(TibetanReview.net, Jan22’25) – The United States has withdrawn from two major international bodies, the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization (WHO), with President Donald Trump, who assumed office on Jan 20, citing China as the main reason for doing so.
“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord rip off. The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” the IANS news service Jan 21 quoted Trump as telling supporters at a sporting arena.
“You know, China, and look, they use a lot of dirty energy, but they produce a lot of energy, and when that stuff goes up in the air, you know, it doesn’t stay there. It’s not like you have a wall. We love walls that way. Not like you have a wall around and it just doesn’t.
“It floats into the United States of America after three and a half to five and a half days, it floats across the oceans, and it comes right over your neighbourhood, and it falls into your neighbourhood. So they all say we have to fight for cleaner air, but the other dirty air is dropping all over us. So what the hell are they talking about? Unless everybody does it. It just doesn’t work.”
China is currently the largest global emitter of greenhouse gases, which leads to climate changes, even as it also leads the world in the deployment of renewable energy.
Trump has also announced the initiation of US withdrawal from the WHO due to its alleged mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and unequal financial contributions by China, reported news.apblive.com Jan 21.
Trump had been a vocal critic of the WHO’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which escalated into a global health crisis in 2020, the final year of his first term. He argued that the WHO’s response was inadequate and that the organization had been overly influenced by China.
In a statement to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump has explained his decision to withdraw, citing the financial disparity between the US and China in their contributions to the WHO. “We paid $500 million to the World Health Organization when I was here, and I terminated it,” Trump said.
“China, with 1.4 billion people, paid just $39 million. It seemed unfair to me,” Trump has added, referring to his country’s previous withdrawal from the organization when he was the President in 2020.
China has 300% of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90% less to the WHO, the White House statement was stated to read.
Trump has added that the WHO had offered a deal to return for a lower payment of $39 million, but when President Joe Biden took office, the United States was asked to rejoin for the original $500 million. “They wanted us back so badly.”
“In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments,” the order was further quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Trump has given a 75-day reprieve to the highly popular Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok which otherwise became illegal from Jan 19. The US Supreme Court recently rejected the app’s appeal against the law which rendered it illegal unless sold to US buyers.
The executive order effectively buys time for the US administration to explore alternative solutions to address the app’s data privacy concerns without resorting to an outright ban. It also opens the door for further negotiations with ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, in hopes of finding a resolution that satisfies national security requirements.
“if we wanted to make a deal with TikTok, and it was a good deal, and China wouldn’t approve it, then I think ultimately they’d approve it because we’d put tariffs on China,” the scmp.com Jan 21 quoted Trump as saying.
“Maybe, I’m not saying I would, but you certainly could do that. And if we said, well, ‘you’re not going to approve it’, then that’s a certain hostility, and we’ll put tariffs of 25, 30,40, 50%, even 100%.”