Open letter to our friends and allies

An Urgent Message to Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Japan

By Robert Reich

Please do not lose faith in the United States. 

For over seventy years our beliefs and values have made us staunch allies. 

Nothing and no one can change that.

Most Americans continue to value your loyalty and friendship, and look forward to many more years collaborating in the causes of democracy, equal opportunity, science, the environment, balanced growth, and human rights. 

And against totalitarianism, xenophobia, ignorance, climate change, nuclear Armageddon, and global poverty.

The current occupant of the White House does not represent the views of the majority of Americans. 

We are doing everything we can to ensure that he will not be president beyond his current term, which ends in January, 2021. It is possible he will be removed from office before then.

In the meantime, you can help.

You can maintain a united front against his nativism and xenophobia.

You can join together to resist his demand that you reduce exports to the United States.

You can maintain the Paris climate accord despite the (hopefully temporary) absence of the United States.

You can countervail any harm to your businesses should they fail to go along with renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran.

You can jointly refuse to allow Russia to rejoin the G-7 alliance until Russia terminates its annexation of Crimea, ends its aggression in Ukraine, and stops its efforts to undermine democracies around the world.

You can continue to stand against tyranny and stand for democracy and basic human rights.

You will be more powerful in these efforts if you join together than you can be separately. Together, you can better help constrain our current president than you can separately.

Until the United States is able to resume its postwar role of world leadership on these and other matters, the responsibility must fall to you. We urge you to unite in pursuit of them.

Respectfully,

The majority of the citizens of the United States

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.