By Vivian Salama 

President Trump is expected to call for the reform of the international trade system in his second address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, and he will ask that countries collectively work to ensure that global trade works for the prosperity of all.

No longer a stranger to the international stage, Mr. Trump has revised several international agreements since appearing before the annual gathering of world leaders last year, and has severed others. His unconventional -- and often defiant -- attitude toward international treaties and multilateral alliances rattled many countries around the world last year, provoking questions on how a globalized world would cope with a protectionist U.S.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump will describe how his "America First" foreign policy vision offers a path toward mutual prosperity for the United States and its allies and will assert that the U.S. won't enter into agreements of any kind that force it to surrender its sovereignty, according to a White House spokesman.

Many of those attending this year's assembly have since gotten a taste of the hard-nosed negotiating tactics of this businessman-turned-president -- and are opting either to adapt or find alternatives.

While he has shown some flexibility in his insistence that trade deals be made on a bilateral basis, he continues to hammer some of America's closest allies and biggest trade partners with stiff steel and aluminum tariffs in the name of U.S. national security and assert a need for deals that deliver more reciprocal benefits.

Since last year's speech, Mr. Trump has pulled out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear accord and is in the process of reimposing sanctions on Tehran, ruffling feathers with many European allies who had been keen to explore Iran's untapped economic potential.

He has signed a new trade agreement with South Korea, reached a tentative agreement with Mexico, is negotiating a new one with Canada, and is hoping to pursue deals with the European Union and Japan. He threatened to walk away from America's closest allies in the Group of Seven alliance, boycotting its largely ceremonial communiqué over his trade dispute with Canada and the EU, although he eventually came around. He also has threatened to leave the World Trade Organization.

As his trade dispute with China comes to full blows, Mr. Trump is expected to hark back to his national-security strategy, in which his administration asserted the need for conditional cooperation -- particularly with competitors such as Russia and China. Mr. Trump repeatedly has accused China of engaging in unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft.

Beijing abruptly canceled talks planned for this week, as the Trump administration imposed new 10% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese exports starting Monday. Mr. Trump has vowed additional tariffs if China targets U.S. farmers.

China's President Xi Jinping isn't expected to attend the assembly.

Mr. Trump has faced backlash from U.S. business and farm groups worried that retaliatory measures aimed at American farmers could be costly to ensuring that Mr. Trump's Republican party maintains its fragile majority in this November's critical midterm elections

The White House has countered those concerns, insisting Mr. Trump's goal is preserving and expanding, not contracting, trade -- albeit on terms he considers more fair to the U.S., and in ways that he says would reduce the American trade deficit with other countries.

On Monday, at a ceremonial signing with South Korean President Moon Jae-in of a new free trade agreement, Mr. Trump noted that "farmers are going to be extremely happy," adding, "that makes me feel very good. I love our farmers."

National security -- one of Mr. Trump's priorities -- also will be prominent in the speech. Non-proliferation is a dominant theme of this year's assembly, one that Mr. Trump will address when he chairs the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, however, he will broadly outline his efforts to crack down on Iran to both deny them nuclear weapons and counter any regional ambitions.

Earlier this year, Mr. Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, despite European warnings that an imperfect nuclear accord is better than leaving Tehran to its own devices.

On Monday, as Mr. Trump met with France's President Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders at a New York reception, the European Union announced that it would establish a special payment channel to allow European and other companies to legally continue financial transactions with Iran while avoiding exposure to renewed U.S. sanctions.

But that channel may not be in operation very quickly. At a news conference in Brussels, a spokesman for the European Commission said that technical work on the so-called special purpose vehicle is continuing and that there is no detail yet on how it will work.

"We don't' have details. We don't have any fixed dates," said the spokesman, Carlos Martin Ruiz de Gordejuela.

Iran also has been central to the Trump administration's policy on Syria. Mr. Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, told the Associated Press on Monday that U.S. troops will remain in Syria so long as Iranian troops are deployed outside of Iran.

Hours before he was set to address the assembly, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that he had no plans to meet Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, who also was scheduled to speak on Tuesday, but held out the possibility a meeting could happen "maybe someday in the future," adding, "I am sure he is an absolutely lovely man!"

Despite touch-and-go diplomatic efforts with North Korea, Mr. Trump will use Tuesday's address to point to Pyongyang's willingness to denuclearize as evidence of his desire to settle some of the world's toughest challenges.

Since last year's assembly, the Trump administration continues to press ahead with its yet-to-be-revealed Middle East peace plan, despite having cut hundreds of millions of dollars in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians and to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency and its controversial decision this year to finalize the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem.

Mr. Trump also will underscore what he sees as successes at home, including his efforts to bolster U.S. border security and mitigate the flow of migrants and refugees into the United States, even as his ongoing battle for funding continues with Congress.

Mr. Trump's appearance at the General Assembly comes against the backdrop of a pair of controversies weighing heavily on his administration. The fate of his second pick for Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, remained in question over a second allegation of sexual misconduct.

On Monday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was summoned to the White House following reports he discussed recording his conversations with the president as a means to convince his Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. Mr. Rosenstein has denied the reports and will meet with Mr. Trump on Thursday in Washington.

Write to Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 25, 2018 08:36 ET (12:36 GMT)

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