30 April 2019 - Trump withdraws from UN Arms Treaty, evoking the Second Amendment
Donald Trump to withdraw US from Arms Trade Treaty
(BBC News, 27/04/2019)
The agreement, signed by Barack Obama in 2013, aims to regulate the sale of weapons between countries.
The US National Rifle Association says the treaty amounts to international gun control, and is a threat to America's second amendment right to bear arms.
Speaking at the lobbying group's annual meeting, Mr Trump said he would ask the US Senate not to ratify the pact.
The US is the world's top arms exporter. Its weapons sales are 58% higher than those of Russia, the world's second largest exporter.
Trump withdraws from UN arms treaty as NRA crowd cheers
(Irish Times, 27/04/2019)
US president Donald Trump told the National Rifle Association he was pulling the United States out of an international arms treaty signed in 2013.
Mr Trump said he intends to revoke the status of the United States as a signatory to the Arms Trade Treaty, which was never ratified by the US Senate.
“We’re taking our signature back,” Mr Trump said to thousands of cheering attendees at a convention on Friday.
In reversing the US position on the pact, he wrote on Twitter, “We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedoms.”
Trump’s decision to leave a global arms treaty was built on an NRA lie
Rachel Stohl, ex-consultant in Arms Trade Treaty process (The Washington Post, 29/04/2019)
President Trump announced on Friday — during a speech that pandered to special-interest groups and was symbolic of his administration’s disdain for multilateral agreements — that the United States would “unsign” the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a landmark agreement that regulates the international trade in conventional arms.
It took more than five years of negotiations to develop the ATT, and I spent those years as a consultant in the treaty process, working with diplomats to draft the text. Each word was hard-fought by U.S negotiators to ensure that it aligned with U.S. national security priorities, foreign policy goals, economic interests and long-standing American values and principles.
Most Americans Reject Trump’s “America First” Policy
Lawrence Wittner (Counterpunch.org, 29/04/2019)
As president, Donald Trump has leaned heavily upon what he has called an “America First” policy. This nationalist approach involves walking away from cooperative agreements with other nations and relying, instead, upon a dominant role for the United States, undergirded by military might, in world affairs.
Nevertheless, as numerous recent opinion polls reveal, most Americans don’t support this policy.
The reaction of the American public to Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from key international agreements has been hostile. According to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted in early May 2018, shortly before Trump announced a pullout from the Iran nuclear agreement, 54 percent of respondents backed the agreement. Only 29 percent favored a pullout.
EU Condemns Trump’s Withdrawal From UN Arms Trade Treaty
Abel Ogwu (Signal, 28/04/2019)
The European Union warned Saturday that US President Donald Trump’s rejection of a UN treaty designed to regulate the global arms trade would hamper the global fight against illicit weapons trafficking.
“A decision by the US to revoke its signature would not contribute to the ongoing efforts to encourage transparency in the international arms trade, to prevent illicit trafficking and to combat the diversion of conventional arms,” said the EU’s chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini.
“The EU will continue to call on all states, and in particular the major arms exporters and importers, to join the Arms Trade Treaty without delay,” she said.