The United States is departing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the overarching treaty that has organized global climate diplomacy for more than 30 years, according to the Associated Press.
The withdrawal, if confirmed, marks a significant escalation of President Trump’s war on environmental diplomacy beyond what he waged in his first term.
Trump has twice removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, a largely nonbinding pact that commits the world’s countries to report their carbon emissions reduction goals on a multi-year basis. He most recently did so in 2025, after President Biden rejoined the treaty.
But Trump has never previously touched the UNFCCC. That older pact was ratified by the Senate, and it has served as the institutional skeleton for all subsequent international climate diplomacy, including the Paris Agreement.
The United States was a founding member of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It first joined the treaty in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush signed the pact and lawmakers unanimously ratified it.
Every other country in the world belongs to the UNFCCC. By withdrawing from the treaty, the U.S. would likely be locked out of the Conference of the Parties, the annual UN summit on climate change. It could also lose any influence over UN spending to drive climate adaptation in developing countries.
It remains unclear whether another president could rejoin the framework convention without a Senate vote.
As of 6 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, the AP report cited a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the news had not yet been announced.
The Trump administration has yet to confirm the departure. On Wednesday afternoon, the White House posted a notice to its website saying that the U.S. would leave dozens of UN groups, including those that “promote radical climate policies,” without providing specifics. The announcement was taken down from the White House website after a few minutes.
The White House later confirmed the departure from 31 UN entities in a post on the social network X, but did not list the groups in question.
