What Trump's expected withdrawal from global climate efforts means for the environment — and the economy

President-elect Trump’s victory is expected to result in the U.S. exiting the Paris Agreement once again and more broadly disengaging from global climate efforts.

Experts say they don’t expect this to derail international work to address global warming, but that it will cede U.S. leadership on climate issues and technology in a way that could make the country less competitive in international markets down the line.

“We saw this movie before, when he pulled out of the Paris Agreement in 2017,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “It’s terrible for United States interest, but I think the Paris process will survive it.”

The New York Times reported this month that Trump’s transition team is preparing a slate of executive orders that include a withdrawal from the global agreement, which seeks to limit planetary warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Meanwhile, Trump has also taken a broader protectionist stance, announcing this week that he would implement new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. 

During his first administration, Trump exited the Paris Agreement, calling it “an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production.”

President Biden, however, reentered the global pact and has stressed that climate and labor interests can go hand in hand. His administration has made significant investments in climate-friendly energy technologies, including through the Inflation Reduction Act.

GOP lawmakers now appear poised to claw back some of those investments under the incoming Trump administration, although it's unclear to what extent they will do so. Trump himself has called for a repeal of “insane wind subsidies.” 

“The current administration is making a push to bring the U.S. into the game on technologies like electric vehicles, carbon capture, nuclear and some of that will continue,” said David Hart, senior fellow for climate and energy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

More than a disengagement from large multilateral efforts like the Paris Agreement, "I'm more worried about what the U.S. might pull back from in terms of its domestic investments,” said Hart, who also served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama administration. 

He added that the consequences of pulling back such investments would be ceding “large export sectors to China that will help China establish a greater presence in a lot of places.”

Joseph Majkut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also said that if the U.S. reduces its investment in low-carbon technologies, it could lose out in a global marketplace that is trying to cut emissions. 

“As countries … and companies are looking to clean up their supply chains and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that creates a market opportunity for low-carbon technology and low-carbon production,” Majkut said. “If you can make lower-emission steel, if you can make lower-emissions fertilizers, then you have a lot of export potential for either the underlying technology or the goods themselves.”

He also specifically pointed to the growing popularity of carbon border tariffs — in which products made with high emissions face a surcharge.

“In the near term, I think the U.S. is going to be very competitive,” he said. “We need to be invested in the long-term competitiveness just to make sure that that stays the case.”

And while experts say they don’t necessarily expect a U.S. climate withdrawal to dismantle global efforts to counter global warming, American disengagement could still have some consequences. 

Dan Lashof, director of the U.S. chapter of the World Resources Institute, said that a broader U.S. disengagement could make it more difficult to pressure China, the world’s largest emitter, to take action.

He called the potential for emissions cuts from China the “key question” regarding whether the world will be able to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. 

Lashof noted that the nation has “committed to peak by before 2030” and added that “how high the peak is and how rapidly it reduces emissions is really critical in terms of the cumulative burden of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere.”

"The U.S., I think, has played over the last four years, a very important role in encouraging China to be more ambitious in its actions,” he added. “With that absent, I think it's an open question to what extent the European Union and other countries will be able to have that role.” 

Meanwhile, Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and Dean of the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, noted that a slowdown in U.S. efforts to cut emissions will harm not only the U.S. but also other countries due to its impact on the climate. 

“If the U.S., all of a sudden, slows its efforts down to halt and stop climate change, that will have, of course, an effect on the whole planet,” he said.