WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump shared his top three accomplishments of his first year back in office in response to a question from The Epoch Times.
“I think the building of a really powerful military has been a great achievement, and that would include the Venezuela thing,” Trump said during a White House press briefing on Jan. 20 that ran for almost two hours.
“That would include the attack on Iran and the wiping out of the nuclear threat. I think that’s been really amazing what we’ve done militarily.”
Trump also touted economic investments coming into the United States.
“I think what we’ve done in business has been incredible,” he said. “We have $18 trillion coming in. Plants are being built all over. Thousands of plants are being built all over the country.”
Included in that total are investments from companies such as Meta and Apple, at $600 billion each; NVIDIA, at $500 billion; Micron, at $200 billion; and Amazon, at $100 billion. It also includes investment from countries, such as $1.4 trillion from the United Arab Emirates, $1.2 trillion from Qatar, $1 trillion from Japan, $600 billion from Saudi Arabia, $500 billion from India, and $450 billion from South Korea.
Finally, Trump stated that lowering drug prices by using most-favored-nation status was also a major accomplishment. Under most-favored-nation principles, one developed country pays no more for a drug than another developed country does.
“I think that most favored nations for drugs is something that nobody thought they’d be able to get,” he said.
“Tariffs helped me there because the nations would have never gone along with it if I wasn’t able to say, ‘If you don’t go along with it, we’re going to put a 10 or 15 or 20 percent tariff on your nation.' And they went along, and our drug prices are going to come down at numbers never even seen before, never even thought possible before.”
Drug manufacturers Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi—along with five others—joined the White House initiative to market drugs in accordance with lower prices in other countries. Soon the deal will include the 17 largest manufacturers, according to the president.
“This represents the greatest victory for patient affordability in the history of American health care, by far, and every single American will benefit,” Trump said during the signing ceremony.
“So, this is the biggest thing ever to happen on drug pricing and on health care. This will have a tremendous impact on health care itself.”
The president spent more than an hour on the one-year anniversary of his second inauguration highlighting his administration’s accomplishments.
Securing the nation’s southern border was a recurring theme, as Trump pointed out negative net migration resulting from more than 2.6 million illegal immigrants leaving the country via deportations and incentivized self-departures.
White House staffers passed out a 36-page document titled “365 Wins in 365 Days: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity” listing achievements ranging from border policy to national security, the economy, and foreign policy, among many others.
Trump also emphasized efforts to apprehend violent criminals, displaying dozens of mugshots of individuals arrested in Minnesota in recent weeks.
Approximately 10,000 people were charged with various offenses recently in the state, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
