Argentina’s President Considers Exiting Paris Agreement with Trump

By David Feliba, Samantha Schmidt, Maxine Joselow, Chico Harlan / The Washington Post

17:13 JST, November 15, 2024

BUENOS AIRES – Argentine President Javier Milei is evaluating whether to withdraw his country from the Paris climate agreement as part of a broader review of all international policy, according to a senior official in his administration who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decision has been made.

The discussions follow the libertarian president’s decision to recall his delegation from the U.N. climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. It could further strain global cooperation on climate change at a time when President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to yank America out of the pact for the second time. When the United States withdrew from the accord during Trump’s first term, no other country followed.

“We are reevaluating our strategy on all climate-change-related issues,” Argentina’s new foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein, said in a phone interview Thursday, adding that the government has not made any decision to exit the Paris agreement.

“We do not deny the existence of climate change,” Werthein said, “and of course we agree with taking measures to mitigate it.”

If Milei were to decide to leave the accord, the withdrawal would not take effect until one year after Argentina notified the international community, according to U.N. rules.

The decision to withdraw the delegation from the Baku climate talks “allows us to reevaluate the situation and reflect on the position [of Argentina],” Milei spokesman Manuel Adorni said in a news conference Thursday.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference, known this year as COP29, represents the most significant opportunity for global climate action all year. It is the only time that diplomats from nearly 200 nations haggle over how to meet the central goal of the Paris agreement: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, a threshold that would avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

In Baku on Thursday, one negotiator from Paraguay, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss another country’s affairs, described Argentina’s departure from the summit as sudden and a “weird situation.” The negotiator said she received text messages from her Argentine counterparts that they were being called home.

Mukhtar Babayev, the president of COP29, declined to comment when approached following an event Thursday.

Trump shocked the world in June 2017 by announcing that the United States would become the first country to exit the Paris accord since its signing in 2015. He proclaimed at the time that he “was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Milei, a libertarian economist embraced by far-right leaders around the globe, spoke on the phone with Trump on Tuesday. During the call, Trump told Milei, “You are my favorite president,” according to Adorni, the Milei spokesman.

Last week, Milei congratulated Trump on his win in a post on X.

“Now, Make America Great Again,” Milei said. “You know that You can count on Argentina to carry out your task.”

The Argentine president is scheduled to travel this week to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, for a retreat with right-wing donors and activists. He is expected to meet there with Trump and billionaire tycoon Elon Musk.

Milei has previously called climate change a “socialist lie” and labeled climate scientists “lazy socialists.” Soon after taking office, he dissolved the Environment Ministry as part of a promise to shrink the government. But he said his administration would still prioritize the environment and that the ministry’s responsibilities would be spread across other departments.

At last year’s global climate talks in Dubai, one of Milei’s top climate diplomats said Argentina would remain in the Paris pact.

“Argentina will stay committed to the Paris agreement,” diplomat Marcia Levaggi told Reuters. “We will honor all our environmental agreements. Milei is a liberal, he’s a libertarian, and he believes in market forces. And the market demands to include measures to address climate change.”

Argentina ranks as South America’s second-largest economy and the world’s 24th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It boasts significant fossil fuel resources and exports, with the second-largest reserves of shale gas and the fourth-largest reserves of shale oil worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency.

Climate activists expressed shock and dismay at the Argentine delegation’s abrupt departure from COP29.

“All it does is remove the country from critical conversations going on climate finance,” Anabella Rosemberg, an Argentine-born senior adviser at Climate Action Network International, said in a statement. “It’s difficult to understand how a climate vulnerable country like Argentina would cut itself from critical support being negotiated here at COP29.”

Argentina’s departure from COP29 marks another blow to climate talks at a time of mistrust between wealthy and developing countries, and deepening uncertainty about which nations are fit to lead the global process. As the U.S. election has shown, liberal democracies can zigzag between climate policies in a way that can disrupt long-term commitments. China and the United Arab Emirates have presented themselves as more predictable alternatives – but both depend heavily on fossil fuels.

While it is exceedingly unusual for a country to walk out of the talks midway, this year Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape announced that his country would not send a delegation, to protest how the “big carbon footprint holders of the world” don’t fulfill their pledges. And France’s top climate official, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, canceled a planned trip to Baku after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused France of “brutally” suppressing climate concerns in its territories, including French Polynesia.

In his own appearance at COP29 on Tuesday, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said Trump should not exit the Paris agreement again, putting the oil giant at odds with the incoming Republican administration on a key policy question. Pulling out of the pact, Woods said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, would create uncertainty for many businesses and would undermine global climate cooperation.

When Trump takes office in January, Milei will be a top Trump ally in South America, a region dominated by leftist presidents. Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who campaigned on a promise to protect the Amazon rainforest, will preside over next year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, a gateway to the Amazon River.

A senior Brazilian government official said the Lula administration sees it as a “concerning development” that Argentina is reconsidering its position in the Paris agreement, particularly as Brazil prepares to host COP30 next year. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because Argentina has not yet made its decision.

Trump’s election already means the United States, a crucial partner and one of the world’s largest emitters of planet-warming pollution, is likely to be less engaged in the global push to cut carbon emissions. Now Brazil’s neighbor and key historical ally might, too.

But Brazilian diplomats cautioned that the scenario – however predictable it may be – has not yet materialized.