Trump: 6.5 Million Jobs Saved by Leaving Paris Accord

Donald Trump said in his announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord on Thursday that the pact would have cost the country 6.5 million industrial jobs by 2040 and would have “vastly diminished economic production” in the United States.

“One by one we are keeping the promises I made to the American people,” he said. “I don’t want anything to get in our way.”

“This agreement is less about the climate, and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.”

The president cited a study by National Economic Research Associates that showed, if the U.S. remained in the agreement, as many as 2.7 million jobs lost by 2025 and a total of 6.5 million lost by 2040.

“According to the same study,” said the president, “by 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by the previous administration would cut production for the following sectors: paper, down 12 percent; cement, down 23 percent; iron and steel, down 38 percent; coal — and I happen to love the coal miners — down 86 percent; natural gas, down 31 percent.”

“The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States,” the president said.

At the beginning of his speech, the president talked of bringing “jobs, plants and factories” back into the United States. “And believe me, we’ve just begun,” he said.

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The Paris Agreement, said the president, blocked the development of clean coal in America, while China would have been able to expand coal mining, and India would have been able to double its coal production by 2020.

“In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States and ships them to foreign countries,” he said.

“This agreement is less about the climate, and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.”

Former President Barack Obama signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.

Obama set a goal for the U.S., under the agreement, of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by the year 2025. To this end, his administration drafted new regulations that restricted the use of coal, oil, and natural gas.

“In effect, the framework is a push for un-development for the industrialized world and a major obstacle for growth for the developing world,” wrote the authors of a 2016 Heritage Foundation report, “Consequences of Paris Protocol: Devastating Economic Costs, Essentially Zero Environmental Benefits.”

Higher energy prices would have meant higher electric and gas bills that would disproportionately “hurt the poorest Americans” who pay the highest proportion of their income for utilities, according to the report.

The economic models Heritage used were based on the tax on carbon, and showed that the average American family of four would have lost $20,000 in income by 2035 – enough for a down payment on a new house.

In his speech in the Rose Garden on Thursday, President Trump made a strong case for exiting the climate accord, based on an “America First” economic policy.

“Millions of our citizens are out of work, and yet, under the Paris accord, billions of dollars that should be spent here, will be sent to the very countries that have taken our jobs away from us,” he said. “Think of that.”

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He also painted a picture of a country in the midst of a turnaround.

“The mines are starting to open up,” he said. “We’re having a big opening in two weeks … the big opening of a brand new mine. It’s unheard of. For many, many years that hasn’t happened. They asked me if I’d go, I’m gonna try.”

“No responsible leader can put the workers, and the people, of their country at this debilitating and tremendous disadvantage,” he said. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”