G20: Donald Trump slams the Paris climate accord saying it was ‘designed to kill the American economy’
- ‘To protect American workers, I withdrew the United States from the unfair and one-sided Paris climate accord,’ said Trump
- Trump has been a long-time critic of the environmental pact, which was established in 2015
President Donald Trump on Sunday slammed the Paris climate accord, telling world leaders at the G20 summit that the pact was harmful to American citizens.
“To protect American workers, I withdrew the United States from the unfair and one-sided Paris climate accord, a very unfair act for the United States,” he said.
“The Paris accord was not designed to save the environment. It was designed to kill the American economy. I refuse to surrender millions of American jobs and send trillions of American dollars to the world's worst polluters and environmental offenders, and that's what would have happened.”
Trump has been a long-time critic of the environmental pact, which was established in 2015 and the United States joined under then-President Barack Obama in August 2016.
In June 2017, a few months into his presidency, Trump withdrew from the accord, saying that the deal was “draconian,” while disagreeing with the standards for carbon emission reductions.
After a complex winding-down process, the US formally left the Paris agreement on November 4.