Speeches and Remarks

Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York

5:49 P.M. EDT

THE FIRST LADY: Good evening. (Applause.)

Aren’t all of our U.S. military musicians spectacular? (Applause.) Thank you for all that you — for joining us this evening. It’s great to be with so many friends here.

For Joe, diplomacy is personal. It’s why, for more than 50 years, he’s created deep personal bonds with world leaders. He shows up for our allies and our partners. He listens and is always eager to debate complex international issues to find common ground.

Serving as first lady has be- — of the United States is the honor of my life. This is our — (applause). Thank you.

This is our fi- — our United Nations — our final United Nations General Assembly as president and first lady. So, tonight, I want to take this moment to celebrate Joe and honor the relationships he’s built with all of you — (applause) — to honor these relationships with all of you to shape a brighter future for people around the world.

Please join me in welcoming my husband, President Joe Biden. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) That was worth the trip. (Laughter.)

Well, welcome, everyone. I’m delighted to see you all. You know, my fellow leaders and friends we’ve honored here, it’s an honor to welcome you here tonight.

I should start off by saying we owe a special thanks tonight to — to Mayor Bloomberg. He’s not the mayor right now, but he’s still the mayor. (Laughter.) Mr. Mayor, thank you for all you’ve done.

I want to begin by quoting someone who I wish was here tonight: my mom, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden. (Applause.) Growing up, my mom had an expression. She had a lot of expression. She had a backbone like a ramrod. But my mom, she used to say, “Joey, remember, never bow, never bend, never yield, and never give up.”

Folks, as I said yesterday at the United Nations, I recognize the challenges the world faces: Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, war, hunger, poverty, climate change. But my message to you tonight is this: We must never, ever, ever bow, bend, yield, or give up. And most importantly, we must never lose faith — lose faith in our abilities to do so much.

I was first elected to the United States Senate when I was 29 years old, 280 years ago. (Laughter.) Since then, I’ve seen the impossible become — the impossible become reality, for real. I’ve seen the Berlin Wall come down. I’ve seen Poland leave the (inaudible) — I shouldn’t go on, I guess. But I’ve seen apartheid end. I’ve seen humanity pull together to prevent a nuclear war. I’ve seen war criminals and dictators face justice and accountability for human rights violations. And I’ve seen countries in the Middle East make peace. We must always remember.

In America, I was (inaudible) — I spent a lot of time with Xi of China, and we were in the Tibetan Plateau, and it was one of my 90-some hours alone with him. And he looked at me; he said, “Can you define America for me?” This is an absolutely true story. He said, “Can you define America for me?” I said, “Yes. In one word: possibilities — possibilities.” (Applause.) We believe anything is possible. No, I really mean it. Remember, nothing is impossible.

And, folks, look, in our time, we turn the page on the — on the — on a whole range of issues. We turned the page. Nothing is impossible, as I said, but we turned the page on the worst pandemic in a century. We defended Ukraine as a tyrant threatened to wipe it off the map. We made the largest investment in history to fight climate change, the existential threat to humanity.

And, folks, time and again — and I mean this sincerely — time and again, our nation and our world found a way forward. But make no mistake: It didn’t happen by accident. Nothing was inevitable. It took people like all of you assembled here tonight refusing to give up, rejecting the forces that pull us apart, believing that change is possible, and fighting to make it so every single day. That’s what you in this room assembled have done.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s our change. Together, we can broker deals, end wars and suffering. We can stop the spread of disease and dangerous weapons alike. We can make AI
empower people, not shackle them. We can cut our emissions and achieve our climate ambitions. We can leave our children, literally, a better world.

That’s our obligation, and we can. We can do this.

I can say to you — and I mean this sincerely — I’ve never more optimistic in my life because of all of you, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep it up.

And every time I’d walk out of my grandpop’s house up in Scranton, he’d yell, “Joey, keep the faith.” My grandmother would go, “No, Joey, spread it.” Spread it. Spread it. Spread it. (Applause.)

Folks, remember, nothing is beyond our capacity when we work together. Nothing at all.

So, thank you, thank you, thank you for all you’re doing. I appreciate it very, very much.

It’s an honor to be with you. Thank you. (Applause.)

5:54 P.M. EDT

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Today, we stand together to lift up and reflect on the progress we are making as a nation – progress propelled by the hard work of the American people, endowed with the inventiveness to imagine a better future and inspired with the willingness to roll up our sleeves and build it.

Over the last few years, we have come together around this hopeful calling – united in this important task at this important time. We are building back not only from an awful economic crisis, but also from decades of underinvestment in our infrastructure, our communities, and our industrial strength – truly, an underinvestment in America.

So many times, each of us has driven by that idled factory or blighted plot, some place where the loss of opportunity is fenced in and the chance for a comeback seemingly fenced out. These are monuments to underinvestment and a failed economic policy that promised prosperity will just trickle down – but never delivered.

Fortunately, if we invest in America, there is a better way forward.

Under President Biden and Vice President Harris’s leadership, that is exactly where we are headed – bringing down the barriers to economic opportunity, lowering costs for American families, and, in just three and a half years, creating 16 million jobs with rising wages and with unemployment at its lowest level in 50 years.

We see the bet on America’s promise, our potential and possibilities, paying off as we reclaim the lead in the global race on clean energy and in the interconnected fight against the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.

And we see that bet paying off as we find solutions to what felt like unsolvable problems.

Today, finally, America is leading in the race to innovate the technologies needed to tackle climate pollution in the industrial sector.

The largest source of global climate pollution and the source of about 30 percent of U.S. climate pollution, the industrial sector has long been considered “hard to decarbonize.”

But we’re changing the game. To meet our climate goals, we are innovating and modernizing the way we make steel, aluminum, cement, and other bedrock materials of our economy.

The transformation is underway, and not by accident. The Biden-Harris Administration has deployed all tools in its policy toolbox to expand clean manufacturing. Buoyed by this support, American manufacturers and workers are stepping up.

Yet, as they reach for scale, their efforts have found some critical scaffolding missing – an inability to measure progress.

The U.S. government lacks a comprehensive emissions intensity measurement system. That has been an inhibitor.

Today, we are making progress to help fill that gap – to build the data infrastructure we need to drive forward our clean manufacturing strategy.

We are launching a new and critical effort at the Department of Energy – a pilot program that will offer data tools to track and accelerate reductions in industrial emissions, and to ensure that clean manufacturing remains competitive.

It is a meaningful move to build not just a foundation, but a launch pad for our ambition in this space.

Before offering more details on this data effort, let me describe how this data puzzle piece fits into our broader clean manufacturing strategy.

To fuel today’s industrial transformation, the Biden-Harris Administration is currently deploying the largest investment in clean manufacturing in U.S. history.

These investments are supporting game-changing projects that transform how we manufacture materials that form the backbone of our economy.

A couple of projects will make the U.S. one of the first nations in the world to convert clean hydrogen into clean steel.

One project will build a new clean aluminum smelter – the first primary aluminum smelter to be built in the U.S. in 45 years – which will avoid about 75 percent of the emissions of a conventional facility.

Other projects will virtually eliminate the emissions associated with making cement – a millennia-old process that is responsible for about 8 percent of global, human-caused carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, we’re pairing this supply push with a demand pull. We’re working to ensure that there’s a market on the other end of these investments for the clean steel and cement that’s produced.

Buy Clean, a flagship initiative of the Biden-Harris Administration, leverages the U.S. government’s sway as the largest purchaser on Earth to spur demand for low-emissions construction materials. When the government buys steel for federal buildings or concrete for highways, Buy Clean ensures that we support businesses that are investing in clean production.

Right now, agencies are deploying more than $4 billion under Buy Clean to support government purchases of low-emissions materials. And we’ve recruited a dozen states to do the same, harnessing the power of their procurement as a spur for innovation and scale.

As we invest in clean manufacturing, we are reminded of the importance to not let unfair trade undercut this industrial transformation.

For too long, trade policies that ignore climate change have incentivized a shift in energy-intensive manufacturing to countries with lower standards and higher climate pollution.

We need to level the playing field, and we need to level it up.

Take a look at aluminum. The U.S. used to be the world’s biggest producer of aluminum. Many of our aluminum smelters were powered by clean hydropower. But starting in the 1990s, smelter after smelter closed down under divestment and unfair trade. Each closure spelled lost jobs for workers and lost tax revenue for industrial communities. Today, we have only four primary aluminum smelters left in the country – four.  

As U.S. production declined, production in China rose to take its place, driven in part by China’s non-market policies. Today, more than half of the world’s aluminum is made in China. That’s an industrial competitiveness problem. It’s also a climate problem. Because the average ton of aluminum made in China is 65 percent more emissions-intensive than in the U.S.

This race to the bottom has undercut our climate goals, the competitiveness of clean manufacturers, and the good jobs they offer to industrial workers and communities.

Our workers and communities deserve a race to the top – one that supports climate action across borders while buttressing our investments to expand clean manufacturing at home.

That is why earlier this year we created the new White House Task Force on Climate, Trade, and Industrial Competitiveness. To develop tools and approaches that will help close the climate loophole in our trade policies. To ensure a level playing field for our clean manufacturers and workers. To accelerate industrial decarbonization globally.

We want to work with trade partners, Congress, and industry, labor, and environmental stakeholders to help build a new trade framework that actually rewards clean manufacturing.

The Task Force is taking a strategic, cross-governmental approach, building on decades of research and policy expertise. The work of the Task Force includes: identifying and developing data and methodologies for measuring the emissions intensity of traded goods; identifying opportunities to accelerate industrial decarbonization in emissions-intensive, trade exposed sectors; exploring a broad set of potential climate and trade policy options that help us achieve both our domestic and international climate goals; and coordinating engagement with key stakeholders, Congress, and trading partners.

The Task Force is working with like-minded trade partners and allies at all levels of development to develop compatible approaches that foster a level playing field, incentivize industrial decarbonization, reduce the emissions embodied in traded goods, and ensure developing countries have the opportunity and capacity to participate in this low-carbon trade system.

We are engaging with them as they pursue similar efforts, including on questions of data and methodologies, administrability, and policy design. We seek to build a fair and compatible framework for supporting and rewarding clean manufacturing, not a patchwork of divergent approaches.

Data is one area that has been a priority for us – an area we see as primed for progress. Reliable, transparent emissions intensity data is the foundation of effective climate-aligned trade policies. As you know, part of the work of our Task Force is to help ensure that we have credible, robust, and granular data for climate and trade policies.

In addition, as we invest billions in new, emissions-cutting technologies for manufacturing, policymakers and manufacturers need reliable estimates of how quickly we’re reducing the emissions intensity of essential materials.

So do the buyers of these materials. Global demand is rising for steel, aluminum, cement, and other materials that are made with a low level of emissions. New climate-focused trade policies around the world, national green procurement efforts such as Buy Clean, industry commitments, and consumer preferences are all driving this rising demand for clean manufacturing.

As the market for clean manufacturing grows, the United States, our trading partners, and consumers need an accurate and transparent system for measuring the emissions intensity of energy-intensive industrial products.

So far, the United States has not had a comprehensive emissions intensity measurement system.

But today we can report progress to help fill in this missing puzzle piece. The pilot program that the Department of Energy is announcing today will help coordinate data sources across the federal government to assemble rigorous, timely, and accurate emissions intensity statistics.

These metrics will support our climate and clean manufacturing goals alike. An accurate, whole-of-government emissions intensity framework will help to incentivize further reductions in industrial emissions and support the competitiveness of clean manufacturing as the emissions intensity of traded goods becomes increasingly important.

The White House Task Force on Climate, Trade, and Industrial Competitiveness looks forward to continued work with Congress and industry, labor unions, environmental advocates, and academic stakeholders to develop the data infrastructure we need. In fact, we will be following up today’s announcement with a webinar laying out more details and drawing our stakeholders in to be even closer thought partners.

Critically, we also look forward to continued work with trade partners to explore compatible, coordinated approaches to emissions intensity data so we can avoid a patchwork of divergent approaches.

With solid data, we can accelerate the Biden-Harris Administration’s comprehensive clean manufacturing strategy – an interlocking mix of investment, procurement, and trade policies to tackle a major source of climate pollution while boosting a major source of good jobs.

Working together, we can win the industrial transformation we need for a livable climate and a more equitable economy. We can launch the race to the top that our workers and communities deserve.

The promise is what I saw last year in Toledo, Ohio. What was once a brownfield is now the site of a new manufacturing plant, where union steel workers are forging a cleaner product than what we used to import from overseas. The Hot Briquetted Iron from that Cleveland Cliffs factory is the start of a supply chain critical to U.S. automotive manufacturing – for UAW workers an hour away in Michigan making next generation vehicles and helping America lead that global industry. This is the real promise: not just steel in the ground, but steel in the spine of the American middle class. A real chance to win the future.

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InterContinental New York Barclay
New York, New York

2:17 P.M. EDT

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Well, General Secretary, it’s great to see you again, have you here in the United States.  We appreciate it.

Is this simultaneous interpretation?

One year ago, in Hanoi, we began a new era of relations with Vietnam and the United States, and we elevated our partnership to the highest level as possible.  Since then, we’ve been — I’ve been very proud of the progress we’ve made.

First of all, we made historic investments in semiconductors and supply chains.  And I want to note this was made possible through our CHIPS and Science Act here at home.

Second, we launched unprecedented cooperation on cybersecurity.

And third, we stood united building a more open and secure Indian Ocean committed to freedom of navigation and the rule of law.

And finally, we continue our pathbreaking work to heal the wounds of war.  I’m proud that we, the United States, have committed $215 million to complete the detox — the tox- — the detox remediation, as well as — as we have many more things to do as well.

Secretary General, as I — or General Secretary, I should say — I suggested at the U.N. address, there’s nothing beyond our capacity when we work together.  So, we welcome you all and looking forward to our conversation.

The floor is yours.

GENERAL SECRETARY LÂM:  (As interpreted.)  It’s a great pleasure to meet with you again, Mr. President.  Well, this is the third time we met.  As the Vietnamese proverb says, “It feels like a destined encounter.”

First, on behalf of the party, the state, and people of Vietnam and the family of the late General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng, I wish to convey our heartfelt gratitude to you, Mr. President, for your sincere condolences on his passing and thank you for dispatching State Secretary Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to pay their respects.

We deeply value the warm regards from the United States and from you personally, President Biden, towards late General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng.  And even during his lifetime, the late general secretary often spoke of you with fond memories and sincere appreciation.

His historic visit to the U.S. in 2015 followed by your visit to Vietnam in September last year were historic milestones and have significantly advanced the growth of the Vietnam-U.S. relations, resulting in a higher level of the relations that we enjoy today.

We appreciate very much your liking towards Vietnam, and your historic contributions have been pivotal in elevating our bilateral relations to the comprehensive strategic partnership as we enjoy today. 

Thank you very much, once again, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Thank you.  And, again, welcome.  And welcome to all of you. 

Thank you.

2:22 P.M. EDT

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InterContinental New York Barclay
New York, New York

4:03 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  (Applause.)  Welcome to Washington.

Fellow leaders, friends, nine hundred and f- — for 944 days, Putin has waged his vicious onslaught against Ukraine.  For 944 days, the Ukrainian people have stood unwavering, unbroken, and unbowed. 

Today, we’re launching a Joint Declaration of Support for Ukrainian Recovery and Reconstruction to make it clear: We stand with Ukraine now and in the future. 

That starts on the battlefield.  I am determined to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevail in its fight for its survival.  Tomorrow, I will announce a series of actions to accelerate support for Ukraine’s military. 

But we know Ukraine’s future victory is about more than what happens on the battlefield.  It’s also about what Ukrainians do to make the most of a free and independent future, of which so many have sacrificed so much. 

With this declaration, over 30 countries and the European Union have made important commitments. 

First, as Ukraine continues to make necessary reforms to fight corruption, we are committed to providing Ukraine with the resources it needs to build back stronger than it was before. 

Folks, it’s no secret Russian attacks have caused significant damage to Ukraine.  And less well-known is the story of Ukraine’s economic resilience. 

Ukraine’s GDP is stable and actually growing.  Ukraine’s defense industry, forged in the fire, is six times larger than it was a year ago.  And Ukraine is now exporting almo- –exporting almost as much grain as it did before the war, feeding people and the world once again. 

Ukraine’s economy is resilient, and together, we can help Ukraine go from economic resilience to economic revival.  

Second, we commit to hold Russia accountable for the damage it has caused.  This builds on a historic effort by the G7.  Back in 2022, two days after Russia’s invasion, members of the G7 and the EU worked together to freeze $280 billion in Russian Central Bank funds outside of Russia. 

This summer, at the G7, the United States and our partners reached a decision to unlock $50 billion from the proceeds of those frozen assets to put that money to work for Ukraine as it rebuilds and recovers its economy. 

Today, we reaffirm that with all our respective countries and legal systems, Russia’s sovereign assets will remain immobilized until Russia ends its aggression and pays for the damage it has caused. 

Finally, we’re committed to coordinate closely, through efforts like the Ukraine Donor Platform, so we can make sure that each dollar goes as far as possible, reinforcing one another instead of duplicating work. 

Let me close with this.  This war has shown the Ukrainians can do anything they set their minds to. 

Today, we show the Ukrainians you’re not alone.  You’re not alone in this fight.  You’re not alone in the reconstruction that comes after.  

Ukrainian people have fought and died to win a future of freedom and independence.  Mr. President, we all — we all stand by your side to help Ukraine make the most of it. 

Thank you all very much.  (Applause.) 

4:07 P.M. EDT

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