President Trump isn’t as powerful as he thinks he is, thankfully.
This is a man who’s happy to wave around the threat of nuclear annihilation with frightening casualness, who’s ripped refugee children from their parents’ arms and taken the US out of the crucial UN compact for migration, and eventually sneaked the discriminatory ban on travellers from Muslim-majority countries past the US courts.
But he isn’t going to stop the world’s work — as inadequate and slow as it is — to tackle climate change, and take on other pressing environmental threats, much as he clearly would like to.
He’s doing damage, certainly
Trump is empowering forces in other countries that wish to protect the interests of short-term corporate profits over the survivability of the planet.
He’s encouraging US manufacturers to drop their environmental standards, which given the already outrageous levels of American consumption, will have a global impact.
And in cutting funding to Nasa’s carbon monitoring system, which has been monitoring national efforts to cut carbon emissions, he’s slowing but not stopping oversight of progress. But most of the damage Trump is doing is to the United States.
The US president is taking climate change from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s planning, trying to revive the coal industry at the expense of renewables, ending restrictions on toxic air pollution, removing inevitably rising sea levels from flood risk standards, and slashing the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget.
All of these things are hurting his nation’s people, their industries, their global competitiveness and standing in the world.
We are all in this together, and any nation that doesn’t pull its weight, any leader who values the profits of his super-rich friends over the wellbeing of all, is behaving unacceptably.
He has left the US isolated as the one rogue state that isn’t a signatory to the Paris climate accord, which acknowledged that we have to keep global warming at well below 2C to avoid the threat of catastrophic climate change.
The purely national impacts of his actions are a matter for the people of the United States – who did not of course elect him as president, since it was the undemocratic electoral system that put him in power, despite Hillary Clinton receiving more votes. They, like us in the UK, clearly need to become a democracy.
But the global impacts are a matter for all of us, and one reason why I, and many other Green Party members, will be on the streets of London and other British cities sending a message to the US President during his visit to the UK.
That message is: we are all citizens of the world. We only have one fragile planet, which is already at or past its physical limits – in the level of carbon dioxide in the air, in the plastics choking its seas, in the destruction of its soils and fresh water sources, in the collapse of biodiversity and bioabundance
We are all in this together, and any nation that doesn’t pull its weight, any leader who values the profits of his super-rich friends over the wellbeing of all, is behaving unacceptably.
They will face not just the anger of the world’s people.
I have no confidence at all that Theresa May – who’ll be followed forever by that teeth-wrenchingly awful image of her hand-in-hand with Trump like a small child – will be saying these things to the him.
She should be, but, like so many other of her responsibilities as prime minister, it is being buried by the pressures of the impossibility of managing an orderly Brexit.
Her failure to do that will do further damage to Britain’s already much-battered reputation on the international stage.
But the people of Britain will be stepping up to do it for her.
Mr Trump, climate change is real. We demand you act on that information – which your own experts are giving you. It’s our world. We won’t allow you to wreck it.
The decision comes as UN independent expert Philip Alston is presenting a report to the council on how the US falls short on responding to extreme poverty.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has also criticised America’s separation of migrant children from their parents at the southern border as ‘unconscionable’.
But quitting the council will not allow the US to shield itself from the scrutiny of the international community.
The council will continue to hold its universal periodic review of the US government’s human rights record and its independent experts will continue to report on any rights violations.
The only difference is that the US is choosing not to be in the room.
It is remarkable that the US has chosen to disengage from the council completely, especially with 18 months remaining on its term.
Not even North Korea has refused to appear – diplomats from Pyongyang at least show up to defend themselves.
Countries don’t need to be members of the council to join in sessions, they can just make their voices heard.
Indeed, no country has ever resigned its seat on the council, and the empty spot left by the US will now be filled by a member of the so-called WEOG group – Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.
The Human Rights Council, like every UN body, has its flaws.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticised the system that allows candidates to run unopposed in the competition for seats. This can result in the election of countries with poor human rights records, like Democratic Republic of Congo or Saudi Arabia.
In the wake of claims of Russian war crimes in Syria, Moscow was voted off the UN Human Rights Council in 2016.
We at Human Rights Watch have also raised strong objections about the council’s disregard of many key rights issues.
But we’ve worked together with other civil society groups to identify a path forward for reforms by using procedural rules in Geneva to make improvements.
The US has also complained about the council’s standing Agenda Item 7 on rights violations by all parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It has actively campaigned for its removal and has opposed resolutions addressing Israel even when not presented under this agenda item, such as a recent Special Session resolution creating an inquiry into violence in Gaza.
The council’s work has also led to many important outcomes in recent years. Key resolutions in 2015-2016 led Sri Lanka and South Sudan to commit to setting up mechanisms to investigate violations committed during their civil wars.
It also set up the historic 2014 North Korea Commission of Inquiry, which found Pyongyang had carried out crimes against humanity and warned its actions could results in officials being tried before the international criminal court.
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Washington is not acting in America’s best interests by choosing to leave the organisation.
Negotiations about council reform and work programmes are ongoing.These efforts are important and need to continue. And there are much better ways to achieve reform than by simply leaving – which accomplishes nothing.
The UK, for instance, which largely agrees with the US position on item 7, has announced that it will vote against all resolutions brought under that agenda item unless council reforms are carried out – but it has no intention of leaving the organisation.
By walking away, the US is turning its back not just on the UN, but on victims of abusive governments around the world, including those in Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Myanmar.
Other governments will now have to redouble their efforts to ensure that the council addresses the world’s most serious human rights problems
On Thursday, President Trump decided to impose additional tariffs on aluminium and steel imported from the EU, Canada and Mexico.
The Trump administration has justified these tariff increases on the grounds that they harm the US’s national security interests.
The legality of this ground is highly contested as, under international rules, national security interests are typically limited to exceptional circumstances such as war and national emergencies.
The argument that the tariffs aim to address national security interests is even more problematic when you consider that the countries targeted by these measures are traditional US allies
reality, these tariffs have very little to do with US national security and everything to do with domestic politics. The aim is to increase the price of aluminium and steel products imported into the US in order to protect the US steel industry against global competition.
The tariffs also stand to have a considerable detrimental economic impact, not least on the UK’s steel industry, which currently employs over 30,000 workers.
Logically, the EU has already signalled its intent to retaliate by imposing its own high tariffs on a series of US imports.
This could well be the start of a trade war where nobody wins. Prices for consumers will go up and jobs will be lost on both sides of the Atlantic. And, perhaps more worryingly, political tensions between historical allies will continue to ramp up.
As the UK is still an EU Member State, it will apply any additional tariffs the EU decides to impose on US imports.
The UK government’s position on this issue so far has been largely in line with that of the EU. Liam Fox – the International Trade Secretary – confirmed that the UK was not ruling out retaliatory measures and would support an EU challenge against US tariffs.
Given the UK government’s aspirations for a future trade agreement with the US, it will have to play a difficult balancing act where it supports EU retaliation against the US while simultaneously trying to appease the Trump administration.
Once the UK finally leaves the EU, presuming it has its own autonomous trade policy, the UK will have to decide on its own whether to apply retaliatory measures and take full responsibility for those measures
The one key difference being that, as a much smaller market, the UK’s impact will be much reduced compared to that of the EU.
But from a wider perspective, the US administration’s approach to trade raises deeper questions about the UK’s immediate place and role in the world post-Brexit.
One of the underlying assumptions behind the decision to leave the EU is that the UK would still be able to benefit from a generally stable international trading system.
The possibility of signing a trade agreement with the US was sold by Leave campaigners (and still is) as one of the big potential benefits of withdrawing from the EU. And, as a last resort, there was an assumption that the UK would be able to benefit from the baseline rules of the World Trade Organisation.
But, in the current climate, those assumptions are being severely tested.
Yesterday’s decision to increase tariffs is but the latest in a long line of protectionist measures adopted by a Trump presidency that is deeply distrustful of existing structures, which underpin the international trading system.
This is reflected by the manner in which Trump has embraced tariffs but also by how he has approached trade negotiations in bilateral, regional and international settings
Since his inauguration, Trump has withdrawn from one major trade agreement (the Trans-Pacific Partnership), decided to launch a renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and has systematically attacked the legitimacy of the World Trade Organisation.
Trump’s dislike of trade agreements reveals something more fundamental about how he sees trade relations. One of the hallmarks of his presidency has been an unwavering belief that trade is a zero-sum game, which is either won or lost. You win if you export more and import less.
But the entire purpose of trade agreements and a rules-based international trading system is to impose limits on what countries can and cannot do in trade.
They are intended to curb the abuses and excesses of protectionism by, for example, imposing limits on the level of tariffs that can be imposed and by stopping countries from applying domestic rules in a manner that discriminates against imports.
By challenging these rules, the US is harking back to an age of ‘power politics’ where it can use its economic and military might to achieve its goals without limitations.
Trump’s approach to trade should be of great concern to the UK.
There is no guarantee that a Trump administration would be willing to negotiate a trade agreement with the UK that would be mutually advantageous to both parties.
Indeed, all the evidence so far suggests that this could possibly be the worst possible time to negotiate with the US.
But beyond this, the Trump administration is also questioning the very foundations of the international trading system, meaning that as the UK contends with the tricky task of leaving the EU, it also has to do this at a time when global trading environment is increasingly unstable
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LOVE TRUMP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
The presidency of Donald Trump has been one based on an America-first foreign policy.
This, coupled with his erratic rhetoric, has changed the international values associated with the United States. So for the first time in a generation, American values differ greatly to that of the states making up the European Union.
Trump believes this strategy will eventually force the European states to capitulate to his nationalist foreign policy, allowing the United States to become an unchallenged superpower state.
However, it is more likely that it will embolden anti-US flavour across Europe and promote political integration on an unprecedented scale.
Trump’s forthright approach to his relationship with Europe has redefined the long-standing transatlantic relationship between the United States and its European allies.
It has now deteriorated to the point where Jens Stoltenberg, the usually impartial head of NATO, has urged the United States and Europe to work closely together to prevent a breakdown in relations.
This unprecedented intervention comes as the President launched into one of his typical, undiplomatic Twitter rants, in which he claimed ‘the people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition’.
The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2018
Since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, there has been an understanding between countries in Europe and the United States that one should not intervene in the domestic politics of another.
Whether you like him or not, Trump is breaking down once traditional boundaries between states that is fuelling this new world order.
The Trump Administration’s brazen disregard for unity with Europe was made clear at the recent meeting of the G7, where the President openly called for Russia to be welcomed back into the group of industrialised nations.
After being expelled in 2014 for the annexation of Crimea, Russia has largely been seen as somewhat of a pariah state, particularly when it comes to the G7, which is now based on the shared political values of democracy and liberty.
This month’s G7 meeting not only saw Trump break with Europe and Canada in regard to Russia but, by pulling out of the the joint communique, Trump emphasised the differences that exist between his administration and Europe by failing to even agree a form of words to summarise the discussions.
President Trump’s skewed nationalism forces him to look for a trade war with just about any country that can compete with the United States, leading to punitive trade tariffs being placed on European steel and aluminium.
Placing such economically detrimental tariffs on his allies shows Trump has, deliberately or not, failed to distinguish between American allies and adversaries, with similar trade tariffs recently placed on China.
Picture posted on Angela Merkel's Instagram account shows the German chancellor surrounded by world leaders as she talks to President Trump (Picture: bundeskanzlerin/Instagram)
(Picture: bundeskanzlerin/Instagram)
Attacking European trade will only force the European nations to further integrate their economies and look elsewhere for export opportunities, particularly for the goods affected by Trump’s measures.
This also carries the risk that Europe and China will see their trading partnership flourish, which could be potentially disastrous for the United States’ influence across the world.
The G7 debacle was just the latest in a string of American tensions with Europe, with the most significant of these being Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Donald Trump’s late arrival for last week’s G7 meeting, coupled with his early departure to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, also shows this shift in priorities from the United States.
In Singapore, Trump altered how the United States deals with regimes that threaten the West with military force.
By guaranteeing security to North Korea, in an albeit vague agreement, Trump has legitimised Kim’s use of nuclear threats, and showed it to be successful for political gains.
This sets an extremely dangerous example for other countries that look to develop nuclear weapons as a means to gaining more influence on the international stage, particularly the most significant US adversary, Iran.
The use of this strategy with Iran may have different, much more devastating, consequences.
The fact is that it was the President that has stepped forward to bow to Kim’s threats of nuclear annihilation and to legitimise not only Kim’s leadership, but his strategy too.
But while Trump is President, this new American attitude to international relations cannot be stopped as it stems from his personality
President is more than happy to tear up long-standing international agreements if it wins him a cheap headline. Trump continues to wave away human rights abuses in the Middle East, particularly in Yemen and Gaza.
With Brexit looming for the UK, this new American attitude towards its allies has potentially the most significant consequences.
Britain is leaving the European Union just as a political integration process is about to begin.
While Brexiteers may not like it, the fact is that, as Europe grows closer on issues such as security, trade, and defence, Britain will fail to reap any benefits and be forced to form an unequal partnership with the United States, which would see Britain as the obvious junior partner.
Donald Trump’s presidency is changing the international status quo at a rate not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The state of play is now that the President does not recognise the differences between his allies and adversaries, particularly when it comes to the American economy.
This is an unprecedented moment for the world, and while a fully integrated EU superstate is unlikely, Donald Trump is paving the way for a more united Europe at the cost of an unstable world
Du you have any other hobbies?
😂🇺🇲💯😎👍🏻
Human Rights Council (Picture: Reuters)
This week, the US government shot itself in the foot by announcing it was leaving the United Nations Human Rights Council.
More significantly, Washington said it would cease to attend any future meetings of the Geneva-based council. That puts the US in the same group as Iran and Eritrea, who all refuse to join council discussions.
Announcing the decision, secretary of state Mike Pompeo told the media, the US ‘will not take lectures from hypocritical bodies and institutions as Americans selflessly give their blood and treasure to help the defenceless’.
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the UN, wrote an extraordinary letter to rights groups, inexplicably suggesting that their efforts to weigh in on the council reform agenda were the reason for the US departure. She also described the council as a ‘self-serving organisation’ that displayed ‘unending hostility towards Israel’.
The decision comes as UN independent expert Philip Alston is presenting a report to the council on how the US falls short on responding to extreme poverty.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has also criticised America’s separation of migrant children from their parents at the southern border as ‘unconscionable’.
But quitting the council will not allow the US to shield itself from the scrutiny of the international community.
The council will continue to hold its universal periodic review of the US government’s human rights record and its independent experts will continue to report on any rights violations.
The only difference is that the US is choosing not to be in the room.
It is remarkable that the US has chosen to disengage from the council completely, especially with 18 months remaining on its term.
Not even North Korea has refused to appear – diplomats from Pyongyang at least show up to defend themselves.
Countries don’t need to be members of the council to join in sessions, they can just make their voices heard.
Indeed, no country has ever resigned its seat on the council, and the empty spot left by the US will now be filled by a member of the so-called WEOG group – Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.
The Human Rights Council, like every UN body, has its flaws.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticised the system that allows candidates to run unopposed in the competition for seats. This can result in the election of countries with poor human rights records, like Democratic Republic of Congo or Saudi Arabia.
In the wake of claims of Russian war crimes in Syria, Moscow was voted off the UN Human Rights Council in 2016.
Human Rights Watch is campaigning for reforms to the UN Human Rights Council (Picture: AFP/Getty)
We at Human Rights Watch have also raised strong objections about the council’s disregard of many key rights issues.
But we’ve worked together with other civil society groups to identify a path forward for reforms by using procedural rules in Geneva to make improvements.
The US has also complained about the council’s standing Agenda Item 7 on rights violations by all parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It has actively campaigned for its removal and has opposed resolutions addressing Israel even when not presented under this agenda item, such as a recent Special Session resolution creating an inquiry into violence in Gaza.
The council’s work has also led to many important outcomes in recent years. Key resolutions in 2015-2016 led Sri Lanka and South Sudan to commit to setting up mechanisms to investigate violations committed during their civil wars.
It also set up the historic 2014 North Korea Commission of Inquiry, which found Pyongyang had carried out crimes against humanity and warned its actions could results in officials being tried before the international criminal court.
Washington is not acting in America’s best interests by choosing to leave the organisation.
Negotiations about council reform and work programmes are ongoing.These efforts are important and need to continue. And there are much better ways to achieve reform than by simply leaving – which accomplishes nothing.
The UK, for instance, which largely agrees with the US position on item 7, has announced that it will vote against all resolutions brought under that agenda item unless council reforms are carried out – but it has no intention of leaving the organisation.
By walking away, the US is turning its back not just on the UN, but on victims of abusive governments around the world, including those in Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Myanmar.
Other governments will now have to redouble their efforts to ensure that the council addresses the world’s most serious human rights problem
@G000dbuddy that's ancient history! Nobody cares
@doq525 Donald Trump has claimed a city 157 miles away from the Mexico with no border wall is a perfect example of how border walls work.
The President made the comments about San Antonio, Texas, as the country was in the 29th day of its shutdown over a standoff with Congress over the funding of his wall.
He said: ‘Everybody knows that walls work. You look at different places they put up a wall, no problem. You look at San Antonio. You look at so many different places.
Sorry, this video isn't available any more.
Trump doesnt know where San Antonio is
San Antonio is 157 miles away from the Mexican border (Picture: Google/ Metro.co.uk)
‘They go from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to one of the safest cities, immediately, immediately.’
If he was hoping that example would inspire Congress to give him the money, then he might want to rethink which city he uses, as San Antonio is around a two-and-a-half hour drive away from the nearest border crossing.
Admittedly, San Antonio used to have the Alamo Wall, which was built in in the 18th century.
However, it was torn down by the Mexican army in 1836 so it may not be the best example of how successful a wall can be.
Trump may have intended to reference El Paso – which is on the border – a place which he called ‘one of the most dangerous cities in the country.’
He might want to check on his geography (Picture: AP)
But statistics show El Paso had the third lowest violent crime rate among 35 US cities with a population over 500,000 in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
However, the city’s violent crime rate increased 5.5% from 2007 to 2010 — the years before and after construction of a border fence, which was completed in mid-2009.
Currently, all nine representatives who represent border areas in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California oppose the wall, including Republican Will Hurd, whose district includes 820 miles of the border.
Around 800,000 federal employees have now gone without pay for a month in the longest government shutdown in US history, with many being expected to work for free
City skyline of San Antonio, San Antonio, America. (Photo by: Loop Images/UIG via Getty Images)
There was a wall in San Antonio in the 18th century – but it was torn down by the Mexican army so may not be the best example of a security measure (Picture: Getty)
He said his plan would protect the deportation of hundreds of thousands of young ‘Dreamers’ for three years if the Democrats paid for the 230-mile long wall.
But the Democrats rejected the proposal and called on Trump to re-open the government first.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the expected proposal for ending the 29-day partial government shutdown was ‘a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable.’
She said Trump’s expected offer was ‘not a good-faith effort’ to help the immigrants and could not pass the House.
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The odds of Donald Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize have been dramatically slashed following his historic summit with Kim Jong Un.
The US President is now 2/1 to be awarded the gong in December either alone or with someone else.
Bookies Ladbrokes have offered the new odds just hours after his meeting in Singapore with the North Korean leader.
If successful, Trump would emulate the achievement of predecessor Barack Obama who won the prize in 2009.
Other previous winners include Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai and last year’s group recipient the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Trump is now 2/1 to get the prestigious honour either alone or as part of a team and 10/1 to win the gong in December on his own.
CAPTION CORRECTION CORRECTS BYLINE: U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un walk from lunch at the Capella resort on Sentosa Island Tuesday, June 12, 2018 in Singapore. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
Trump and Kim Jong Un have both signed a document after a friendly meeting in Singapre (Picture: AP)
Trump had unprecedented talks aimed at getting the rogue Asian nation to ditch its nuclear weapons and end its decades-long conflict with South Korea.
He and Kim signed an unidentified document to cement their new friendship and said the details will be released imminently.
Speaking as he signed the paper, Trump said: ‘We are signing a very important, pretty comprehensive document.’
He added: ‘Both sides are going to be impressed with the result.’
Trump praised Kim as a ‘very worthy, very smart negotiator’ during the historic summit at a luxury hotel in Singapore’s Sentosa island.
It comes after a year of exchanging threats but ended in handshakes and a promise of further meetings.
Kim said: ‘Today we had a historic meeting and decided to leave the past behind and we are about to sign the historic document.
Trump is now 2/1 to get the Nobel Prize.
‘The world will see a major change.’
Trump insisted that America and North Korea could now put their fraught past behind them. He said: ‘I think it’s going to be a very much different situation that it was in the past.
‘We both want to do something – we have developed a special bond.
‘We are going to take care of a very big and very dangerous problem for the world.’
The document is expected to offer a path to denuclearization for North Korea.
In return for dumping its nukes – and ceasing the Korean War, which has been going since 1945 – the US has offered to drop sanctions against North Korea, and help the impoverished nation build its economy.
Politics are ass 🤣🤣 come on here to fuckin talk politics, go somewhere else 🖕🤣🤯🔫
Indian CEOs are already there. And know something first, American's aren't worth of becoming a CEO in America itself. What a pathetic life American people are living
Exactly 👏
I think that there are two major benefits of welcoming the US president to the UK. Firstly, the more you see and hear him, the more you realise that he is not the type of politician we would want in our country.
Secondly, hopefully he will realise the depth of antipathy towards him when he sees protestors on the streets outnumbering the fake crowds at his inauguration. Certainly none of us have to accept him as the leader of the free world if we don’t want to.
Of course, free speech has to have boundaries. It shouldn’t limit other people’s with racism and misogyny. It’s up to the media and each one of us to not accept or condone any lies or prejudice. If Donald Trump or anyone else does this, then we are complicit if we do not call it out.
Nor do we have to be too polite or fawn over our guest. After all, he is not one for etiquette.
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Whilst I will defend the right of Trump to visit and be heard to the hilt, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protest against the way he behaves towards women or minority groups and how he disregards truth.
Also, we should be able to have a bit of fun and give him a blast of British humour with the ‘Donald in a Nappy’ inflatable blimp.
So, I am looking forward to joining my fellow supporters to make some noise at the Women’s March on Friday 13 July, as Trump arrives in the UK.
To me, this is an issue of freedom and it’s definitely not a sign of weakness. I do not envy the United States in terms of their current President, but I do wish we had a written constitution like them with a strong First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech. Importantly, the same amendment also guarantees the freedom of the press and the right to peaceably assemble.
I believe that freedom of speech must also be accompanied with a free and strong press to keep us honest, and that we must have the right to protest if we feel that something isn’t right. Both of these are essential to defend freedom and freedom of speech.
This is why I’m hoping that Donald Trump visits as much of the country as he can, and gets his voice heard. But, also that the press is critical of everything he says, which goes beyond the boundaries of truth and decency, and that the voices of dissent are also heard and reported on.
If this happens, then it will be a good example of freedom of speech in action and one more reason why we need to enshrine it in our own written constitution.
Donald Trump is also going to be a hot topic at Byline Festival, the festival of independent journalism and free speech on 24 to 27 August.
I don’t expect he will get an easy ride in either scenario, but if he wants to fly back and fight his corner in panel discussions, he is welcome
@realdeal5254 arriving in the UK today (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
President Trump isn’t as powerful as he thinks he is, thankfully.
This is a man who’s happy to wave around the threat of nuclear annihilation with frightening casualness, who’s ripped refugee children from their parents’ arms and taken the US out of the crucial UN compact for migration, and eventually sneaked the discriminatory ban on travellers from Muslim-majority countries past the US courts.
But he isn’t going to stop the world’s work — as inadequate and slow as it is — to tackle climate change, and take on other pressing environmental threats, much as he clearly would like to.
He’s doing damage, certainly.
Trump is empowering forces in other countries that wish to protect the interests of short-term corporate profits over the survivability of the planet.
He’s encouraging US manufacturers to drop their environmental standards, which given the already outrageous levels of American consumption, will have a global impact.
And in cutting funding to Nasa’s carbon monitoring system, which has been monitoring national efforts to cut carbon emissions, he’s slowing but not stopping oversight of progress. But most of the damage Trump is doing is to the United States.
The US president is taking climate change from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s planning, trying to revive the coal industry at the expense of renewables, ending restrictions on toxic air pollution, removing inevitably rising sea levels from flood risk standards, and slashing the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget.
All of these things are hurting his nation’s people, their industries, their global competitiveness and standing in the world.
We are all in this together, and any nation that doesn’t pull its weight, any leader who values the profits of his super-rich friends over the wellbeing of all, is behaving unacceptably.
He has left the US isolated as the one rogue state that isn’t a signatory to the Paris climate accord, which acknowledged that we have to keep global warming at well below 2C to avoid the threat of catastrophic climate change.
The purely national impacts of his actions are a matter for the people of the United States – who did not of course elect him as president, since it was the undemocratic electoral system that put him in power, despite Hillary Clinton receiving more votes. They, like us in the UK, clearly need to become a democracy.
But the global impacts are a matter for all of us, and one reason why I, and many other Green Party members, will be on the streets of London and other British cities sending a message to the US President during his visit to the UK.
That message is: we are all citizens of the world. We only have one fragile planet, which is already at or past its physical limits – in the level of carbon dioxide in the air, in the plastics choking its seas, in the destruction of its soils and fresh water sources, in the collapse of biodiversity and bioabundance.
We are all in this together, and any nation that doesn’t pull its weight, any leader who values the profits of his super-rich friends over the wellbeing of all, is behaving unacceptably.
They will face not just the anger of the world’s people.
I have no confidence at all that Theresa May – who’ll be followed forever by that teeth-wrenchingly awful image of her hand-in-hand with Trump like a small child – will be saying these things to the him.
She should be, but, like so many other of her responsibilities as prime minister, it is being buried by the pressures of the impossibility of managing an orderly Brexit.
Her failure to do that will do further damage to Britain’s already much-battered reputation on the international stage.
But the people of Britain will be stepping up to do it for her.
Mr Trump, climate change is real. We demand you act on that information – which your own experts are giving you. It’s our world. We won’t allow you to wreck it
@realdeal5254 US President Donald J. Trump
, along with Vice President Mike Pence (C-R) and Senate Republicans, speaks to the media after attending the Senate Republican policy luncheon in Washington, DC, USA, 09 January 2019. A partial shutdown of the US federal government continues since Congress and Trump failed to strike a deal before a 22 December 2018 funding deadline due to differences regarding border security. The partial shutdown, which has become the second-longest in US history, has affected about 800,000 federal workers. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
This latest government shutdown has effected hundred of thousands of federal workers Picture: EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
The current shutdown of the United States Government has officially become the longest ever in the country’s history.
It seems like Donald Trump is rather fond of ringing in the new year with a government shutdown, as this is now the second in two consecutive Januaries of his presidency.
Now, as the American people enjoy their (at the time of writing) 22nd day of partial government shutdown, here’s everything we need to know about it from this side of the pond.
TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump delivers a televised address to the nation on funding for a border wall from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC on January 8, 2019. - Trump demanded $5.7 billion to fund a wall on the US-Mexico border in his first televised Oval Office address Tuesday, describing a "growing crisis" of illegal immigration hurting millions of Americans. The president stopped short of calling for a much-touted state of emergency, instead appealing to the need to slash the cost of the illegal drug trade, which he put at $500 billion a year. "There is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border. Every day customs and border patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country," Trump said. (Photo by CARLOS BARRIA / POOL / AFP)CARLOS BARRIA/AFP/Getty Images
Trump delivered his first Oval Office address about his planned border wall in the middle of the shutdown (Picture: CARLOS BARRIA / POOL / AFP / Getty Images)
What is the US government shutdown about?
The shutdown is the result of contention in the US government over funding for Donald Trump’s infamous border wall.
The president has refused to approve any federal budget which does not include funds for a border wall between the US and Mexico.
Presidential elections in the US are due in 2020, and building the wall was one of his key campaign promises, so it’s very likely that Trump is feeling under pressure to get it started.
He has stopped just short of declaring the matter a national emergency, which would allow him to bypass congress to get the money for the wall.
In his Oval Office address earlier this month, Trump requested a grand total of 5.7 billion dollars (£4.5 billion), along with listing off some of what you might call ‘alternative facts’ about why the wall is so important