President Donald Trump will use his first speech on the State of the Union before Congress to talk about building a “safe, strong and proud” country and promote changes in security, immigration, trade, economy and infrastructure.
The White House today made public the theme of Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday: “building a secure, strong and proud United States.”
“The president will speak from the heart, it will be a speech that will echo American values ​​and that will unite us with patriotism and also unite us around the great opportunities that all Americans are encountering,” a senior official told reporters. of the White House that requested anonymity.
According to that source, Trump will review the achievements of his first year in power and, in the future, will focus on five areas: economy, infrastructure, immigration, trade and national security.
In the area of ​​national security, Trump will talk about North Korea and the tensions with the regime of Kim Jong-un, who last year claimed to have developed a missile capable of carrying an atomic head and reach any point in the US, including the east coast, where Washington and New York are located.
“The president will talk about national security, talk about very important issues and we can expect him to mention North Korea,” said the White House official.
Trump has often used a belligerent tone against North Korea, threatening the country with “a fire and a fury that the world has never seen.”
According to the White House, Trump on Tuesday will lower the rhetoric a bit, but will continue using a hard tone similar to the one he used in November to address the National Assembly (Parliament) of South Korea, where he urged Pyongyang not to underestimate the US. UU and advocated seeking “peace through force”.
In addition, according to the newspaper Politico, Trump announced during his speech an executive order to keep open the prison of the military base in Guantanamo, in the southeast of Cuba, and to cancel another decree, proclaimed in 2009 by his predecessor, Barack Obama, who wanted to close the jail.
The White House official who spoke to the press did not confirm that information about Guantánamo, published this week by Politico and other media.
On the other hand, facing Congress and the nation, Trump will insist on his protectionist vision of “the US first” with a “fair trade” for American workers, according to the White House.
In that part of the discourse focused on trade, it is possible that the president mentions China, country with which the US it registers a bulky trade deficit, and Mexico, with which it is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in force since 1994 and in which Canada also participates.
Addressing his legislative priorities, Trump will unveil the most important points of his plan to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, which will require an investment of $ 1.7 trillion over ten years.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the situation of US infrastructure. by assuring that a large part is “in ruins” and seems “of the third world”.
Therefore, the president wants to concentrate much of the economic effort of his second year around this ambitious plan.
Addressing his first year in office, Trump will boast about his economic achievements: accelerated growth at 3% per year, historical records at the stock exchange, an unemployment rate at 4.1% and the country’s largest tax reform in several decades with Notable tax cuts for companies.
Finally, Trump will ask Congress to act on immigration and reiterate its offer to legalize 1.8 million undocumented youth who arrived in the United States. of children, known as “dreamers”, in exchange for 25,000 million dollars to build the wall with Mexico and strengthen border security.
Given the importance of the issue of immigration in the speech, at least 24 Democrats from the House of Representatives have already announced that they will invite a group of “dreamers” to Congress in order to show their disagreement with Trump and to give visibility to the uncertainty that many of them live.
The time is running out for the 690,000 young people who are currently protected from deportation by the DACA program, whose term expires in March by order of Trump.
For its part, the White House has not yet revealed its list of guests to the speech, but said that there will be victims of the epidemic of opiate abuse in the country.
