Trump’s UN Speech Puts the Benefits of Global Cooperation at Risk

Esther Brimmer is the James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Returning to the United Nations dais after four years, President Donald Trump doubled down on the themes he raised in his four previous speeches during his first term: the importance of sovereignty, the independence of states, and especially, the need for each state to preserve its culture. In particular, he lambasted migration and efforts to shift to a green economy, creating a throughline between his domestic and international policies. Furthermore, his speech suggested that he sees a role for diplomacy, but his diplomacy is transactional and preferably bilateral, not multilateral. While his past speeches at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) were not always understood by listeners as insights into his intentions, the words he delivered this time were largely met by a crowd of silent and sober world leaders as he addressed a series of international grievances. 

In his speech, Trump stressed “the crisis of uncontrolled migration” and claimed that countries were “being ruined by it.” Even though migration occurs around the world, his examples featured uncontrolled migration into the United States and Europe.  He mused critically that migrants bring different customs and that people should deal with issues in their own countries and “not create new problems in ours.” He argued that the United Nations had funded an assault on Western countries and their borders by providing cash assistance to refugees. 

He went on to rail against climate science, asserting that carbon footprint concepts were “a hoax,” climate science had been developed by “stupid people,” and that a “green energy scam” had ruined countries abroad. Presenting himself as a peacemaker, Trump alleged that he alone had ended seven “unendable” wars. The role other countries had in extending or ending these conflicts went unmentioned, and the United Nations was used as a general label without differentiating among parts of the global body. He also did not acknowledge years of efforts by diplomats, militaries, and others to address these conflicts. But the president did lament that the United Nations’ “tremendous potential” had never developed, in his view, beyond “empty words.”

While not all of what Trump said might have been workshopped with his advisors or connected directly to U.S. policy, his speech has profound implications. In effect, he eschewed the idea of a common humanity that transcends borders and rejected the notion of international society beyond the circle of sovereign states. Thus, he undermines the foundation for concepts such as human rights or a duty to protect the environment on which all living beings on Earth depend. These concepts are based on relationships beyond the narrow preferences of the sovereign state.

The United Nations is a component of an international system forged over the past eighty years that has served the United States well. Although not perfect, the UN system provides a form of international burden-sharing. Since its founding, the United Nations and its agencies have advanced economic development, improved global public health, and created international peacekeeping operations that could be effective when supported by the major powers. The United States shares the costs of multilateral diplomacy by paying its UN dues of 22 percent rather than the 100 percent of a wholly U.S. funded program. Sharing the cost of maintaining a degree of international order is a prudent accompaniment to nationally funded operations.

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries bear witness to the importance of dealing with issues that transcend borders, and which cannot be solved wholly by one state alone. Countering the spread of nuclear weapons technology needs a degree of international cooperation. Human rights abuses can spill over into a refugee crisis. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing undermines countries’ efforts to maintain sustainable fisheries vital to the livelihoods of over three billion people dependent on oceans and coastal areas.

Many of the actions that Trump has lauded from the first six months of his second term are intended to destroy the presumption of international cooperation on which the United Nations is based. Barely hours in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization on Inauguration Day. Within weeks, he had destroyed the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which brought countries closer to the United States while meeting crucial development and humanitarian needs.

The tone and terms of the UNGA speech echoed those of his March 2025 address to a Joint Session of Congress (given in a president’s first year in lieu of the State of the Union address). He used tag words to label international organizations he dislikes. These pejorative adjectives guide his listeners on how to think about these programs without providing substantive bases for his criticisms. In this speech he belittled the “Green New Deal” as the “Green New Scam,” celebrated withdrawing the United States from the “unfair Paris Climate Accord.” 

In his UNGA speech, he did not mention the Secretary-General’s UN80 reform plan, which would reduce the size and structure of the United Nations system. However, he recalled an unsuccessful real estate effort years earlier when he bid to refurbish the United Nations buildings in New York City. While he did not win that construction contract, his administration’s actions seem fit to permanently remake the United Nations. 

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.