What happened
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending U.S. participation in dozens of international organizations, including the landmark United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The White House said Trump determined that the 66 treaties and organizations, 31 of which are U.N. entities, “operate contrary to U.S. national interests.”
Who said what
Many of the organizations Trump is targeting are obscure or narrow in focus, like the International Cotton Advisory Committee, but the 1992 UNFCCC is the “bedrock international agreement that forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change,” The New York Times said. The U.S. withdrawal, “amid the hottest decade ever recorded,” appears to be Trump’s “latest attempt to destabilize global climate cooperation,” Politico said.
Making the U.S. the “only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty” is “shortsighted, embarrassing and foolish,” said former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement. Trump is “forfeiting our country’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies and decisions that would have advanced our economy.” Other organizations on Trump’s withdrawal list are the Global Counterterrorism Forum, the gender equality–focused UN Women and the U.N.'s Population Fund for family planning and maternal health, International Law Commission and Peacebuilding Commission.
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What next?
The U.S. exit from the UNFCCC, unanimously ratified by the Senate in 1992, will take effect a year after Trump files formal notice with the U.N. Trump’s second-term withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, which is undergirded by the UNFCCC, becomes official on Jan. 20. The U.S. is also the only country to pull out of the Paris deal.
