One for the Good Guys

A Faux-Calamity Kicked Out of the Park

So, Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Accord (Treaty?).   At the White House Rose Garden, Trump stated his principal objections to the Accord:

Trump complained in the White House's Rose Garden that major polluters like China are allowed to increase their emissions under the agreement in a way that the US cannot. India is hinging its participation on billions of dollars of foreign aid.

'The bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States,' he said.   He argued later, 'The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.  This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States,' he contended. . . .

As of today the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.   This includes ending the implementation of the National Determined Contribution and – very importantly – the Green Climate Fund, which is costing the United States a vast fortune.   The bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.

Compliance...could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to the National Rconomic Research Associates.  The cost to the economy at this time [by 2050] would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and in many cases much worse than that. 
America first... The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense.   They don't put America first. I do and I always will.   The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices, and in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance.

Trump said he would end the United States' participation in the United Nations' Green Climate Fund for the same reason.  The UN program asks developed countries to provide billions in foreign aid on top of what the US already gives.   'Many of the other countries haven't spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime,' he said.

In another slap at the European leaders who'd lobbied him last week to stick with the agreement, including France's Emmanuel Macron, Trump said his Paris exit is 'a reassertion of America's sovereignty.'  'Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia and across the world should not have more to say with respect to the US economy that our own citizens and their elected representatives,' Trump proclaimed.  [Daily Mail]

All this makes common sense to the average "person in the street".  It also serves as a high spin power serve to the former President Obama, who refused to comply with the intent of the Constitution on handling this Accord.  Obama refused to submit this Accord to the Senate to gain its approval, which would have formally entered the US into a treaty obligation.  Rather, Obama cutely signed it off as a presidential decree.  What can be signed off as a decree by one president, can be "de-signed" by the next president.  Obama's sharp practice has been served right back at him.