Bill Gates

New York, (IANS) : Multimillionaire Bill Gates said on Tuesday that US President-elect Donald Trump has the chance to establish his country’s leadership through innovation.

In an interview on the CNBC channel, EFE news quoted Gates as saying that he recently spoke on the phone with the New York real estate mogul to discuss, among other matters, the importance of the power of innovation.

“Of course, my whole career has been along those lines. And he was interested in listening to that. And I’m sure there will be further conversation,” said the founder of the high-tech giant Microsoft.

Gates said that just as President John F. Kennedy “talked about the space mission and got the country behind that,” in Trump’s case it could be through innovation in education, health or energy.

“There can be a very upbeat message that (Trump’s) administration (is) going to organise things, get rid of regulatory barriers, and have American leadership through innovation,” the Microsoft multimillionaire said.

Aside from the phone call, Gates met Tuesday with Trump in New York, but afterwards only said he had a “good conversation” with the President-elect about innovation and about how much it can do in fields like health and education.

Gates’ meeting with Trump came days before the multimillionaire philanthropist announced a new fund of $1 billion, supported by other big investors, for developing clean energy projects to counteract climate change.

In contrast, the President-elect announced last week that Scott Pruitt, a known climate-change sceptic, will head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in charge of environmental regulations in the United States.