The ‘Right’ View by Francis P. Sempa

Trump’s Retreat from Global Governance Puts America First

The Trump administration’s announcement that the United States will withdraw from 66 international organizations is a welcome development that puts America first, just as Trump promised during his presidential campaign.

The left-wing news media accused the president of retreating from “global cooperation,” but he is actually retreating from the much more insidious concept of “global governance.” The White House explained that the withdrawals “will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over U.S. priorities” or that are ineffective. President Trump took this action, he said, after considering a State Department report and deliberating with his Cabinet.

The international agencies the U.S. is withdrawing from include: the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact and other globalist environmental organizations; several “global forums,” international institutes, and “intergovernmental” panels on energy, law, solar power, and timber; and 31 United Nations agencies focused on population, gender equality, trade and development, peacebuilding, economic development, and environmental issues. Trump’s action brought expressions of “concern” from something called the Better World Campaign, the UN Secretary General, Earth.org, and other globalist groups. Nina Schwalbe of the Georgetown Center for Global Health Policy and Politics called Trump’s order “ridiculous and dangerous, thoughtless and malicious.” A “climate adviser” to former President Biden called Trump’s action “shortsighted, embarrassing and foolish.”

The critics of Trump’s withdrawal from these organizations have one thing in common: a preference for global governance over national sovereignty. To the critics, the nation-state is the cause of most of the world’s problems and the best way to fix those problems, in the critics’ view, is to lessen, if not eliminate, the sovereignty of nation-states. That is why they disdain Trump’s America First agenda—it is too parochial, too chauvinistic, too nationalist. The global governance crowd believe they know what is best for the world, and it’s not America First.

Far too many American presidents have bought into the idea of global governance. In fact, all 21st-century presidents, except Trump, have accommodated and in some cases partnered with the globalist agenda. Influential groups like the World Economic Forum, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations regularly promote a globalist agenda and openly tout the benefits of global governance. These groups are the intellectual descendants of the promoters of “world government.”

This isn’t a secret conspiracy—the global governance crowd is quite up front about their agenda, which they likely believe will make the world a better place, but will also cede more power to them. They want global rules on health, climate, population growth, immigration, energy, distribution of resources, arms control, law, human rights, and other areas that would inevitably limit the sovereignty of nations.

It is a simple fact that the more authority and power a country surrenders to global organizations, the more aspects of the country’s sovereignty disappear. Back in 2008, then Senator Barack Obama, speaking in Berlin, called himself a “citizen of the world.” Five years later, President Obama, again in Berlin, said that people and leaders must “care about more things than just our own comfort, about our own city, about our own country,” because “we are not only citizens of America and Germany—we are also citizens of the world.” That is how Obama and other globalists think and act.

During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to put America First, and the voters responded by electing him to his second term as president. The United States can cooperate with other nations without ceding important aspects of its sovereignty. Trump’s withdrawal from these organizations and forums is a rejection of the globalist agenda. For Trump, the world doesn’t come first—America does.

Francis P. Sempa is the author of the books “Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century” and “America’s Global Role,” He is a contributing editor to “The American Spectator” and writes a regular column for “Real Clear Defense.”