US President Trump rejects globalism in speech to UN General Assembly’s annual debate

“America is governed by Americans,” he said on the opening day of the Assembly’s annual General Debate. “We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty not just from global governance, but also from other, new forms of coercion and domination.”

At the same time, he reiterated the US commitment to making the UN more effective and accountable. “I have said many times that the United Nations has unlimited potential,” he declared.

“America is governed by Americans,” he said on the opening day of the Assembly’s annual General Debate. “We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty not just from global governance, but also from other, new forms of coercion and domination.”

At the same time, he reiterated the US commitment to making the UN more effective and accountable. “I have said many times that the United Nations has unlimited potential,” he declared.

US-UN relations

But Mr. Trump reiterated his past criticism of the world organization, hitting out at the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) and the recently-proposed Global Compact on Migration, while stressing that the US will not pay more than 25 percent of the UN. peacekeeping budget, to encourage other countries to step up and share in the burden.

“And we are working to shift more of our funding from assessed contributions to voluntary so that we can target American resources to the programs with the best record of success,” he said. “Only when each of us does our part and contributes our share can we realize the UN's highest aspirations.”

He added that despite his warning to the Assembly last year that “the UN Human Rights Council had become a grave embarrassment to this institution, shielding egregious human rights abusers while bashing America and its many friends... no action at all was taken.”

“So the United States took the only responsible course: We withdrew from the Human Rights Council, and we will not return until real reform is enacted.”

International Criminal Court has ‘no legitimacy’

“As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority,” he declared. “The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process.  We will never surrender America's sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.”

Likewise, he said the US will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration, scheduled to be adopted in Morocco this December.

“Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens,” he stressed.

Turning to trade issues, in which Trump has recently imposed tariffs of steel and aluminium imports $200 billion of imports from China, Mr. Trump said the US had opened its economy with few conditions, allowing foreign goods from all over the world to flow in freely across our borders, while other countries did not grant fair and reciprocal access.

“The United States will not be taken advantage of any longer,” he added. “Some countries abused their openness to dump their products, subsidize their goods, target our industries, and manipulate their currencies to gain unfair advantage over our country.  As a result, our trade deficit ballooned to nearly $800 billion a year. For this reason, we are systematically renegotiating broken and bad trade deals.”

Turning to Iran, Trump called the Iran nuclear “a windfall” for the country’ s leaders an in the years since the accord had been reached, Iran’s military budget grew nearly 40 percent. “The dictatorship used the funds to build nuclear-capable missiles, increase internal repression, finance terrorism, and fund havoc and slaughter in Syria and Yemen.”

The deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was reached in 2015 by Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US and the European Union. It sets out rigorous mechanisms for monitoring restrictions placed on Iran’s nuclear programme, while paving the way for the lifting of UN sanctions against the country.

“We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth, Trump said.