Musk threatened to quit on Wednesday if Trump pulled the trigger.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images

Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk is stepping down from several Trump administration advisory councils after the president announced on Thursday that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.

Musk, who sits on Trump's economic advisory council as well as a manufacturing group, threatened to quit on Wednesday, amid news reports that the president would pull the US from the climate accord, which has been ratified by 147 countries.



Don't know which way Paris will go, but I've done all I can to advise directly to POTUS, through others in WH & via councils, that we remain

@schneby Will have no choice but to depart councils in that case

Musk, whose electric car company Tesla's stated mission is "to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy," is widely viewed as a clean energy luminary. In February, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick stepped down from Trump's economic advisory council following backlash from customers and protests outside the ride-hail giant's San Francisco headquarters. Hours later, Musk said he would remain on Trump's advisory councils to "serve the greater good."

Regarding the meeting at the White House:

Some Tesla customers had canceled their Model 3 orders over Musk's relationship with Trump, BuzzFeed News reported in January.

In Paris at the COP21 climate conference in 2015, Musk said addressing climate change "fundamentally is a government issue." "I think hopefully what comes out of the climate talks in Paris is that the governments of the world, they have to put their foot down and they say five years from now, let's say, there has to be a huge change and that companies know for sure that this is going to happen," he said. Following in Musk's steps, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger also announced that he was resigning from Trump's White House advisory council, tweeting that it was a "matter of principle."