The United States on Tuesday officially withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, completing a yearlong process launched by President Donald Trump and making the nation the only country to leave the landmark climate pact twice.
The withdrawal took effect Jan. 27, 2026, following a written notification delivered to the United Nations one week after Trump announced the decision on his first day back in office in January 2025. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, is the central global framework aimed at limiting global temperature rise and coordinating national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The exit further isolates the United States from international climate policy. Over the past year, the administration has criticized renewable energy development abroad, threatened trade penalties against countries backing carbon pricing in shipping, and canceled climate-related foreign aid for vulnerable nations. As a result, the United States now stands among a small number of countries without a national target for cutting climate pollution.
The administration is also pursuing a withdrawal from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1992 treaty that underpins the Paris Agreement and serves as the foundation for global climate negotiations. That move, announced earlier this month, carries a separate one-year waiting period before taking effect.
Even before the Paris withdrawal became official, federal participation in international climate efforts had largely ceased. The State Department closed its climate office, while the Environmental Protection Agency stopped submitting U.S. emissions data to the United Nations for the first time and began dismantling its greenhouse gas reporting program. The agency is also preparing to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding that established its authority to regulate climate pollution.
Those actions have coincided with a reversal in emissions trends. After years of decline, U.S. climate pollution increased by 2.4 percent over the past year, according to the Rhodium Group.
No U.S. officials attended last November’s global climate talks in Brazil, where a lack of major power leadership contrasted with new commitments among smaller coalitions to curb fossil fuels and deforestation.
The Paris Agreement seeks to hold global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Global temperatures have already risen about 1.4 degrees. While the pact requires countries to submit progressively stronger emissions-reduction targets, it does not impose penalties for missing them and relies on wealthier nations to help finance climate action in developing countries.
Trump previously withdrew the United States from Paris in 2020, a move reversed by President Joe Biden upon taking office in 2021. Unlike Paris, the broader U.N. climate treaty was approved by the Senate, potentially making reentry more difficult for a future administration and raising the prospect that the current withdrawal could prove longer lasting.
Source: Politico