Trump rings opening bell at New York Stock Exchange

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

The Republican built his fortune as a New York real estate investor before turning to politics. During his first term as president, he measured his success in part by the strength of the stock market, which has so far welcomed his re-election.

The ringing of the bell signifies the start or closing of the trading day at the world’s largest stock exchange, and is considered an honor. 

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The act has historically been reserved for company executives celebrating an initial public offering or other major corporate milestones, but celebrities and politicians like Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela and Arnold Schwarzenegger have also rung it. 

Before ringing the opening bell, Trump said that he thinks the U.S. economy will be strong in his second term but warned there are challenges to be dealt with.

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“We had a very strong economy, and we’re going to do that again, but I think we’re going to even up it because now we have experience we didn’t have. Now I know everybody,” Trump said at the NYSE.

President-elect Donald Trump rings the opening bell on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 12, 2024, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images / Getty Images)

“I think we’re going to have a tremendous run, we have to straighten out some problems, some big problems in the world,” he said. “When we left, we didn’t have any of these problems. We didn’t have Russia with Ukraine, we didn’t have Israel Oct. 7, we didn’t have the Afghanistan disaster, we didn’t have inflation – we had no inflation.”

He also said that bringing businesses to the U.S. from overseas will be a priority once again in his second term.

“For those that are running the big companies, those great big beautiful companies, nobody’s going to be leaving us,” the President-elect said. “You’re going to be coming back, you’re going to be bringing it back to the United States. We are incentivizing everybody to come back to the United States, we want you back here – car manufacturers, everybody.”

President-elect Donald Trump rings the opening bell on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 12, 2024, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Trump also spoke about the importance of ramping up energy production to help bring down prices for American households.

“We have one product that nobody has, really, to the extent that we do – it’s called oil and gas. There’s no country in the world that has more, we’re No.1,” Trump said. “I brought it to No.1 during my first term in terms of production,” Trump said.

“We’ll do numbers that nobody will really see before and when that happens, prices are going to start coming down because people can’t afford their groceries and they’re going to be affording their groceries very soon,” he added.

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Trump ringing the opening bell coincided with him being honored as Time magazine’s person of the year and said, “It is an honor, and this is a double, because usually they don’t coordinate the man of the year or the person of the year with the ringing of the bell, and brilliantly, you picked them both at the same time.”

Reuters contributed to this report.