Slamming US President-elect Joe Biden's decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, President Donald Trump on Saturday (local time) said that the decision would give advantage to Russia and China.
Speaking at a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, Trump said, "The Paris Environmental Accord. I said, I'm gonna get killed in this one. But we would've paid trillions and trillions of dollars. Russia has a big advantage over us, they go back to the old days when the air was very dirty, that was their standard. China doesn't kick in until 2030, we kick in immediately, and the money that wouldn't have cost us."
"Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it," Biden said on November 6.
US President Donald Trump and his advisors have described the historic 2015 climate change mitigation agreement - a cornerstone of the foreign policy i.e. the legacy of former US President Barack Obama - as weak, particularly with regard to providing incentives to polluters in India and China to lower emissions, while concurrently being too hard on the US industry.
Arguing that the 2015 agreement was detrimental to the US economy, Trump in 2017 had said: "In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but being negotiations to reenter, either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction under terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers," "We're getting out."
( With inputs from ANI )
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