Trump’s UN Address

To the Editor:

In his September 24th address to the UN President Trump made the point that the future will belong to national self-interest and not to globalism.

It’s doubtful if Trump believes his own argument. He owns a multinational complex of golf courses and hotels, not to even speculate on the variety of his other investments. Trump Jr. boasted from the beginning about how much money they got from Russian interests.

And it doesn’t take much looking to learn how businesses which advertise as distinctly local are actually global in ownership (destination of profits). Here’s a list to start with.

US Business Foreign Ownership

Poland Spring Nestle/Switzerland
(world’s largest food and beverage company)

Monsanto Bayer/Germany
(RoundUp banned in Germany as cancer causing,
US EPA trying to rescind ban here)

Hannaford Ahold Delhaize Group/Netherlands

Central Maine Power Avangrid/Conn., a subsidy of Iberdrola/Spain
(multinational electricity)

From the beginnings of civilization cultures and economies have followed a global urge, out of simple curiosity and the desire to trade things they have for things they don’t. New markets for domestic surpluses (the result of positive industrial efficiencies) are invariably overseas, with people both similar and very different from ourselves. Any basic history book describes this.

Trump’s UN speech thus made little sense; it wasn’t intended to. It wanted only to sound once more his America First slogan and was aimed not at an educated UN audience, which even Trump would know disagreed with him, but at his domestic base of support, which lives in fear of the complexity of global interdependencies and multi-ethnic cultures.

Dick Taylor
Bethel