President Trump’s stand against world pressure for him to continue the one-sided deal with Iran is a defining moment in world history. His announcement at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to terminate the agreement is a watershed as the end of globalism.
One small event for man, one big moment for mankind, to paraphrase Neil Armstrong’s words when he landed on the Moon. It is not the interaction between the United States and Iran that is so significant here, but the rejection of the world order that has reigned supreme since World War II.
The wrong path of globalism will no longer be the road for our country, as President Trump wisely charts a new course in which international deals must be as fair to the United States as they are to foreign countries. Just as important is how the United States will no longer bow to pressure from Western Europe or anyone else about how we manage our foreign policy.
A few days earlier, the use of the word “Orwellian” from the White House in rebuking China for trying to boss around our airlines likewise signaled the dawn of this new era. Communist China insisted that airlines stop referring to Taiwan because China is in denial about the independence and freedom of that island nation, which was formed by those who fled the communist Chinese revolution in 1949.
In 1971, globalists seeking to appease communist China arranged for the United Nations to expel Taiwan, whose real name is the Republic of China. Early the following year, globalist Henry Kissinger persuaded President Richard Nixon to turn his back on Taiwan by visiting communist China and giving it legitimacy.
Then, in over-the-top bravado by Nixon that would have made Trump blush, Nixon declared that his trip to China was “the week that changed the world.” Eight months earlier Phyllis Schlafly published her P.S. Report warning that Nixon could lose the confidence of the grassroots, and the subsequent Watergate operation that got him in trouble arose from doubts about his winning reelection.
China and globalists have been trying to ostracize Taiwan ever since. They have even prevented Taiwan from competing in the Olympics as the independent country that it is, since 1976.
But the sentiment on the island of Taiwan is increasingly independent, as globalism is being rejected there like almost everywhere else. Taiwan’s current president, Tsai Ing-wen, is more willing to assert the nationalism that Trump asserts for Americans.
Recently China demanded that businesses stop referring to Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong as countries. Quickly Marriott, the hotel chain associated with globalist Mitt Romney, caved in and pandered to communist China by apologizing to it.
China made its demand on 36 foreign airlines, insisting that they stop referring to Taiwan as a country. Many of these airlines are American carriers, such as Delta which has already apologized.
But President Trump, more so than any president since World War II, rejects globalist pressure like China’s demand. Trump will “stand up for Americans resisting efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to impose Chinese political correctness on American companies and citizens,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced.
Sarah Sanders declared that the Trump Administration is telling China “to stop threatening and coercing American carriers and citizens.” That’s right: China has no authority to push around our citizens and our businesses.
Then Sanders used the “O” and the “C” words, which not even past Republican presidents were willing to do enough. “This is Orwellian nonsense and part of a growing trend by the Chinese Communist Party to impose its political views on American citizens and private companies,” Sanders observed.
George Orwell was a visionary in criticizing the communist mindset, as a former Leftist himself. It is doubtful that any press secretary has ever applied Orwell’s truths so properly to the communist attempts at mind control, as Sarah Sanders just did.
Meanwhile, the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is up for renegotiation, and Trump’s rejection of globalism bodes us well for this issue also. Far from seeking to renew that deal, Trump should look to terminate as much of it as possible.
Economically, NAFTA has been far more harmful to the American economy than the Iran deal was. Trump’s criticism of the Iran deal as one-sided applies with greater force to NAFTA.
The flood of illegal drugs into our country, along with illegal aliens, has been facilitated by NAFTA. The loss of manufacturing jobs to south of the border is the result of NAFTA, too.
NAFTA was never properly ratified as a treaty because it never had the necessary support in the Senate. The agreement should be terminated and any replacement should only be considered under the 2/3rds ratification requirement of the Treaty Clause, which is the provision that globalists hate most about the Constitution.
John and Andy Schlafly are the sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.