The upcoming decision could be a victory for the nationalist wing of Trump’s White House.

President Donald Trump is planning to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, a White House official said Wednesday morning — only to have Trump himself revive the suspense less than an hour later.

The withdrawal would fulfill a Trump campaign promise but would be certain to infuriate America’s allies across the globe. It would threaten to destabilize the most comprehensive pact ever negotiated to blunt the most devastating effects of climate change.

Intrigue surrounding Paris has accelerated in the past week, after Pope Francis and other world leaders pressed Trump during his European visit not to abandon the nearly 200-nation 2015 agreement. Administration officials said they are still sorting out the details of how exactly Trump would withdraw, and one noted that nothing is final until an announcement is made.

Trump declined to make it official, at least not yet. "I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" he tweeted Wednesday morning.

Trump was slated to continue discussing the issue with senior advisers on Wednesday.

Axios first reported the news that Trump would withdraw.

Administration officials sent mixed messages on Wednesday, with some saying they are confident the president will pull out and others urging caution. But officials on both sides of the issue have become increasingly convinced he plans to exit the deal, despite arguments from moderate advisers like Trump’s daughter Ivanka that withdrawing would damage U.S. relations abroad.

Prime supporters of leaving the deal, including senior White House adviser Steve Bannon, argued that its terms would hobble the U.S. economy and Trump’s energy agenda.

Reaction from the international community Wednesday was swift, mostly without mentioning Trump by name. "Climate change is undeniable," the United Nations tweeted from its official account Wednesday morning, quoting from a speech by Secretary General António Guterres. "Climate action is unstoppable. Climate solutions provide opportunities that are unmatchable."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff expressed hope that the president could still be swayed. "As far as I can see, it is an ongoing debate within the administration," Peter Altmaier said at a POLITICO Connected Citizens Summit Wednesday afternoon in Berlin.

Others who have supported staying include Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and major oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell.

But the vast campaign to persuade the U.S. to remain ultimately did not seem to sway the president.

If Trump withdraws, it would mark the second time in two decades that the United States has negotiated, signed but then spurned a major international climate pact following a change of party control in the White House. The previous occasion — the decision by George W. Bush to abandon the 1997 Kyoto accord negotiated by the Clinton administration — caused years of distrust of the U.S. in international climate circles.

Since then, climate scientists say, the problem has grown only more dire, with few years left for nations to act if they want to avoid the droughts, floods, famines, mass migrations and worsening storms that a changing climate would bring.

Only two countries declined to join the Paris agreement: Syria and Nicaragua.

Republican leaders in Congress had warned other countries before the Paris talks not to trust President Barack Obama’s promises, noting that a future GOP president could undo any commitments he made. The Obama administration insisted that the deal’s carbon-cutting targets be nonbinding, avoiding the politically disastrous Senate ratification fight that a binding treaty would require.

It would take years for the U.S. to formally withdraw from the Paris deal. But the U.S. is the world’s second-largest carbon polluter, and its decision to walk away would threaten to weaken the resolve of major emitters such as China and India to keep their own pledges, even though both nations have pledged to remain in the agreement.

A pullout would be certain to draw the ire of dozens of American allies who received assurances from the Obama administration that the United States was committed to the deal.

Wednesday's news comes on top of separate steps by Trump to weaken the major domestic planks of Obama’s climate agenda, including Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring cuts in greenhouse gas pollution from power plants.

Trump's advisers have been — and remain — at odds over how the administration should approach Paris. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, had pushed to stay in the deal, and Ivanka even brought Al Gore to Trump Tower to meet with her father in December. Gore spoke with Trump again this month in an effort to encourage the president to remain in the agreement.

Trump was also personally lobbied by world leaders at last week's G-7 summit in Italy, and foreign diplomats repeatedly made their case for remaining in the agreement during frequent calls with administration officials.

Tillerson praised the Paris deal when he was ExxonMobil’s CEO. During his confirmation hearing this year, he said the United States must keep "its seat at the table" for international climate talks.

But ultimately, Bannon and his allies in the White House appear to have win Trump over, arguing that the agreement isn't in the U.S. interest.

Even if the U.S. sticks with the deal, scientists and climate activists have warned that the targets Obama and other leaders promised in Paris wouldn’t cut enough carbon pollution to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Instead, they said, the signing nations would have to steadily escalate their commitments in coming years.

The agreement calls on countries to aim to limit global warming to "well below" 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels, and it said countries should "pursue efforts" to keep temperature increases to 2.7 degrees. Under a business as usual scenario, global temperatures could rise by between 4.7 degrees and 8.6 degrees by the end of the century, according to the United Nations, an increase that would have catastrophic consequences.

Trump's upcoming decision raises the prospect that other countries will move on without the U.S., lessening America's influence. Indeed, the European Union and China are set to pledge deeper cooperation on the Paris agreement and the promotion of clean energy technologies, according to a draft leaders' statement for an upcoming summit that was seen by POLITICO.

Maroš Šefčovič, the vice president of the EU’s energy union, said Thursday that Europeans will stick with their climate efforts regardless of what the Americans do.

“For Europe there is no plan B, because we do not have a planet B,” Šefčovič told reporters. “If they decide to pull out, this would be disappointing, but I really don’t think that this would change the course of mankind.”

Janosch Delcker, Kalina Oroschakoff and Anca Gurzu contributed to this report.



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