TAORMINA, Italy—President Donald J. Trump declined to endorse the Paris climate accords last Saturday, ending his first foreign trip much as he began it: at odds with several of the nation’s allies and under a cloud of questions back home about his ties to Russia.
Trump refused to bend on the pact after three days of contentious private debate and intense lobbying by other leaders that began on Wednesday with an appeal by Pope Francis.
The six other nations in the Group-of-Seven (G7) reaffirmed their commitment to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions in a joint statement issued last Saturday.
The stalemate leaves the country’s future role in the climate accord in flux, although Trump promised to make a decision in the week ahead on whether the US will be the first of 195 signatories to pull out.
Trump returned home last Saturday night to a White House in crisis after a nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe that was bookended by new disclosures about links between his aides and Russia.
The climate accord was the most vivid sign of division between the US and its allies, but it was not the only one: Trump also scolded Germany for its trade practices and lectured North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) members for not adequately supporting the alliance.
“There was a lot of give and take between the different countries in the room,” said Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council.
But he insisted that the other countries understood Trump’s refusal to decide now, even if they did not support that position.
“The president’s only been in office for a certain period of time, and they respect that,” Cohn said. He added: “We’re all allies. We’re all trying to get to the right place and be respectful of each other.”
While Trump’s decision was not a surprise, the reaction was swift and critical.
“President Trump’s continued waffling on whether to stay in or withdraw from the Paris Agreement made it impossible to reach consensus at the Taormina summit on the need for ambitious climate action. But he stands in stark isolation,” said Alden Meyer,director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The leaders of Germany and France expressed disappointment, according to The Associated Press.
“The whole discussion about climate was very difficult, not to say unsatisfactory,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said. “There’s a situation where it’s six—if you count the European Union, seven—against one.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France said he had told Trump it was “indispensable for the reputation of the United States and for the Americans themselves that the Americans remain committed” to the climate agreement.
The G7 statement provides the US more time to resolve internal White House debates about whether to pull out of the pact. It says the US is “in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and, thus, is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics”.
The president did not mention the impasse in his only public remarks after the summit to US troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily. But he repeated his complaints about trade and the financing of Nato, even as he pronounced the trip a rousing success.
“We hit a home run no matter where we are,” he said.
For Trump, however, the lack of a decision on the climate accord put an uncertain ending on an ambitious first presidential trip abroad that began as a respite from the surfeit of scandal at home.
Beleaguered White House aides—who were aboard Air Force One flying to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when they heard reports that Trump had called his former FBI director a “nut job”—had hoped the trip would offer a much-needed change of subject. And to some degree, it did, if only because the White House engineered the itinerary to keep Trump far away from reporters who could ask him questions.
They scheduled no news conferences and put the president only in highly controlled situations: a brief photo session with a foreign leader; a teleprompter speech; ceremonial gatherings with other leaders.
But last Saturday, as his aides tried to promote the trip’s accomplishments, reporters bombarded them with questions about reports that Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, had talked about opening a secret back channel to Russia during the transition.
“We’re not going to comment on Jared,” an exasperated Cohn said.
In some ways, it was not one trip, but two, each with very different themes.
In Saudi Arabia and Israel Trump was surprisingly disciplined, sticking to his script and delivering two speeches that set a clear course for his approach to the Middle East. His rapturous welcome in both countries suggested that the US could make a new start with allies who had grown restive during the Obama administration.
In Europe, however, the pugnacious side of Trump reasserted itself. In addition to offering a harangue of Nato members over budgetary matters, he declined to explicitly reaffirm America’s commitment to Article 5, which requires the US to come to the defense of allies in the event of an attack.
He also won derisive headlines across the Continent after muscling aside the prime minister of Montenegro during a photo shoot, an image that quickly became a metaphor for his rough dealings with Europeans.
“His advisers tried to make him understand that there are some allies that are really nervous and needed reassurance,” said Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “He managed to do it with the Saudis and the Israelis.” But in Europe, he said, “he does take us for granted.”
Brian McKeon, a senior policy official in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, said: “The in-your-face thing at the Nato headquarters was pretty undiplomatic. He succeeded at busting norms, but not building goodwill.”
The US national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, said Trump’s participation in the ceremony was an implicit endorsement of Article 5. “He did not make a decision not to say it,” McMaster said.
Image credits: Luke Sharrett/The New York Times