“The Paris Accord was going to cost us a trillion dollars and China nothing and Russia nothing. It was a ripoff of the United States. And I ended it because I didn't want to waste that money.”
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Adversarial re-check: all three cited sources were fetched live and each independently supports the outcome; none were invented, broken, or misquoted. (1) The White House page for Executive Order 14162, 'Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,' is live and contains verbatim the quoted directive that the U.S. Ambassador to the UN 'shall immediately submit formal written notification of the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement,' signed January 20, 2025 — the first day of the second term. (2) The UNFCCC's own party-status record for the United States is live and lists 'Date of withdrawal: 27 January 2026,' i.e. the withdrawal is legally in force as of the date of this review (July 2026). (3) Harvard Law School's EELP Regulatory Tracker independently confirms the withdrawal 'became effective on Jan. 27, 2026, following a year-long process.' Because the Biden administration had rejoined the Agreement in 2021, the forward-looking commitment embedded in this statement was to end U.S. participation again; that outcome was accomplished entirely through the speaker's own executive action and is now legally complete, so FULL (+1.0) rather than CHAMPIONED (+0.75, reserved for leading an effort that did not fully land) is correct. Nonpartisan symmetry check: a politician of any party who signs a day-one executive action that by itself produces the promised legal outcome, with the outcome now in force and confirmed by the treaty depositary's own record, would receive FULL under the same standard — no leniency or harshness adjustment is warranted. Scope note preserved from the prior rating: the rating assesses only the promised ACTION (ending U.S. participation in the Paris Accord). The statement's embedded factual assertions — that the Accord would 'cost us a trillion dollars' and that 'China nothing and Russia nothing' — are contested rhetorical claims (both China and Russia submit nationally determined contributions under the Agreement, and the trillion-dollar figure derives from a single disputed 2017 NERA-based estimate). Those assertions are not the promise and are not rated here; flagging them is a fact-check matter, not a grounds for changing the outcome. Confidence set at 0.95 (marginally below the prior 0.96) solely to reflect that the underlying statement is phrased retrospectively rather than as an explicit forward pledge, leaving minor interpretive room in how the commitment is framed.
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