Is Trump already a lame duck president?
President Trump’s influence may already be waning as he heads into his second year in office, with Congress passing just 61 laws last year.
President Donald Trump announced in a Jan. 7 memo that the United States will withdraw from more than 50 international cooperation agreements, including treaties and organizations with the United Nations on climate change and oceans.
Among the organizations the United States will withdraw from are the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The list also includes agreements and organizations on renewable energy, oceans, piracy, counter-terrorism and women’s empowerment.
The memo’s title states that 66 entities, treaties, and agreements, including 31 associated with the United Nations, are “contrary to U.S. interests.” The reversal follows Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s review of all international organizations, treaties, and treaties to which the United States is affiliated or a member, at the request of President Trump.
The White House said the withdrawal “will end U.S. taxpayer funding and involvement in organizations that promote globalist policies over U.S. priorities or that address important issues inefficiently or ineffectively so that U.S. taxpayer funds are best allocated to other ways to support related missions,” Reuters reported.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change was ratified by the U.S. Senate in October 1992 and signed by former President George HW Bush. The United States was the first developed country to sign this treaty.
At the time, President Bush called it “the first step in an important long-term international effort to address climate change.” The treaty committed countries to inventorying all sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, and establishing national climate change programs.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the United States will be the only country in the world not to join the framework. The United States has never withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord, although the country has already submitted its second letter of intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, according to the scientists involved.
The move to withdraw from the framework and the IPCC follows actions taken by the Trump administration in 2025 to downplay climate change, including a directive that federal employees not be involved in the IPCC’s next report. The IPCC is considered the world’s leading group studying climate change.
“A strategic failure that robs America of its superiority.”
With a report on global temperatures for 2025 to be released in the coming days, leading organizations and climate scientists are predicting that this year will be the second or third warmest year on record globally. Several groups quickly criticized the withdrawal from international cooperation on climate change and oceans, saying it would harm U.S. residents and U.S. businesses.
David Widowski, director of the World Resources Institute, WRI US, said that withdrawing from the Framework Convention on Climate Change is a “strategic failure that gives the United States an advantage for nothing in return.” “Withdrawal does not just put the United States on the sidelines, it removes the United States from the scene entirely,” Widowsky added.
Widowsky said the measure would leave American communities and businesses losing economic footing as other countries take advantage of the “burgeoning clean energy economy.”
Rachel Cleetus, policy director and chief economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy Program, said withdrawing from the global climate agreement is a “new low” for the administration. She added that this is “another sign that this authoritarian and anti-science regime is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation.”
According to Cleetus, the withdrawal would “further isolate America and diminish our standing in the world, following a series of deplorable acts that have already undermined our nation’s credibility,” jeopardizing relationships with historic allies and making the world more dangerous.
Since taking office about a year ago, Trump has worked to cut funding to the United Nations and end cooperation with the Human Rights Council and cultural organization UNESCO, according to Reuters. The administration previously announced plans to withdraw from the World Health Organization.
Contributed by: Reuters
Dinah Boyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, covers climate change, weather, the environment and other news. Contact dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or dinahvp.77 on X or Signal.
