WHITE HOUSE — President Donald Trump said Thursday he is pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, but will try to negotiate a better deal to benefit American businesses and taxpayers.

Ending days of speculation about what course he would take, Trump announced he is ending U.S. compliance with nonbinding portions of the Paris agreement immediately, while also calling for talks to come up with “a deal that’s fair.”

“We’re getting out,” Trump said, as an invited audience in the White House Rose Garden applauded enthusiastically.

“The Paris climate accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that damages the United States,” Trump said. “…As of today the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding accord.”

Former President Obama lamented the decision to leave the first global agreement to set all nations on “a low-carbon course, and to protect the world we leave to our children.”

In a statement apparently prepared in anticipation of Trump’s decision, Obama said: “It was steady, principled American leadership on the world stage that made that achievement possible.It was bold American ambition that encouraged dozens of other nations to set their sights higher as well.And what made that leadership and ambition possible was America’s private innovation and public investment in growing industries like wind and solar – industries that created some of the fastest new streams of good-paying jobs in recent years, and contributed to the longest streak of job creation in our history.”[xyz-ihs snippet=”adsense-body-ad”]Obama served two terms in the White House and was ineligible to run again last year, when Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. He noted that private businesses in the U.S. have already made clear their support for the Paris agreement, which “opened the floodgates for businesses, scientists, and engineers to unleash high-tech, low-carbon investment and innovation on an unprecedented scale.”

On the eve of Thursday’s announcement, Trump noted as he took part in a photo session with Vietnam’s visiting prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc that he was hearing from “a lot of people both ways” as he considered his options. Spokesman Sean Spicer said the president consulted U.S. business leaders and foreign heads of state.

Trump stressed that withdrawal from the climate agreement fulfilled one of his major campaign promises during last year’s political campaign. His reversal of Obama-era policy was expected to please many of his supporters in the Republican Party but infuriate environmentalists and America’s allies.

The accord, which has been endorsed by 195 countries, is technically legally binding, though its powers for enforcement are fairly weak.

As an example, carbon emissions targets are not binding. The U.S. pledged under the accord to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025. If the U.S. fails to meet that goal, however, there are no legal repercussions.

“Donald Trump has made a historic mistake, which our grandchildren will look back on with stunned dismay at how a world leader could be so divorced from reality and morality,” Sierra Club President Michael Brune said in a statement emailed to VOA.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, the founder of Space X, said he would resign from three White House scientific advisory boards as a sign of opposition to Trump’s decision.

Economist Gary Hufbauer of the Washington-based Peterson Institute told VOA he expects other countries to remain a part of the accord, and that Trump deciding to leave would “put the U.S. in a bad light.”

Source: VOA [xyz-ihs snippet=”Adsense-responsive”]

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