Potential Implications of U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

Updated April 5, 2019

Potential Implications of U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris

Agreement on Climate Change

On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced his intent to

withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement (PA),

an international accord to address climate change over the

coming century. In a December 2018 meeting of the

Parties, an official U.S. statement reiterated the intent to

withdraw “absent the identification of terms that are more

favorable to the American people.”

Congress may wish to consider implications of the

President’s intent in several dimensions: foreign policy,

economic, environmental, and legal.

What Is the Paris Agreement?

The PA exists under the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The United

States ratified the UNFCCC in 1992 with the advice and

consent of the Senate. In 2016, President Obama accepted

the PA without requesting the Senate’s advice and consent;

the Department of State took the view that the PA contained

no substantive, legal obligations for the United States

beyond those already required by the UNFCCC. Currently,

the PA has 185 Parties—governments that have ratified or

accepted the agreement, including the United States—out of

195 Signatories. Of the top 20 emitting nations, only Iran,

Russia, and Turkey are not Parties.

Under the UNFCCC, the United States and the thenindustrialized Parties listed in “Annex I” took on specific

commitments for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation,

financial resources, reporting, and review. The PA modified

the UNFCCC bifurcation of commitments between Annex I

and developing country Parties to establish a single,

common set of obligations for all Parties (with flexibilities

for the least capable). For example, China agreed in the PA

to the same binding commitments as the United States.

Under the PA, all Parties must submit “Nationally

Determined Contributions” (NDC) every five years, but the

content is not binding. An NDC must identify how the

Party intends to abate its GHG emissions, initially to 2025

or 2030, depending on the time frame each nation chooses.

Each nation voluntarily decides its NDC. As such, all PA

emissions targets, including the U.S. target, are voluntary

and nonbinding.

The UNFCCC requires GHG and other reporting and

review, differentiated by types of Parties. The PA makes an

enhanced transparency framework applicable to all Parties.

The PA contains cooperative compliance mechanisms but

not formal sanctions. Incentives for compliance include

“name and shame” processes: Parties that do not meet their

pledges may incur diplomatic and public opinion penalties.

For example, the European Union has a policy not to sign

trade pacts with countries that are not parties to the PA.

Variety of GHG Pledges in Selected NDCs

United States: Reduce GHG emissions to 26-28% below 2005

levels in 2025.

China: Inter alia, by 2030, peak carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions;

lower its CO2 emissions per unit of gross domestic product

(GDP) by 60-65% below 2005 levels; and increase the non-fossilfuel share of energy consumption to around 20%.

European Union: Reduce GHG emissions by at least 40%

compared to 1990 levels.

India: Inter alia, reduce GHG emissions per unit of GDP by 3335% by 2030 from the 2005 level and reach 40% of its cumulative

installed electric capacity from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030.

Mexico: Reduce GHG and black carbon emissions by 25%

below business-as-usual projections by 2030, and up to 40%

under some conditions, implying a net emissions peak in 2026.

Reduce GHG emissions per unit of GDP by around 40% from

2013 to 2030.

Countries have long negotiated over what would constitute

a “fair” distribution of effort under the UNFCCC. The

strength of the U.S. NDC compared with those of other

countries can be viewed from various perspectives (see text

box): To illustrate, under the NDCs, China’s GHG

emissions could grow to 2030, while U.S. GHG emissions

would fall. Nonetheless, China’s GHG emissions per

person would remain well below those of the United States,

and China would reduce its emissions per unit of GDP more

than the United States.

Withdrawal Procedure

The Department of State notified the U.N. Secretary

General that the United States would provide formal

notification of withdrawal “as soon as it is eligible to do

so.” Under Article 28 of the PA, this would be November 4,

2019. Withdrawal may take effect one year later—on or

after November 4, 2020. In the meantime, the United States

remains a Party to the PA (unless, following customary

international law, the other Parties agree to allow an earlier

exit).

In the meantime, the U.S. delegation continues to

participate “in order to ensure a level playing field that

benefits and protects U.S. interests,” according to the

Department of State.

Foreign Policy and Diplomacy

The President’s announcement was viewed generally by

observers as consistent with the Administration’s “America

First” approach to foreign policy. Although the

Administration has arguably sent mixed signals about its

specific foreign policy intentions, some of these signals

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Potential Implications of U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

appear to reflect, among other things, a skeptical approach

toward multilateral organizations and multilateral

agreements and a transactional approach to alliances and

international agreements.

Some observers argue that the Administration’s decision to

withdraw from the PA will (1) reduce the U.S. standing in

the world by making the United States an international

outlier on climate change, (2) strengthen perceptions that

the United States is withdrawing from its traditional

position of world leadership and becoming more inwardfocused or even isolationist, (3) create an opportunity for

China to assume a position of world leadership on climate

change and perhaps other issues, and (4) make the United

States appear less reliable as a negotiating partner, which

could make it harder for the United States in the future to

secure foreign cooperation for addressing other issues of

mutual interest or to call on other countries to abide by their

commitments in other international agreements. Other

observers either disagree with these arguments or argue that

they are offset by gains realized for Americans under the

Administration’s approach to foreign policy.

Other nations responded to the U.S. intent to withdraw

largely with restrained expressions of regret; they rebuffed

the President’s proposal to reopen negotiations. Despite

initial concerns about the resolve of Parties to implement

the PA without the United States, the most recent meeting

of the Parties agreed on most of the “rulebook” for

implementing the PA’s provisions. China’s Special

Representative on Climate Change stated, just prior to those

negotiations, that “the political influence of the American

withdrawal [from the PA] was quite big.” He said that the

U.S. announcement initially “affected the resolve and

confidence of some other countries.” He opined that the

impact of the U.S. decision has since “dissipated,” in part

because of China’s pledge to meet its commitments in full.

China “sent out such a strong political signal,” he said, that

it helped “stabilize” international climate change efforts.

Economy and Trade

The PA was intended to lay a path to long-term transition of

the world’s economies toward “deep decarbonization”—

sustaining economic growth while delinking it from

emissions of CO2 and other GHGs. Such a transition is

generally expected to impose near- to medium-term costs,

though the magnitude and distribution would depend on

policy timing and design and private investment. Trade

could be affected by differences in Parties’ NDCs and

policy designs. Economic and trade impacts could be

adverse or positive for individual countries or businesses,

and many are building this into their economic strategies.

Experts expect that deep decarbonization would initially

increase costs and dislocation for many populations and

businesses. Technology experts and economists expect that

experience with and wider use of advanced technologies

would lower the costs of key GHG mitigation options, and

economies would adjust to new conditions.

Some economists believe that the costs of mitigating GHG

would be less than the costs that climate change would

impose on people—costs of adapting to expected climate

changes and of net losses where anticipatory action does

not fully mitigate adverse impacts. Optimizing policy might

seek to minimize the total net costs of mitigation,

adaptation, and losses and consider distributional impacts.

The trade implications of the President’s intent to withdraw

are unclear. The President’s Executive Order 13783,

Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,

instructed agencies to review, and possibly rescind or

modify, regulations that may obstruct energy development,

including those that would reduce U.S. GHG emissions. As

China, South Korea, and European and other countries

enact climate change policies, they promote investment in

advanced energy, materials, electronics, vehicle, and other

technologies. They may initially raise costs, but over time,

they expect many technologies to become commercially

competitive and bring trade advantages. To date, the U.S.

Congress has largely continued public funding to advance

cleaner technologies, but the level of private sector research

and “learning-by-doing” is uncertain with lower policy

stimulus for technology end-users.

Environment

The PA contains a collective commitment to reduce GHG

emissions almost to net zero in the second half of this

century. The goal is to hold the GHG-induced increase in

global temperature well below 2o Celsius and to try to hold

it to 1.5oC. Reaching “net zero” would stabilize the rise of

GHG concentrations in the atmosphere and, after a lag of

many decades, end the induced climate change. The pledges

made in NDCs to 2025 or 2030 are intended as the initial

steps in a multi-decadal process toward the net zero goal.

President Trump cited one study estimating that the initial

NDCs would avoid global warming of about 0.2 oC by 2100.

This could be roughly 8-10% of the way to meeting the 2oC

goal. Compared with a no-further-policy scenario, some of

the study’s authors estimated that countries’ commitments

could reduce temperature by 0.6-1.1° C. Other studies

estimate larger or smaller temperature effects of NDCs,

depending on assumptions about future commitments.

Long-Term Liabilities

President Trump cited “legal liability” associated with

staying in the PA. This may refer to an assertion that PA

obligations could prevent the federal government from

rescinding or modifying its domestic regulations or risk

litigation under the Clean Air Act. In rebuttal, a former

Department of State attorney who worked on the PA has

opined that “if a domestic stakeholder sought to invoke the

PA in a domestic challenge to withdrawing the Clean

Power Plan, courts would almost certainly find that the

agreement does not constrain executive branch action.” The

EPA has since proposed to rescind the Clean Power Plan.

Thus far, references to commitments in the PA have not

featured in litigation challenging the Clean Power Plan or

comments submitted on EPA’s proposal to revise vehicle

GHG emission standards.

See also: CRS Report R44609, Climate Change:

Frequently Asked Questions About the 2015 Paris

Agreement, by Jane A. Leggett and Richard K. Lattanzio.

Jane A. Leggett, Specialist in Energy and Environmental

Policy

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Potential Implications of U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

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