President also rejects global AI guardrails, touts Venezuela oil arrangement
President Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday — framed as a campaign-style speech declaring a “Golden Age of America” and insisting the U.S. economy was “the envy of the world” — produced announcements on multiple foreign-policy fronts: a signed security deal with Denmark and Greenland for two new American military bases on the island, a public rejection of international guardrails on artificial intelligence, and a touted Pentagon-backed arrangement for 17 Venezuelan oil fields.
On Greenland, Trump said an agreement he signed Tuesday gives the United States “permanent control over security” on the island, with plans to build “two very major military bases.” The agreement would establish an American presence at Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, a location where the U.S. previously operated a base during the Cold War, and at Mestersvig on the island’s east coast. The U.S. already operates Pituffik Space Base there. Trump said the agreement would prevent U.S. adversaries from establishing a military presence in Greenland or making inroads or “sensitive investments” without America’s approval. Danish officials have described the deal differently, stressing it preserves Denmark’s sovereignty and Greenlanders’ right to self-determination; the agreement must still go through Denmark’s parliament before it can take effect.
On artificial intelligence, Trump told the assembly the U.S. “totally rejects” any “globalist scheme” to control the technology: “We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in.” The remarks were a rebuke to growing international calls at this week’s U.N. meetings for stronger AI guardrails. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called for a global framework to manage AI risks, and the U.N. body has launched an international dialogue with governments and technology companies on approaches to governing the technology. Trump has framed winning the global AI race against China as a national priority, telling the assembly: “Whoever wins superintelligence wins,” and adding that the U.S. was leading China “by a lot” when it came to AI development.
Trump also touted a deal — which The Wall Street Journal called controversial — in which the Pentagon will take a stake in a private company with rights to 17 Venezuelan oil fields, asserting the arrangement would drive down energy costs. The Journal reported that analysts say the deal is not expected to reduce prices soon, noting that Venezuela’s decrepit oil industry and infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars of investment before production can rise significantly.
Cuban delegates walked out of the General Assembly hall as Trump predicted the country’s Communist government “will fall” and said his administration is seeking “fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.” Trump called Cuba “an absolutely failed state.” The Journal reported that in recent months the administration has imposed an oil blockade on the island that has worsened acute fuel shortages and pushed the power grid to collapse as part of a pressure campaign to extract economic and political concessions from the regime.
Trump used a significant portion of his speech to defend the U.S. war against Iran, now in its seventh month without a clear path forward for a peace deal. He framed his choice as either a deal allowing Iran to “rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world,” or his alternative of “annihilat[ing] the Islamic Republic and do[ing] it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again” and “driv[ing] them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations.” He predicted a deal would come after the November U.S. midterm elections. Most of Iran’s delegates filed out of the main forum as Trump described his choices for Tehran, according to The Wall Street Journal. The remarks came amid tentative efforts by Arab mediators to revive negotiations between Washington and Tehran this week. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that Trump was open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the General Assembly: “The president is open to a meeting with him or anybody.”
On energy markets, Trump pointed to increasing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, telling the assembly: “more oil is flowing than at any point since the start of the war.” Commercial ship trackers cited by the Journal said the volume of oil transiting the strait remains small compared with what it was before the war. Trump predicted that if the world “stayed united,” oil prices would “come plummeting down even lower than they were at the start of the conflict.”