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Louis Jacobson
By Louis Jacobson January 22, 2025

Trump signs order to leave Paris climate agreement

Among his first-day executive actions, President Donald Trump ordered the United States to leave the Paris climate agreement, an international accord negotiated by almost 200 countries almost a decade ago that aims to curb climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As a result of Trump's action, the U.S. will join only three members of the United Nations that are not a party to the agreement: Iran, Libya and Yemen.

Trump's Jan. 20 announcement is the latest development in the back-and-forth over the agreement. It has factored into each of the four PolitiFact promise meters we have undertaken since 2009, for Barack Obama, Trump during his first term, and Joe Biden.

The United Nations flag is adjusted ahead of the COP 28 U.N. Climate Summit on Nov. 29, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (AP)

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama promised to work with the United Nations on fighting climate change. We rated this a Promise Kept after the U.S. joined other nations in signing the Paris Agreement, which formally took effect in November 2016 after 55 countries accounting for at least 55% of total global greenhouse gas emissions formally ratified it

The agreement neither imposes penalties on signatories, nor specifies how each country should meet the targets, but the idea behind the agreement is that mutual peer pressure will keep member nations in line.

When Trump ran in the 2016 presidential election, he promised to leave the Paris accord. We rated this a Promise Kept in 2017 after he said the U.S. would exit the agreement.

When Biden ran for president in 2020, he pledged to rejoin the agreement, and he earned a Promise Kept when he signed an executive action doing so on his first day in office. Rejoining the pact is a bit more complicated than leaving it, because a nation joining it must formally set its greenhouse gas reduction target. But the Biden administration did that by May 2021.

Then, during the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to leave the agreement for the second time. 

Technically, under the agreement, a separation takes effect one year after notice is given to the United Nations, which hasn't formally happened yet. However, "this does not strike me as a very important question," said Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow with the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute.

In the order, Trump used the term "immediately" twice, writing that the United States' U.N. ambassador "shall immediately submit formal written notification of the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. …  The United States will consider its withdrawal from the agreement and any attendant obligations to be effective immediately upon this provision of notification."

Experts said the impending U.S. departure has global implications.

"Leaving the Paris Climate Accord implies that we will not be part of any of the international negotiations and lose some of our sway in the process," said Kenneth Gillingham, an environmental and energy economics professor at the Yale School of the Environment. "It will take some of the wind out of the sails of the international climate negotiation process this November in Brazil."

Trump's move "puts us in opposition to allies who have moved climate near the top of their agenda," said Jake Schmidt, international strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. "It is a signal to the Pacific Island countries, the African Union, the least developed countries, the European Union, Brazil, and other countries that this country is not interested in addressing one of their top priorities and may undercut their desire to work with the US on other issues."

Trump's decision to pull the U.S. from the agreement will take at least a year to become official, but given Trump's consistent calls over the years to exit the pact, there's no reason to believe that it won't happen. We rate this Promise Kept.

Our Sources

Donald Trump, Executive Order: "Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements," Jan. 20, 2025

Associated Press, "Here's what the Paris climate agreement does and doesn't do," Jan. 21, 2025

Email interview with Jake Schmidt, international strategic director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Jan. 21, 2025

Email interview with Jeremy Symons, principal with Symons Public Affairs, Jan. 21, 2025

Email interview with Benjamin Zycher, senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, Jan. 21, 2025

Email interview with Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at the Yale School of the Environment, Jan. 21, 2025

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