Trump Blames India, China for His Withdrawal from Paris Climate Deal

United States President Donald Trump once again said that the Paris Climate Agreement was benefiting only developing countries like India and China in a bid to justify his withdrawal from it. The deal was unfair to the United States, Trump said during his address to the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) on Feb. 23.

Trump withdrew from the pact, that has been signed by almost 200 countries, in June 2017, saying it would have cost the United States economy, killed jobs and slowed down the oil, gas, coal and manufacturing industries.

“We knocked out the Paris Climate Agreement. It would have been a disaster. Would have been a disaster for our country,” Trump said.

“Other countries, big countries — India and others — we had to pay, because they considered them a growing country. They were a growing country. I said, ‘What are we?’ Are we allowed to grow too? Okay? (Laughter.) Now, are we allowed to grow? (Applause.) They called India a ‘developing nation.’ They called China a ‘developing nation.’ But the United States, we’re developed — we can pay,” he said, according to a White House statement.

He further defended the withdrawal saying that the United States is doing “record business” now and companies are coming back.

“We’re doing record business. We’re doing business — and you have to look at the fundamentals. Companies are pouring back into this country. They’re pouring back,” he said.

In January 2018, he said that he was open to signing the deal if it was different but wouldn’t sign the current one, which he called terrible and a disaster. He added that the pact would force the United States to not utilize oil and gas reserves that were found recently. Since 2014, America has found more reserves in the Permian basin in Texas. In 2016, the country had the largest oil reserves in the world.

“You know, basically, it (the Paris accord) said, you have a lot of oil and gas that we found—you know, technology has been amazing—and we found things that we never knew. But we have massive — just about the top in the world — we have massive energy reserves. We have coal. We have so much. And basically, they were saying, don’t use it, you can’t use it,” he said.

In June 2017, when he withdrew from the Paris climate deal, he said that India would get billions of dollars to fulfill the commitment, since it was a developing nation, and would double its coal-fired power plants in the coming years, which would give the country a financial advantage over the United States. His decision to withdraw from the pact was met with outrage all over the world.

The pact, which is seen as a legacy of Barack Obama’s presidentship, took years to be formed and get signed. Years of diplomacy and lobbying were invested into the agreement, which necessitated reduction of greenhouse gases by 2025 to stabilize climate change.