Trump signs order to withdraw US from Paris Agreement for 2nd time
He also described the agreeement as an "unfair one-side Paris climate accord rip-off"

On his first day back as U.S. president on Jan. 20, Donald Trump immediately worked to roll back a number of Joe Biden's environmental regulations.
One major move by Trump? Signing an executive order to withdraw the country from the Paris Agreement, a climate change treaty which aims to keep global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The agreement expects nations to submit their own carbon emissions-reducing targets, also known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), with 2025 being the next deadline for the submission of new NDCs.
Withdrawal
The executive order Trump issued was titled “Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements,” and also withdraws the U.S. from any other international climate pacts, reported Time.
This was done mere hours after Trump was sworn in, and he claimed that the U.S. would save "over a trillion dollars" by doing so.
Trump believes that the Paris Agreement is one of several international agreements that “steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people," AP News wrote.
NOW - Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. pic.twitter.com/pcPoEBCML5
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 20, 2025
According to The Guardian, he also described it as an "unfair one-side Paris climate accord rip-off".
Additionally, Trump signed a letter to the United Nations (UN) informing them about the U.S.'s exit, which will take about a year to be formalised.
This means that the U.S. will join Iran, Libya and Yemen, which are not part of the agreement.
Exit will hit harder now
This is the second time Trump has confirmed he will be withdrawing from the Paris agreement — the first was during his first term in 2017.
When Biden became president in 2021, he rejoined the agreement.
This time, experts believe the impact of the withdrawal will be more severe.
In 2017, the withdrawal only took effect after around 3.5 years due to complicated UN regulations, The Guardian reported.
The short exit timeframe now, coupled with the fact that the impacts of climate change appear to have been escalating, will "further jeopardise the achievement of the Paris Agreement's temperature goals," a legal professor at Columbia Law School told Reuters.
Paul Watkinson, a former climate negotiator who worked on the 2015 Paris Agreement, said:
"That has obviously an impact on others. I mean, why should others continue to pick up the pieces if one of the key players once again leaves the room?"
Other environmental regulations repealed
The Paris Agreement is not the only thing Trump has reversed.
He issued an order to repeal 12 Biden-era regulatory actions related to clean energy, Time wrote.
This includes a goal to make half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.
"Our kids and everyone with lungs will pay the price for these politically motivated rollbacks of protections for our air and the climate," said a director at U.S. non-profit Center for Biological Diversity.
Trump also signed an order declaring a "national energy emergency", citing a need to increase oil and natural gas production in order to lower energy costs.
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Top photo from MarwanNawaz / X and Canva
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