Yesterday, we talked about Xi’s upcoming visit, and the year Trump has spent pulling countries away from China’s influence and back toward the United States.
Today, Trump stood in front of the UN General Assembly and laid the whole case out.
A year ago, his UN address started with an escalator that stopped and a teleprompter that failed.
This one started with an accounting of the past year.
Maduro is in U.S. custody. The Venezuelan agreement covers 65 billion barrels of reserves. The Greenland security agreement was signed today, with two more American bases going in. NATO is committed to 5% of GDP by 2035. And he named the instrument behind the wars he says he has settled: “the use of tariffs and the threat of tariffs.”
Then he rejected the globalist agenda.
On the shipping levy the International Maritime Organization tried to impose: “There is no global government and while I’m president there will be no global taxes.”
On AI, the United States “totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control” it.
And on the UN itself, he took credit for cutting its budget and its staff.
For perspective, the takeaway of last year’s UN meeting was a world that was wiring up two systems. One that attracts capital around abundance, around energy and industry and innovation. And the other that demands compliance, controlling access to money and markets.
A year later, and the UK has scrapped the digital ID program. Europe, though, is still building the digital euro pilot (central bank digital currency).
Importantly, the UK didn’t reverse because Trump asked. It reversed because the policy consequences resulted in political change, and political change resulted in policy change.
That dynamic is slowly working through the rest of Europe, with the energy supply shock acting as the catalyst.
Xi arrives tomorrow (meetings through Thursday).
China got almost no direct attention in today’s speech beyond the AI race. As we discussed yesterday, keeping the China talks stable buys the Trump administration the time to finish everything around them.
