Trump rings NYSE bell to open trading, family by his side

After being recognized as Time magazine's "Person of the Year" at the New York Stock Exchange, President-elect Donald Trump rang the bell to open the financial exchange on Thursday with Melania, his daughters Ivanka and Tiffany, and Vice President-elect JD Vance at his side.

He rang the bell with the backdrop of Time magazine's cover of him being awarded the "Person of the Year" for 2024. He joins 13 other presidents who have taken the title and was awarded the same recognition in 2016. He rang the bell after he vowed to strengthen the US economy in his upcoming term. 

As he did so, people broke out into chants of "USA!" inside the NYSE building.

Trump spoke for the occasion, saying, “We’re going to have a tremendous run. We have to straighten out some problems, some big problems in the world. When we left, we didn’t have any of these problems. We didn’t have Russia, with Ukraine. We didn’t have Israel, October 7. We didn’t have the Afghanistan disaster."

Recalling his first term, Trump added, “We had no inflation, and 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 that we didn’t have."

At the event, Trump was also invited to sign the NYSE guest book as the first president to ring the bell opening the exchange since Ronald Reagan did so in 1985. Reagan was the first president to do so and the bell ringing has been a tradition at the exchange since the 1800s, per Le Monde. Despite his time as a well-known businessman in New York, Trump never had the chance to ring the bell until now.