U.S. withholds its endorsement on Paris climate pact

President Donald Trump declined to endorse the Paris climate accords on Saturday, ending his first foreign trip much as he began it: at odds with several of the nation's allies and under a cloud of questions back home about his ties to Russia.

Trump refused to bend on the pact after three days of contentious private debate and intense lobbying by other leaders that began Wednesday with an appeal by Pope Francis. The six other nations in the Group of 7 reaffirmed their commitment to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions in a joint statement issued Saturday.

The stalemate leaves the country's future role in the climate accord in flux, though Trump promised to make a decision in the week ahead on whether the United States will be the first of 195 signatories to pull out.

Trump left Italy on Saturday afternoon, returning home to a White House in crisis after a nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe that was bookended by new disclosures about links between his aides and Russia.

[Trump administration sought last-minute changes to soften Arctic Council climate-change commitment]

The climate accord was the most vivid sign of division between the United States and its allies, but it was not the only one: Trump also scolded Germany for its trade practices and lectured NATO members for not adequately supporting the alliance.

"There was a lot of give-and-take between the different countries in the room," said Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council.

But he insisted that the other countries understood Trump's refusal to decide now, even if they did not support that position.

"The president's only been in office for a certain period of time, and they respect that," Cohn said. He added: "We're all allies. We're all trying to get to the right place and be respectful of each other."

While Trump's decision was not a surprise, the reaction was swift and critical.

"President Trump's continued waffling on whether to stay in or withdraw from the Paris Agreement made it impossible to reach consensus at the Taormina summit on the need for ambitious climate action. But he stands in stark isolation," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The leaders of Germany and France expressed disappointment, according to The Associated Press.

"The whole discussion about climate was very difficult, not to say unsatisfactory," Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said. "There's a situation where it's six — if you count the European Union, seven — against one."

President Emmanuel Macron of France said he had told Trump it was "indispensable for the reputation of the United States and for the Americans themselves that the Americans remain committed" to the climate agreement.

The G-7 statement provides the United States more time to resolve internal White House debates about whether to pull out of the pact. It says the United States is "in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics."

The president did not mention the impasse in his only public remarks after the summit, to U.S. troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily. But he repeated his complaints about trade and the financing of NATO, even as he pronounced the trip a rousing success.

"We hit a home run no matter where we are," he said.

[Trump returns home to face a growing crisis over Kushner]

For Trump, however, the lack of a decision on the climate accord put an uncertain ending on an ambitious first presidential trip abroad that began as a respite from the surfeit of scandal at home.

Beleaguered White House aides — who were aboard Air Force One flying to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when they heard reports that Trump had called his former FBI director a "nut job" — had hoped the trip offer a much-needed change of subject. And to some degree, it did, if only because the White House engineered the itinerary to keep Trump far away from reporters who could ask him questions. They scheduled no news conferences and put the president only in highly controlled situations: a brief photo session with a foreign leader; a teleprompter speech; ceremonial gatherings with other leaders.

But on Saturday, as his aides tried to promote the trip's accomplishments, reporters bombarded them with questions about reports that Trump's son-in-law an adviser, Jared Kushner, had talked about opening a secret back channel to Russia during the transition.

"We're not going to comment on Jared," an exasperated Cohn said.

In some ways, it was not one trip, but two, each with very different themes.

In Saudi Arabia and Israel, Trump was surprisingly disciplined, sticking to his script and delivering two speeches that set a clear course for his approach to the Middle East. His rapturous welcome in both countries suggested that the United States could make a new start with allies who had grown restive during the Obama administration.

In Europe, however, the pugnacious side of Trump reasserted itself. In addition to offering a harangue of NATO members over budgetary matters, he declined to explicitly reaffirm America's commitment to Article 5, which requires the United States to come to the defense of allies in the event of an attack.

He also won derisive headlines across the Continent after muscling the prime minister of Montenegro aside during a photo shoot, an image that quickly became a metaphor for his rough dealings with Europeans.

"His advisers tried to make him understand that there are some allies that are really nervous and needed reassurance," said Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "He managed to do it with the Saudis and the Israelis." But in Europe, he said, "he does take us for granted."

Brian McKeon, a senior policy official in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, said: "The in-your-face thing at the NATO headquarters was pretty undiplomatic. He succeeded at busting norms, but not building good will."

The U.S. national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, said that Trump's participation in the ceremony was an implicit endorsement of Article 5. "He did not make a decision not to say it," McMaster said.

On climate, Trump has long railed against what he says are the economic dangers of a global climate pact. He has demanded more flexibility in setting standards on emissions, saying other countries are getting a better deal and that the agreement could be costly for U.S. businesses.

In a message on Twitter on Saturday, he said: "I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!"

There is an intense debate inside the West Wing over whether to withdraw from the accord or to try to renegotiate its terms, pitting hard-line nationalists, like the chief strategist Steve Bannon, against more mainstream advisers like Cohn.

On Thursday, Cohn told reporters that Trump's thinking on the subject was "evolving." But other senior officials said even if the United States remained in the agreement, it could effectively gut its principles.

The exit of the United States, the world's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, would not immediately dissolve the pact, which was negotiated under President Barack Obama and legally ratified last year. But it would profoundly weaken the strength of the deal and pave the way for other countries to withdraw from it.

Some climate diplomats said the rest of the world was growing weary of America's back-and-forth on climate change policy. In 1997, the United States joined the world's first climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, but later withdrew during the Bush administration.

"At some juncture, other countries are going to get sick of us joining in, pulling out, joining in and pulling out and say, 'Are we really going to work with the U.S. on this anymore?'" said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.

Trump's supporters, particularly coal state Republicans, are eager for him to withdraw from the Paris accord, and see such a move as a fulfillment of a signature campaign promise. Speaking to a crowd of oil-rig workers in May 2016, Trump vowed to "cancel" the agreement.

Coal miners and coal executives in states like Kentucky and West Virginia have pushed hard for Trump to reverse all of Obama's climate change policies, which are ultimately aimed at reducing the widespread use of burning coal.

In a recent letter to Trump from 10 state attorneys general, West Virginia's attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, wrote, "Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is an important and necessary step toward reversing the harmful energy policies and unlawful overreach of the Obama era."

On trade, Trump pushed his demand that any trade agreements the United States negotiates must be fair. The Trump administration has taken particular aim at Germany, accusing it of depressing the value of the euro to make its exports more competitive and to undercut U.S. goods.

In a meeting with leaders of the European Union in Brussels on Thursday, Trump complained about imports of German cars, threatening to stop them and calling Germany "very bad" on trade.

German officials point out that its two leading luxury automakers, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, have huge assembly plants in the United States. They are also frustrated that Trump officials repeatedly raise the prospect of negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with Germany, something that the country, as a member of the European Union, cannot do.

Shortly after Air Force One took off from Sicily for Washington, Trump said on Twitter that he had enjoyed "great" meetings on trade, saying, "We push for the removal of trade-distorting practices … to foster a truly level playing field."

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Coral Davenport and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, Alissa Rubin contributed from Paris, and Alison Smale from Berlin.