President Trump announced on Friday — during a speech that pandered to special-interest groups and was symbolic of his administration’s disdain for multilateral agreements — that the United States would “unsign” the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a landmark agreement that regulates the international trade in conventional arms.

It took more than five years of negotiations to develop the ATT, and I spent those years as a consultant in the treaty process, working with diplomats to draft the text. Each word was hard-fought by U.S negotiators to ensure that it aligned with U.S. national security priorities, foreign policy goals, economic interests and long-standing American values and principles.

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