CLIMATE DEAL: Trump asserts ‘America first’ as world leaders react with alarm
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, weakening efforts to combat global warming and embracing isolationist voices in his White House who argued that the agreement was a pernicious threat to the economy and American sovereignty.
In a speech from the Rose Garden, Trump said the landmark 2015 pact imposed wildly unfair environmental standards on American businesses and workers. He vowed to stand with the people of the United States against what he called a “draconian” international deal.
“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” the president said, drawing support from members of his Republican Party but widespread condemnation from political leaders, business executives and environmentalists around the globe.
Trump’s decision to abandon the agreement for environmental action signed by 195 nations is a remarkable rebuke to heads of state, climate activists, corporate ex-
ecutives and members of the president’s own staff, who all failed to change his mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying blitz. The Paris agreement was intended to bind the world community into battling rising temperatures in concert, and the departure of the Earth’s second-largest polluter is a major blow.
Trump said he wanted to negotiate a better deal for the United States, and the administration said he had placed calls to the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Canada to personally explain his decision. A statement from the White House press secretary said the president “reassured the leaders that America remains committed to the trans-Atlantic alliance and to robust efforts to protect the environment.”
But within minutes of the president’s remarks, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy issued a joint statement saying that the Paris climate accord was “irreversible” and could not be renegotiated.
The decision was a victory for Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, and Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who spent months quietly making their case to the president about the dangers of the agreement. Inside the West Wing, the pair overcame intense opposition from other top aides, including Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, the president’s daughter Ivanka, and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.
Once ‘unthinkable’
The president’s speech was his boldest and most sweeping assertion of an “America first” foreign policy doctrine since he assumed office four months ago. He vowed to turn the country’s empathy inward, rejecting financial assistance for pollution controls in developing nations in favor of providing help to U.S. cities struggling to hire police officers.
“It would once have been unthinkable that an international agreement could prevent the United States from conducting its own domestic affairs,” Trump said.
In Trump’s view, the Paris accord represents an attack on the sovereignty of the United States and a threat to the ability of his administration to reshape the nation’s environmental laws in ways that benefit everyday Americans.
“At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Trump said. “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.”
But business leaders like Elon Musk of Tesla, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs said the decision would ultimately harm the economy by ceding the jobs of the future in clean energy and technology to overseas competitors.
Musk, who had agreed to be a member of a two business-related councils that Trump set up this year, wrote on Twitter that he would leave those panels.
“Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” he said.
Under the accord, the United States had pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and commit up to $3 billion in aid for poorer countries by 2020.
‘If we can, that’s great’
By stepping away from the Paris agreement, the president made good on a campaign promise to “cancel” an agreement he repeatedly mocked at rallies. As president, he has moved rapidly to reverse Obama-era policies aimed at allowing the United States to meet its pollutionreduction targets as set under the agreement.
“We are getting out,” Trump said Thursday. “But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great.”
In his remarks, Trump listed sectors of the U.S. economy that would lose revenue and jobs if the country remained part of the accord, citing a study — vigorously disputed by environmental groups — asserting that the agreement would cost 2.7 million jobs by 2025.
But he will stick to the withdrawal process laid out in the Paris agreement, which President Barack Obama joined and most of the world has already ratified.
That could take nearly four years to complete, meaning a final decision would be up to the American voters in the next presidential election.
In his address, Trump said, “It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with many, many other locations within our great country, before Paris, France. It is time to make America great again.”
The mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, responded on Twitter, “I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future.”