US opted out of Paris Accord as India, China weren't paying: Donald Trump

Atlanta: Former US president Donald Trump has said his administration opted out of the landmark Paris Climate Accord in 2017 as it was a "rip-off" which would have cost Washington $1 trillion, as he claimed that India, China and Russia weren’t paying for it.

Trump, the presumptive candidate of the Republican Party, made the claims at the first of presidential debates with his Democratic Party rival President Joe Biden on Thursday, where the two 2024 presidential candidates sparred over the state of the economy, border, foreign policy, abortion, national security and climate change.

During their roughly 90-minute debate marred by personal attacks, Trump, 78, claimed that the Paris Climate Accord would have cost $1 trillion and the US was the only country that had to pay.

Calling it a "rip-off", he said that China, India and Russia weren’t paying.

In 2017, Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, saying the international deal to keep global temperatures rising below 2 degrees Celsius was disadvantageous to US workers.

As part of the Paris Agreement, in 2009, the US and other developed nations committed to collectively contribute $100 billion per year by 2020 to help poorer, developing countries, predominantly in the Global South, adapt to the impacts of climate change like sea level rise and worsening heat.

According to a CNN report, developed nations met their collective goal two years late in 2022, but the figure has never been as high as Trump suggested.

Contrary to what Trump said, the US has never paid $1 trillion in international climate finance, according to the report.

The US paid nothing to the global finance goal after Trump pulled the country out of the Paris accord.

President Biden has pledged $11.4 billion annually from the US, but this level of funding hasn’t materialised, the report said.

Trump, a known climate change sceptic, has continuously argued that countries like China and India are benefiting the most from the Paris Agreement.

China is the world's biggest carbon emitter followed by the US, India and the EU.