He made these comments on Wednesday at the annual New York Times DealBook Summit in New York City.
“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow.”
“By the way, all of our problems, all of our economic problems, like if you look at the deficit and the national debt, and how gigantic it is as a portion of GDP — these are real problems, and they’re real long-term problems — and the way you get out of them is by outgrowing them,” he continued. “You’re going to solve the problem of the national debt by making it a smaller percentage of GDP, not by shrinking the national debt, but by growing the GDP. You have to grow the denominator. That means you have to grow GDP at 3%, 4%, 5% a year, and let the national debt grow slower than that. If you can do that, this is a very manageable problem.”
Bezos emphasized the importance of adopting “a growth orientation” and “a growth mindset” to ensure the U.S. maintains its leadership position.
“We are the luckiest country in the world,” he said. “We have all these natural resources, including energy independence. We have the best risk capital system in the world, by far.”
Bezos stated that America’s strength in risk capital draws major companies, investments, and entrepreneurial success to the country.
“It’s not the banking system. We have a good banking system, but so does Europe,” he said. “What’s different here is that you can raise $50 million of seed capital to do something that only has a 10% chance of working. That’s crazy, but the people who are giving you that seed capital know that their expected value is still positive, in many cases — or they’re at least gambling that that’s true. That risk capital system we have in this country is turning out to be very hard for other countries to duplicate.”
Bezos reiterated his “super optimistic” outlook on the potential impact of Trump’s approach to deregulation.
He also noted that Trump has evolved over the past eight years, describing him as “calmer,” “more confident,” and “more settled” now.
NEW: Jeff Bezos says he's 'very optimistic' about the incoming Trump administration, offering to help streamline regulations and dismissing concerns about Elon Musk leveraging government power against competitors.
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) December 5, 2024
"I'm actually very optimistic this time around. He seems to have… pic.twitter.com/0FdTSRFVSc
