to conduct sensitive intelligence operations, but on their race and gender. And that is unacceptable. It will be based on merit across the Federal Government. But this is not just the federal Government. This is the private sector and, of course, our entire university and educational system. So, President Trump’s Justice Department, working with other departments and agencies, has clarified that this administration will fully enforce Title Six, Title 7, and Title 9 of our federal civil rights code. This is an economic issue.

 

When you recruit, retain, and hire based on merit, as President Trump has directed, you advance innovation, growth, investment, job creation, and the best and safest products for all Americans. When citizens go to, say, a hospital in a medical emergency, they don’t care what race or gender their doctor or nurse is. They want the best care they can get in that emergency. When they fly an aeroplane or when they’re in an aeroplane, they want the pilot to be the best, the safest pilot, regardless of what race or gender the pilot is. This is true across Government. In particular, if you look at our university system, this administration has opened investigations into universities nationwide for misconduct, and we’ve talked a lot about the Supreme Court ruling.

 

Surgical castration, castration drugs, and sterilization treatments for children are all barbaric. They violate all good medical ethics. They are completely unconscionable. They harm children for life and are irreparable. It is child abuse. It is child torture. It is medical malpractice. So, the Department of Health and Human Services under Bobby Kennedy, the Department of Justice, and other departments in this administration made it very clear to our medical providers and our hospital systems that you cannot use taxpayer money to perform these barbaric procedures on American children. HHS has systematically updated and eliminated all the fake science that was produced under the Biden administration that promoted sex change in children and the idea of ​​sterilizing children. That’s been cleared.

 

The President is also fighting to return the Justice Department to its primary mission of protecting public safety and putting violent criminals in jail rather than using it to target conservatives, Christians, and people of faith. The last administration ruthlessly and shamefully used the power of the Justice Department to go after law-abiding Americans, especially Trump supporters, conservatives, and Christians. That persecution is over. The Justice Department and the FBI are back to their jobs of hunting down bad guys, going after gangs, going after criminals, and keeping Americans safe.

President Trump is addressing the trade crisis that is gripping this country with the destruction of our manufacturing and industrial base, the shameful betrayal of American workers by Joe Biden, and the globalists who are shipping our entire supply chain overseas. He is addressing the scourge of mass, unrestricted illegal immigration that is turning us into a failed third-world nation and achieving the lowest illegal immigration rates in recorded history, bar none. He is addressing the economic crisis that is gripping this country by reopening America’s energy by beating inflation, lowering gas prices, ending the assault and reversing the assault on federal regulation by reopening coal, shale, oil, natural gas, and fighting now for the most significant tax cuts and the biggest reforms and the biggest deregulation and the most significant energy reforms in American history.

 

No. So, China is in a unique situation.

 

Right now, the Treasury Secretary is in the process of developing a plan that will answer the questions that you’re asking. Still, the President’s intent is evident: he will not allow China to continue to steal our intellectual property, illegally dump and subsidize their goods in our markets, manipulate their currency, and create an unsustainable trade deficit. We need a trade relationship with China that is not detrimental to our economy and national security. That should be the guiding principle for every single one of our goals. At the same time, the tariffs will bring significant revenue into this country, allowing us to continue our dramatic tax cuts and reform plans.

 

    The U.S. auto industry used to dominate the world. I believe the numbers in its heyday were 70% of all the cars in the world were made in Michigan. And now, we are a tiny fraction of the global market. The reason is that the United States has opened its markets to every foreign swindler and country that subsidizes its goods on the face of the earth. And their markets have been closed to us. Japan has closed its markets to our cars. The entire European Union has closed its markets to our cars. South Korea has closed its markets to our vehicles. All the countries I just mentioned have annual trade deficits of tens of billions of dollars in autos with the United States. Today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a letter to the Trump administration asking for slight business tax relief. They say it is necessary to save small businesses and prevent a recession. Stephen, is the administration considering slight business tax relief? The relief for small businesses would come from the most significant tax cut in American history. By the way, the tax cut is something that all Democrats plan to vote against. They are voting for a tax increase. Every middle-class family makes about $4,000. The President has clarified that 100% of the spending will be on investments in the United States. Companies that invest in the United States can deduct 100% of those expenses from their tax liability. This would be the most pro-small business tax bill in American history.

 

 

We’re opening mines all over the country. We’re also pursuing energy and mineral deals all over the world. Since the President issued his executive order also on coal deregulation, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in coal production in the United States. So, we’re tapping into the trillions of dollars of coal and mineral wealth in the United States. We’re a very mineral-rich country.

However, we’ll get that deal up and running as quickly as possible, but it’s meant to pay back the United States. I want to make another important point: many complaints about products being sold on Amazon are imitations of American products that China has stolen. Then they take the RIP, put it in the product, and try to undercut our manufacturers. So, as far as we’re concerned about the labelling issue on Amazon, I think the most important thing to fix is ​​to ensure that we’re not hurting the American consumer. And one more thing, Garcia, please. The administration is reportedly asking about his return. Is that to check a compliance box, or does President Trump want him back on U.S. soil or both? So, as Secretary Rubio said yesterday in a cabinet meeting, this administration will not publicly discuss the details of our foreign policy and negotiations with foreign countries.

 

    Secretary of State. Secretary Rubio is the person under the leadership and direction of the State Department who manages the day-to-day relationship with El Salvador. First, let’s take a moment to express our gratitude to El Salvador for agreeing to take some of the most dangerous terrorists off the streets of America and place them in a safe environment where they cannot continue to commit acts of terrorism or coordinate with the Maduro regime. President Trump, who our Democratic judges and Democratic activists are trying to keep on U.S. soil. The Daywa Train has the same legal status as al-Qaeda and ISIS. MS-13 has the same legal status as al-Qaeda and ISIS. They are foreign terrorists operating on our soil, and our gratitude to El Salvador for agreeing to detain these terrorists is enormous.

 

Someone who has extensive evidence of membership in MS-13, a terrorist organization. And, of course, he has MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles. This person is a clear and present danger to the safety of the American people. And it is a sad reflection on the state of our media and many of the outlets that are in this room that you are obsessively trying to defend these MS-13 terrorists. Well, there is no coverage in your newspapers of Americans being raped, tortured, and murdered by illegal immigrants that Biden has brought into our country. You know, you talk about due process. The Biden administration decided to grant extensive due process to two trained terrorists from Nagua who were arrested at the border just a few years ago. There were two men. They were from Venezuela. They were trained members of Nagua.

 

 

America today, Stephen, who says they can’t afford, in the words of the President, patience? Americans elected President Trump on the promise that he would lower prices across the board on day one. But he lowered prices across the board on day one. Well, last month, of course, groceries went up 4%. So, I mean, across the board, not just eggs. Inflation, as you acknowledge, is down dramatically. Gas prices are down dramatically. The latest GDP report showed a record 22% increase in investment in the United States. So everything and even egg prices, of course, which is all that’s been talked about for a couple of days, I think, are down like 80%. The reality is that we can either surrender economically to China or reclaim and shore up our manufacturing base and industrial needs.

 

 

And it’s not just in China. If there’s a national emergency, that’s the President’s first duty as commander in chief. If there’s any kind of national emergency, we can’t depend on foreign countries for steel, aluminium, energy, technology, and all the critical components we need to keep this country running. He’s fulfilled his duty as commander in chief that every President before him has failed to fulfil or has actively betrayed. And despite inheriting all of this, as I mentioned, inflation is down, jobs are up, and in particular, by the way, jobs for American workers. So, for the first time, you look at this jobs report, and the number of Government workers is down, artificially inflating the previous jobs. Jobs for non-citizens are down. Jobs for American citizens are skyrocketing. The President acknowledged that you might have to pay for toys and a little more for the dolls he was talking about. So, in terms of what he was saying, he was making a point that I think almost every American consumer would agree with if they were given a choice between a and I’m a parent of young children. A choice between a doll from China that might have lead paint in it that’s not as well made as a doll that’s made in America that has higher environmental standards and regulations and one that’s made to a higher level of quality and both of those products are on Amazon.

 

Press conference

Steven Rodriguez, UNDP resident representative in Afghanistan, joins virtually from Kabell. They have a report to talk to you about, the UNDP socio-economic review of Afghanistan called Fragile Gains. Deepening livelihoods in security, why the Afghanistan story is different, in our deep dive. So you will see that this is a story of what I call "divergence," which is unusual in a lot of economic analysis. This is the first time since 2019 that we have seen positive GDP growth, and it's at 2.7%. And that's because there are more substantial revenues from cross-sector trade, tax collections, mining, etc.

 

Normally, if you see a positive increase in GDP, which has had negative growth rates for the last 5 years, you would think that that actually means an increase in living standards at the household level. But our UNP report actually looks at the household economy. It looks at what life is like for households in Afghanistan today, and you see that it is different. It even shows a decline in basic indicators if you look at the security data that we have collected. Now, that is reversible, and the good news is that there is more income that is actually going to ordinary Afghan men, women, and children. Let me give you three or four data points that really tell the picture. First, the data shows that about 75% of Afghans are now in what we call livelihood insecurity, and that has been the case since 2023. That means they are basically living hand to mouth, and about 90% of them are exposed to major natural or economic shocks and are unable to cope with those shocks.

 

That's up significantly from 2023, which was around 65%. Yes. Now, the two most pressing and striking basic needs issues are the decline in the quality of housing and the quality of health and health care. The majority of women say they earn their income through casual labor. Uh, and you know this: you can see the almost complete disappearance of women from the formal labor force, and finally, the report shows some strange regional disparities. So, if you look at the northeastern region close to the Tajikistan border and the southern region close to the Pakistani border, I think they are the ones that are lagging the most in terms of household income. Although the biggest decline is in the central highlands, that may also be due to the harsh climate conditions and, you know, the natural disasters that hit Afghanistan last year. So, to end my comments, let me say a couple of things. First, the math is obvious.

 

This country, by not allowing 50% of its workforce, which is women, to really contribute fully to the economy, is likely to lose about a billion dollars in 2023 and 2024. That's about six percentage points of GDP. For the UNP, we work very closely with women in business. Our goal is to see how we can develop micro-enterprises. We work with about 80,000 women micro-enterprise owners who are trying to scale up to small and medium scales because that will really have a huge impact on the household economy because the number of people they employ and all the goods they produce will triple. I close with one thought, which is that we learned the hard way from Afghanistan that not investing early on directly with the community and delaying development for the household has had a huge cost.

 

while the economy is showing signs of bottoming out after a prolonged period of decline that was kind of referred to. Now we have a mix of chronic structural problems combined with new challenges that are emerging And the data in this new report tells us that we should see it as a sign of difficult times to come for the Afghan people.

 

We have seen the trade deficit ballooning, and the data is in the report. We have seen the international payments system collapse, which is further crippling trade and commerce in the country. International banks will not do business with local banks, and so on. The World Bank and others are projecting stagnant economic growth, and for the past three months, the government has been struggling to pay the salaries of public sector workers, and that is evident on the streets of Kabul and in the major cities as more people go hungry and are unemployed every day. Our data also shows that household incomes and consumption are falling significantly in 2024. More stable forms of income, such as formal employment, are declining for all groups in society and have been replaced by reliance on informal sources of income, remittances from casual labor, and humanitarian aid. Now, all of this is happening in a context where humanitarian aid is being drastically cut in half in 2024 compared to 2023. It was around 3.2 billion in 2023, down to 1.6 billion in 2024.

 

By 2024, we also have over 800,000 Afghans who were forcibly repatriated from Pakistan. And this year, our projection is between 600,000 and 1.5 million more will return. We have to remember that Afghanistan is the sixth country in the world in terms of climate change impacts. So every year, we go to provinces, districts, and villages to visit thousands of households that have lost everything: homes, livelihoods, and crops destroyed by flash floods and drought. And we still have almost 600,000 former opium farmers and workers who still have no alternative livelihoods three years after the opium ban.

 

We are now facing a protracted compound crisis, and frankly, we are really going backward, and we see a reversal even in some of the progress that has been made. Now, of course, we at the UN, with our partners, are acting on many elements of the crisis in the UNP, for example, we have provided needed small-scale community infrastructure that has benefited over 5.9 million Afghans so that they have access to water, irrigation, and basic health services. We refer to the fact that we have supported almost 100,000 micro, small, and medium enterprises, of which about 80,000 are run by women. We are providing off-grid energy to social services, hospitals, health centers, and schools, as well as to small businesses.

 

And we continue to provide as much support as we can to thousands of former opium farmers so that they can have alternative sources of income. But again, the message here is that we are not able to operate at the scale that is required to address the magnitude of the challenges that we are seeing. And now, as global funding cuts are taking their toll, we are seeing the reversal of the gains that have been made. For example, in the last 3 to 4 weeks alone, we have seen over 400 health facilities that normally provide critical, life-saving services close, and more are scheduled to close in the coming weeks. We must accelerate the transition away from a reliance on dwindling humanitarian aid and toward the kind of investments that can kick-start economic recovery, create meaningful jobs, and provide people with access to basic but sustainable social services.

 

We must shift to investments in basic water, energy, community infrastructure, banking, and microfinance services that channel capital into the hands of entrepreneurs, especially women entrepreneurs, insurance products, and credit guarantee schemes that reduce the risk of lending. And, of course, we must continue to lobby the de facto authorities to roll back the very restrictive policies imposed on women and girls and make the kind of policy and regulatory reforms that are needed to catalyze private sector growth and job creation. The Gulf States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc., have played a key role in lobbying the de facto authorities to roll back these restrictive policies as well.

 

So, we see a coalition of member states involved in a variety of issues. So, it's not just the UN or the international NOS that is active. It's a variety of stakeholders that are active both in humanitarian and basic needs assistance to the country, as well as in terms of human rights advocacy, women's rights, and girls' rights. US funding. The US government as a whole, not just USAD across its departments, remains one of the most significant funders of humanitarian and basic needs assistance in Afghanistan. This is not just before 2021 but also after 2021. So yes, the cuts in US funding will have a significant impact on the living conditions of the people in Afghanistan. That's for sure. However, one of the significant problems with the fiscal policy of the de facto authorities is that about 50% of the country's budget is allocated to security and defense. It doesn't go into creating infrastructure that supports business. It doesn't go into human resources, into health and education for the people. It doesn't address the policy and regulatory reforms that are needed to give international investors confidence in the country. So there are a lot of shortcomings, from allocating more than 50% of the country's budget to defense to enforcing the very strict morality laws that they have implemented. Now, coming to the question of whether they are aware, we must remember that, like any other government, it is not homogeneous.

     

Press conference

   

Global trade is expected to be negatively impacted by policies and tariffs, with merchandise trade volumes falling by 1.5% by 2025. The biggest impact is felt in North America, while Asia and Europe still contribute positively, albeit at lower levels than before. WTO reform is seen as critical to trade stability. Global trade projections show a decline of 0.2% by 2025 due to new tariffs and increased trade. The decline could reach 1.5% if additional risks materialize. Africa faces significant challenges in global trade, with its high dependence on certain exports making it vulnerable to economic shocks.

    Self-reliance and diversification are key to enhancing Africa’s economic resilience in the future. Global trade is expected to decline due to the US’s tit-for-tat tariffs, which are reducing growth in the volume of goods traded. Developing countries will feel the worst impact of this policy shift. Trade diversion between China and Europe is expected to increase by 6%, but there will also be an impact on European exports to other economies.

This situation highlights the importance of careful management to prevent further tensions in global trade relations. The current global crisis is affecting poor and developing countries, so it is important to consider its impact and protect them. Reforms in the WTO are needed to create fairer and more effective policies. African countries are trying to pursue a balanced approach to trade, despite pressures to choose sides in global trade relations. They want a less fragmented development and to maintain autonomy in their trade policies. Higher import tariffs are affecting economic growth projections in various regions, especially in North America and Asia. This shows the significant impact of global trade policies on local economies. US exports are expected to decline due to import tariffs and retaliation from other countries. This creates new challenges in the competitiveness of US products in the global market.