President-Elect Donald Trump is probably experiencing the shortest honeymoon in American political history.
He is the target of massive protests and the focus of riotous mobs, before he even takes the oath of office let alone signs his first law or executive order. Furthermore, he is taking no time off when it comes to preparing his team to undo the Obama Administration’s economy-crushing policies.
Case-in-point: Trump is looking for ways to extract the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
A source on Trump’s transition team told Reuters that the team was looking for ways to bypass the procedure to leave the Paris accord, which was agreed upon last December. Trump has previously stated his disbelief in global warming. Other global governments, including China, have expressed their reaffirming support for the deal.”It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election,” the source told Reuters on Tuesday.One of the alternatives he said was to withdraw from the 1992 Convention that was a parent to the 2015 Paris accord. It would void U.S. participation in the deal in a year’s time. Trump could also “delete” the U.S. signature from the deal.
However, the Obama Administration intends to carry on until the bitter end.
Despite the threat of a US withdrawal, US secretary of state John Kerry said on Sunday that he would continue his efforts to implement the Paris agreement until Barack Obama leaves office on 20 January.Speaking in New Zealand following a trip to Antarctica, Kerry appeared to take a swipe at Trump when he listed some of the ways in which global warming could already be seen. He said that there were more fires, floods and damaging storms around the world, and sea levels were rising.“The evidence is mounting in ways that people in public life should not dare to avoid accepting as a mandate for action,” Kerry said.
Republican senators have been less than thrilled that President Obama made the climate pact without the advice and consent of their legislative body. They issued a letter to Kerry underscoring this fact.
Thirteen Senate Republicans sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week stating that “sole executive agreements,” as Obama’s State Department describes Paris, constitute “one of the lowest forms of commitment the United States can make and still be considered a party to an agreement.”Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who spearheaded the letter, noted yesterday that Republicans have issued similar warnings for more than a year, “but nobody wanted to believe us.”“The message can no longer be ignored: Americans do not support it when their president sidesteps Congress,” he said in a statement.
Even sweeter is the immediate fiscal impact of Trump’s actions regarding the Paris Climate Agreement.
The Trump victory makes it unlikely that the United States will make good on the $2.5 billion it still owes to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, and the new administration is likely to curtail foreign aid overall.
I noted that Obama had deposited $500 million into the same fund in March of this year, at a time when our Navy Seals were short of combat rifles. The fact that Trump will not empower eco-activists by funding their pseudo-science shenanigans is…delightful.
During the campaign, President Obama warned that electing Trump would undo his work. This threat actually turned out to be a selling point, and the most significant legacy Obama leaves behind is the utter collapse of the Democratic Party.
It appears that President-Elect Trump has done more presidential work on behalf of the American people in less than a week than Obama has done during his entire 8 years.
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