Morality of international trade

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Morality of international trade

[On not inviting Trump to the UK] "It's not as if the Queen has been picky who she's had round to supper in the past. Idi Amin the madman who killed people by the hundreds of thousands is top of an alphabetical list of dictators with whom she has dined. Bashar Al Assad of Syria, Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, Mobutu who plundered millions from Zaire, Mugabe. None have caused as much fuss as [Trump]...

Is the hoo hah about Trump, like the fuss about selling arms to Turkey or buying oil from the Saudis, part of a modern passion for virtue signalling that comes at the expense of trade, jobs and prosperity?...

People have a right to protest. My problem with what's being done against President Trump is that this is a demonization process based on a great deal of distortion and inconsistencies designed to delegitimize him and frustrate the democratic will of the American people...

Travel to the United States is not a fundamental human right. All sovereign nations have the right to control their borders and Americans have the right to challenge the legality of the ban...

Which has the greater legitimacy?... Here you have a man who has been elected by millions of people... you are saying, you have used the word mobilize. You want to mobilize people onto the streets. You want to use the power of the mob to do what? To force, you use the word force. To force Theresa May to do what? You are usurping the democratic process...

'Name a single terrorist from one of those countries where the ban has been introduced that have killed an American civilian on American soil. Just name one. If you can't do so you have to admit the very premise of your question is null and void'

'I do not admit that at all because terrorists from these countries are killing people all over the world'

'Where have they killed people in America?'

'Well whether they have or not yet killed people in America is not the point'...

When we actually invite the President of the states, it's not the personality we're inviting, it's not the person. It's actually the position...

I think it's strange how many westerners including Britons share this collective delusion that we're collect, direct participants in the US political system. I think it speaks to people's disconnection and alienation from their own political systems...

I don't see this idea of these weird and bizarre protests in provincial British cities about opposing Trump's policies just seem to me to be politically delusional... it's displacement activity.

The policies, there are many more important questions that are more central to British political life than Trump's policies in the US themselves. It's those policies and those issues that should be addressed and should be the uppermost concern in people's minds in the political jurisdiction where they actually have an influence...

What we heard from Owen Jones was 'demagoguery'. I mean this elevated language, this hyperbole. Most detest, one of the most detested individuals on the face of the earth. We heard from Matthew 'deranged narcissist', 'existential threat to the human race'. Giles says he was the most morally ab-, more morally abhorrent than anyone else. I mean we're dealing with a situation in which Donald Trump, democratically elected, is being considered to be an absolute demonic monster on a scale which outranks the tyrants and despots who are murdering and have murdered and killed millions of people. This is, I'm sorry this is a complete disproportionate overreaction...

If the President of the United States thinks that in countries where there is chaos and terrorists and failed states there is a danger that people from those countries could carry out future terrorist events why on earth is it irrelevant, why on earth is it relevant to try and prove that that has already happened?

What the President is trying to do as he says is to look forward rather than steer through the rear view mirror... Owen Jones... about what a great opportunity it was to protest against the British government, against the Tory government. He was there talking about Donald Trump' misogyny. He said he'd been invited too early.

In other words a lot of this apparently had nothing to do with his immigration policy at all. It was a series of prejudices which have been worked up quite a long time ago and a wonderful opportunity to link Trump to the Conservative government which is what he actually wants to protest about...

I don't like aspects of his character, they worry me, but he's being - what I can't stand is this, I mean we're talking about morality, the lies that are being told, the distortions. I mean he's being accused of racism. I have not seen any racism. It's being, racism is being used as a term to describe his concern for the security of his country. That is wicked stuff"