Trump confirms US will withdraw from Paris climate change agreement
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he will withdraw the United States from the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, spurning pleas from U.S. allies and corporate leaders in an action that fulfilled a major campaign pledge, Reuters reported.
“We’re getting out,” Trump said at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden in which he decried the Paris accord’s “draconian” financial and economic burdens, according to Reuters.
“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” Trump said. But he added that the United States would begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or “a new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.”
With Trump’s action, the United States will walk away from nearly every nation in the world on one of the pressing global issues of the 21st century. The pullout will align the United States with Syria and Nicaragua as the world’s only non-participants in the accord, Reuters wrote.
The United States was one of 195 nations that agreed to the accord in Paris in December 2015, a deal that former U.S. President Barack Obama was instrumental in brokering, Reuters added.
Supporters of the accord condemned Trump’s move as an abdication of American leadership and an international disgrace, Reuters indicated.
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