The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump says overseas trip a rousing success
Paris accords prove point of contention with Europe on trip.
“We hit a home run no matter where we are,” he said despite differences with European allies over climate and trade.
President Donald Trump declined to endorse the Paris climate accords on Saturday, ending his first foreign trip much as he began it: at odds with several of the nation’s allies and under a cloud of questions back home about his ties to Russia.
Trump refused to bend on the pact after three days of contentious private debate and intense lobbying by other leaders that began Wednesday with an appeal by Pope Francis. The six other nations in the Group of 7 reaffirmed their commitment to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions in a joint statement issued Saturday.
The stalemate leaves the country’s future role in the climate accord in flux, though Trump in a twitter message Saturday promised to make a decision in the week ahead on whether the United States will be the first of 195 signatories to pull out.
Trump left Italy on Saturday afternoon, returning to a White House in crisis after a nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe that was bookended by new disclosures about links between his aides and Russia.
The climate accord was the most vivid sign of division between the United States and its allies, but it was not the only one: Trump also scolded Germany for its trade practices and lectured NATO members for not adequately supporting the alliance.
“There was a lot of give-and-take between the different countries in the room,” said Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council.
President Emmanuel Macron of France said he had told Trump it was “indispensable for the reputation of the United States and for the Americans themselves that the Americans remain committed” to the climate agreement.
The G-7 statement provides the United States more time to resolve internal White House debates about whether to pull out of the pact. It says the United States is “in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics.”
The president did not mention the impasse in his only public remarks after the summit, to U.S. troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily. But he repeated his complaints about trade and the financing of NATO, even as he pronounced the trip a rousing success.
“We hit a home run no matter where we are,” he said.
For Trump, however, the lack of a decision on the climate accord put an uncertain ending on an ambitious first presidential trip abroad that began as a respite from the turmoil at home.
Beleaguered White House aides — who were aboard Air Force One flying to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when they heard reports that Trump had called his former FBI director a “nut job” — had hoped the trip would offer a much-needed change of subject. And to some degree, it did, if only because the White House engineered the itinerary to keep Trump far away from reporters who could ask him questions. They scheduled no news conferences and put the president only in highly controlled situations: a brief photo session with a foreign leader; a teleprompter speech; ceremonial gatherings with other leaders.
But on Saturday, as his aides tried to promote the trip’s accomplishments, reporters bombarded them with questions about reports that Trump’s son-in-law an adviser, Jared Kushner, had talked about opening a secret back channel to Russia during the transition.
“We’re not going to comment on Jared,” an exasperated Cohn said.
In some ways, it was not one trip, but two, each with very different themes.
In Saudi Arabia and Israel, Trump was surprisingly disciplined, sticking to his script and delivering two speeches that set a clear course for his approach to the Middle East. His rapturous welcome in both countries suggested that the United States could make a new start with allies who had grown restive during the Obama administration.
In Europe, however, the pugnacious side of Trump reasserted itself. In addition to offering a harangue of NATO members over budgetary matters, he declined to explicitly reaffirm America’s commitment to NATO’s Article 5, which requires the United States to come to the defense of allies in the event of an attack.
On climate, Trump has long railed against what he says are the economic dangers of a global climate pact. He has demanded more flexibility in setting standards on emissions, saying other countries are getting a better deal and that the agreement could be costly for U.S. businesses.
There is an intense debate inside the West Wing over whether to withdraw from the accord or to try to renegotiate its terms, pitting hardline nationalists, like the chief strategist Steve Bannon, against more mainstream advisers like Cohn.
On Thursday, Cohn told reporters that Trump’s thinking on the subject was “evolving.” But other senior officials said even if the United States remains in the agreement, it could effectively gut its principles.