At the same time, he reiterated the United States’ 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 embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend themselves against threats to sovereignty not only from global governance, but also from other new forms of coercion and domination.”
At the same time, he reiterated the United States’ commitment to making the UN more effective and accountable. “I have said many times that the United Nations has unlimited potential,” he declared.
Relations between the United States and the UN
But Trump reiterated his past criticism of the world organization, attacking the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) and the recently proposed Global Compact on Migration, while emphasizing that the United States will not pay more than 25 percent of the UN. peacekeeping budget, to encourage other countries to step up and share the burden.
“And we are working to shift more of our funding from assessed contributions to voluntary contributions so that we can direct American resources to the programs with the best track record of success,” he said. “Only when each of us does our part and contributes our part can we realize the highest aspirations of the UN.”
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, protecting egregious human rights violators while attacking the United States and its many friends… no action was taken.”
“So the United States took the only responsible path: We withdrew from the Human Rights Council and will not return until real reform is enacted.”
The International Criminal Court “has no legitimacy”
“As far as the United States is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, legitimacy or authority,” he declared. “The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of all countries, violating all principles of justice, equity and due process. We will never hand over US sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountable global bureaucracy.”
Likewise, he said that the United States will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration, whose adoption is scheduled in Morocco next December.
“Migration should not be governed by an international organization that is not accountable to our own citizens,” he stressed.
On trade issues, where Trump has recently imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of steel and aluminum imports from China, Trump said the United States had opened its economy with few conditions, allowing foreign goods from around the world to flow freely across our borders while other countries did not grant fair and reciprocal access.
“They will no longer take advantage of the United States,” he added. “Some countries abused their openness to dump their products, subsidize their goods, attack our industries, and manipulate their currencies to gain unfair advantages 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.”
As for Iran, Trump called Iran’s nuclear power “a windfall” for the country’s leaders, and in the years since the deal was reached, Iran’s military budget has grown nearly 40 percent. “The dictatorship used the funds to build nuclear-capable missiles, increase internal repression, finance terrorism, and finance havoc and massacres in Syria and Yemen.”
The agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was reached in 2015 by Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. It establishes rigorous mechanisms to monitor restrictions imposed on Iran’s nuclear program, 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 most dangerous weapons on the planet. We cannot allow a regime that shouts ‘Death to America’ and threatens Israel with annihilation to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth,” Trump said.