<p>US President Donald Trump. (Reuters photo)<br></p>

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump is understood to have finalized American withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement , reneging on an internationally endorsed treaty in a move critics say will deliver a body blow to efforts aimed at containing global warming .

Trump was slated to meet with his secretary of state Rex Tillerson later in the day to formally decide on the exit strategy and sequence, but White House officials leaked news of the withdrawal — something the US President himself has been hinting at for several days – to some news outlets.

''I will be announcing my decision on the Paris Accord over the next few days. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'' Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning, clearly linking US greatness to withdrawal from the treaty.

Trump’s case on withdrawing the US from the accord, signed by 195 out of 198 countries in the world including North Korea, is premised on the argument that meeting climate change goals by reducing its carbon footprint is detrimental to the US economy and will affect job creation.

In fact, Trump and his aides and strategists maintain that fear of global warming and climate change is overstated by the liberal elites, and the establishment commitment to address the ''non-existent'' threat actually destroyed the US economy, including a once-thriving coal sector.

Trump’s promise to the coal constituency and his pledge to revive the US economy by bringing back jobs is what tipped him into the winning margins in several rust belt constituencies and states such as Kentucky and Tennessee, which have extensive coal mining activity that was being wound up by the Obama administration, a strong votary of clean energy.

''When Pres Trump withdraws from Climate Change agreeement, we'll join Syria+Nicaragua as only countries to say no to global action. Pitiful,'' said Nicholas Burns, a former senior administration officials who served in several previous administrations. Nicaragua, it turns out, did not sign because the accord did not go far enough.

Several experts said Trump’s action would destroy American credibility and could lead to the US ceding global leadership to China.

Remarkably, both China and India, whose per capita carbon footprint is much smaller than that of US, but which were dragged kicking and screaming into the Climate Change Accord, have indicated they intend to stand by their commitment to the agreement, leaving Washington as the outlier – a term once used to describe India.

Much of New Delhi’s pledges were premised on US commitments of financial aid and transfer of clean technology. Prime Minister Narendra Modi , who is slated to meet President Trump at the White House on June 26-27, has indicated that New Delhi will stay the course, emboldened by the steep fall in the price of solar energy, which India sees as the magic bullet.



In Video: US faces isolation as Donald Trump readies Paris pact pullout