Washington Post - Philip Rucker | Jenna Johnson
President Trump has decided to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. Here's what you need to know.
(Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he is withdrawing
the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, a move to
honor a campaign pledge that dismayed America’s allies and thwarted the
global effort to address the warming planet.
Trump’s decision
alarmed leaders around the world, drawing swift and sharp condemnation
from foreign officials as well as top U.S. environmentalists and
corporate titans, who decried the U.S. exit from the Paris accord as an
irresponsible abdication of American leadership.
But Trump cast
his decision as a “reassertion of America’s sovereignty,” arguing that
the climate pact as negotiated under President Obama was grossly unfair
to the U.S. workers he had vowed to protect with his populist “America
First” campaign platform.
“I was elected to represent the
citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump proclaimed in a forceful,
lengthy and at times rambling speech from the Rose Garden of the White
House.
The United States now joins only two countries — Nicaragua
and Syria — in opposing a climate agreement reached by all other
nations in 2015. A signature diplomatic achievement for President Obama,
the Paris accord was celebrated at the time as a universal response to
the global warming crisis.
President Trump announced his decision to
withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on June 1, after saying he
would "cancel" the deal while on the campaign trail.
(Reuters)
Trump argued Thursday that the deal had negative ramifications for
domestic manufacturing and other industries, and put the United States
at a “permanent disadvantage” with China, India and other rising powers.
He said the agreement’s restrictions on future greenhouse gas emissions
would be tantamount to putting America’s vast energy resources “under
lock and key.”
The U.S. withdrawal of the Paris agreement cannot
actually be finalized until near the end of Trump’s term. In a gesture
to those who had encouraged him to remain in the accord, Trump said he
was open to negotiating a new climate deal that, in his assessment,
would be more fair to U.S. interests.
“In order to fulfill my
solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will
withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to reenter
either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that
are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people,
its taxpayers,” Trump said.
“We’re
getting out,” he added, “but we will start to negotiate and we will see
if we can make a deal that’s fair. If we can, that’s great. If we
can’t, that’s fine.”
The leaders of France, Germany and Italy
issued a joint statement voicing “regret” about Trump’s move, promising
to redouble their efforts to implement the Paris agreement and asserting
it cannot be renegotiated.
“We deem the momentum generated in
Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris
Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for
our planet, societies and economies,” read the statement from French
President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
Following Trump’s speech, Macron
spoke with the president by phone for five minutes and “indicated that
nothing was renegotiable in the Paris Accords,” according to a French
official briefed on the conversation.
“The United States and France will continue to work together, but not on the subject of the climate,” the official added.
Erik
Solheim, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program,
said in an interview that “the biggest losers will be the American
people.”
“It’s obviously regrettable,” he said. “The world needs
American leadership. However, the impact is less than most people would
believe, because China, India and Europe will provide leadership.”
Central
to Trump’s rationale was his feeling that the United States had been
taken advantage of. He argued that the Paris agreement would “punish”
Americans and stymie economic growth. The president claimed that meeting
the accord’s greenhouse gas emission standards would cost the United
States close to $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product and 6.5
million industrial jobs.
Trump argued the Paris accord was so unfavorable to U.S. interests that other countries were laughing at America.
“The
rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris agreement,” Trump
said. “They went wild. They were so happy. For the simple reason that it
put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a
very, very big economic disadvantage.”
The
president, who recently returned from his maiden foreign trip, added,
“We want fair treatment for its citizens and we want fair treatment for
our taxpayers. We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing
at us anymore — and they won’t be.”
Obama strongly defended the
Paris agreement as a measure to “protect the world we leave to our
children.” In a statement released Thursday, he said it was the product
of “steady, principled American leadership on the world stage,” pointing
out that it had broad support from the private sector because the
accord “opened the floodgates” for high-tech, low-carbon investment and
innovation.
“I believe the United States of America should be at
the front of the pack,” Obama said. “But even in the absence of American
leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of
nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities,
and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help
protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.”
Gina
McCarthy, Obama’s EPA administrator when the Paris agreement was
negotiated, said in a statement: “It’s a disappointing and embarrassing
day for the United States.”
The atmosphere in the Rose Garden was
celebratory, with a military band performing “Summertime” and other
jazz hits as Cabinet members, White House staffers, conservative
activists and other Trump supporters took their seats in the garden
under a bright sun.
The scene was a reflection of the deep
divide within the Trump administration over Paris. The president took
much of the spring to make up his mind amid an intense campaign by both
sides to influence his decision.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and
Ivanka Trump,
the president’s daughter and adviser, are among those who urged him to
stay in the deal, arguing it would be beneficial to the United States to
remain part of negotiations and meetings surrounding the agreement as a
matter of leverage and influence. Neither was in attendance for
Thursday’s ceremony.
White
House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt pushed for a withdrawal. When Trump
announced that he would pull out, there was a burst of applause and some
whoops from the assembled crowd in the Rose Garden — and Bannon held
his hands up in the air, clapping enthusiastically.
Introducing
Trump, Vice President Pence said the climate decision was an example of
the president putting what he sees as the interests of the United States
above all else.
“Our president is choosing to put American jobs
and American consumers first,” Pence said. “Our president is choosing to
put American energy and American industry first. And by his action
today, President Trump is choosing to put the forgotten men and women
first.”
Pruitt later commended Trump for his “fortitude, courage
and steadfastness” to exit the Paris accord and fulfill a campaign
promise.
“You’re fighting for the forgotten men and women across
this country,” Pruitt said of his boss. “This is an historic
restoration of American economic independence.”
Condemnations of Trump’s decision were immediate and strongly-worded.
Former
vice president Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work
raising awareness about global warming, said the president’s decision
was “reckless and indefensible.”
“It undermines America’s
standing in the world and threatens to damage humanity’s ability to
solve the climate crisis in time,” Gore, who called Trump last month to
try to persuade him to keep the United States in the Paris agreement,
said in a statement.
Jeff Immelt, the chief executive of General
Electric, tweeted: “Disappointed with today’s decision on the Paris
Agreement. Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend
on government.”
In Europe, the top climate official at the European Union, Miguel Arias Canete, decried the U.S. action.
“A
sad day for the global community, as the US turns its back on the fight
against climate change. EU deeply regrets this unilateral decision,”
Canete wrote on Twitter. “The EU will strengthen existing partnerships
and seek new alliances from the world’s largest economies to the most
vulnerable island states.”
A
top German politician slammed Trump’s decision to pull out from the
agreement, mocking him for his brusque brush-aside of a Balkan leader
last week at a NATO meeting in Brussels.
“You can withdraw from a
climate agreement but not from climate change, Mr. Trump,” Social
Democratic leader Martin Schulz wrote on Twitter. “Reality isn’t just
another statesman you shove away.”
On Capitol Hill,
Democrats were fierce in their criticism. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-R.I.), who regularly speaks from the Senate floor about the perils of
global warming, said Trump was “betraying the country.”
“Ignoring
reality and leaving the Paris Agreement could go down as one of the
worst foreign policy blunders in our nation’s history,” Whitehouse said
in a statement. “Trump is betraying the country, in the service of
Breitbart fake news, the shameless fossil fuel industry, and the Koch
brothers’ climate denial operation. It’s sad.”
But Republican congressional leaders praised Trump’s move.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement, “I applaud
President Trump and his administration for dealing yet another
significant blow to the Obama Administration’s assault on domestic
energy production and jobs.”
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)
said, “The Paris climate agreement was simply a raw deal for America … I
commend President Trump for fulfilling his commitment to the American
people and withdrawing from this bad deal.”
More than 190 nations
agreed to the accord in December 2015 in Paris, and 147 have since
formally ratified or otherwise joined it, including the United States —
representing more than 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions.
It’s also heavily backed by U.S. and global
corporations, including oil giants Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and BP.
Large corporations, especially those operating in international
markets, have had years to get used to the idea that there are likely to
be reductions on carbon emissions, and they have been adapting their
businesses accordingly for some time.
Withdrawing
the United States from the agreement could take years due to the
accord’s legal structure and language, but such a move would weaken its
goals almost immediately. The United States is the world’s
second-largest greenhouse gas emitter and would otherwise have accounted
for 21 percent of the total emissions reductions achieved by the accord
through 2030.
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