Jacinda Ardern's swipe at Donald Trump's ‘America First' policy during Yale University speech

News.com.au

19-05-2025

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appeared to take a swipe at the Trump Administration while giving a speech to graduating students at the prestigious American Ivy League, Yale University.
Dame Jacinda, who has been living in the US as a Havard University fellow, spoke at Yale College's Class Day about 'impostor syndrome' and the need for traits that may be considered 'weak' by some, such as sensitivity and empathy, in the world and among leadership.
But the 44-year-old said felt she an obligation to stray from the traditional address.
'That was to be the main message of my address to you today; the usual 'we need you' and 'don't doubt yourself' pep talk that perhaps you might expect at this juncture in your life. But as I sat down to pen these words, that suddenly didn't feel enough,' she said.
'Not when the world, over the course of a few short months, moved from tumultuous to an all-out dumpster fire.
'Telling you, you should be bold and brave as you move into the world didn't feel like enough.'
'There's the war in the Middle East and Europe, with both leaving questions over our sense of humanity, the daily reminder of climate change that bangs on our door but falls on deaf ears at the highest echelons of power, challenges to rules around trade, increases in migration flows and a decreasing regard for civil rights and human rights, including the right to be who you are.'
Dame Jacinda, who threw her support behind Kamala Harris in the 2024 US election, was met with applause.
'Not to mention an environment rife with mis- and disinformation fuelling not what I would characterise as polarisation, but entrenchment,' she continued. 'Views dug down so deeply and held so strongly, they are like pieces of flint, becoming explosive slightest touch.
'We're living in a time where the small are made to feel smaller and those with power loom large.'
Dame Jacinda said people needed an income safety net, and access to health and education to weather the storm.
'Some of the greatest leaders here in the United States have recognised this, that amongst all of the challenges politicians face, they must meet the most basic needs of their citizens, first and foremost,' she said.
'In fact, FDR (former US President Franklin D Roosevelt) said in 1944, while still governing a country at war, 'true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.''
Dame Jacinda said fear and isolationism are against the world's long-term self-interest.
'The illusion that closing yourself off from the world somehow means you are simply prioritising your own people ignores just how connected we are,' she said.
She acknowledged while she had lived in the US for two years, she was not American and could not fully appreciate history, culture or politics. However, she said she had observed that the US had long been pushed and pulled between the sense of obligation to its own country and the world.
'But each time there is a crisis, a war, an infectious disease that grips us or climate change that these two things are not in fact a trade off. They are linked,' she said.
'You cannot remain untouched by the impacts of infectious disease. A trade stand-off can never just hurt your competitors. A warming planet does not produce extreme weather that respects borders, and far-flung wars may not take the lives of your citizens but it will take away their sense of security and humanity.
'We are connected. We always have been.'
US President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated on January 21 this year, has been vocal about his 'America First' policy.
One of his most controversial decisions with impacts across the globe were his sweeping so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs, which were imposed in early April and then suspended for 90 days to allow negotiations.
Dame Jacinda concluded: 'Remind one another that to be outwardly looking is not unpatriotic, to seek solutions to global problems is not a zero-sum game where your nation loses, that upholding a rules-based order is not nostalgic or of another era, and crucially, that in this time of crisis and chaos leading with empathy is a strength.
'Empathy has never started a war, never sought to take the dignity of others, and empathy teaches you that power is interchangeable with another word, responsibility.'