Updated Jan. 7, 2026, 9:43 p.m. ET
The United States will withdraw from more than five dozen international collaborations, including treaties and organizations with the United Nations on climate change and the oceans, President Donald Trump announced in a memo on Jan. 7.
Among the organizations the United States will withdraw from are the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The list also includes agreements and groups on renewable energy, oceans, piracy, counterterrorism, and empowerment of women.
The 66 groups, treaties, and conventions, including 31 associated with the U.N., are “contrary to the interests of the United States,” the memo’s title stated. The withdrawals follow up on a review by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Trump’s request of all international organizations, conventions, and treaties to which the U.S. belongs or is a party to.
The White House stated the withdrawals “will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over U.S. priorities, or that address important issues inefficiently or ineffectively such that U.S. taxpayer dollars are best allocated in other ways to support the relevant missions,” Reuters reported.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change was ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by former President George H. W. Bush in October 1992. The United States was the first industrialized nation to sign the convention.
At the time, Bush called it the “first step in crucial long-term international efforts to address climate change.” The convention committed countries to inventories of all sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and to establish national climate change programs.
Now the United States will be the only nation in the world that is no longer a party to the framework, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Though the country had already submitted a letter of intent to leave the Paris climate agreement for the second time, the United States has never withdrawn from the convention before, according to the concerned scientists.
The action to withdraw from the framework and the IPCC follows actions taken by the Trump administration in 2025 to downplay climate change, such as an edict that federal employees were not to be involved with the IPCC’s next report. The IPCC is considered the leading global group studying climate change.
‘Strategic blunder that gives away American advantage’
As reports on 2025’s global temperatures are released in the days ahead, major organizations and climate scientists expect it to be either the second or third warmest year on record globally. Several organizations quickly criticized the withdrawals from the international collaborations on climate change and the oceans, saying it will harm U.S. residents and American companies.
Pulling out of the framework convention on climate is “a strategic blunder that gives away American advantage for nothing in return,” said David Widawsky, director of WRI US, the World Resources Institute in the United States. “Walking away doesn’t just put America on the sidelines — it takes the U.S. out of the arena entirely,” Widawski added.
Widawsky said the action will cost American communities and businesses economic ground as other countries take advantage of the “booming clean-energy economy.”
The withdrawal from the global climate treaty is “a new low” from the administration, said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists climate and energy program. It’s another “sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation,” she added.
According to Cleetus, the withdrawal will serve to further “isolate the United States and diminish its standing in the world following a spate of deplorable actions that have already sent our nation’s credibility plummeting,” jeopardize ties with historical allies, and make the world more unsafe.
Since Trump’s inauguration nearly a year ago, he has worked to slash funding for the U.N. and cease collaborations with its Human Rights Council and its cultural agency, UNESCO, Reuters reported. The administration has previously announced plans to leave the World Health Organization.
Contributing: Reuters
Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, covers climate change, weather, the environment, and other news. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.
