Donald Trump committed a “colossal own goal” and delivered a “gift to China” with his decision to withdraw from global climate diplomacy, international experts say, as reaction to last week’s announcement continues to roll in.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order that suspended U.S. support for 66 international organizations, agencies, and commissions, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The announcement was seen as the latest effort by Trump and his allies to distance the U.S. from international organizations focused on climate.

“Not exactly a smart move leaving rulemaking to others,” Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns with 350.org, wrote last week on LinkedIn. “This will hurt the U.S. influence for decades.”

In a follow-up statement, UN climate secretary Simon Stiell said Trump had scored a “colossal own goal which will leave the U.S. less secure and less prosperous.”

Trump’s decision “will mean less affordable energy, food, transport, and insurance for American households and businesses, as renewables keep getting cheaper than fossil fuels, as climate-driven disasters hit American crops, businesses, and infrastructure harder each year, and as oil, coal, and gas volatility drives more conflicts, regional instability, and forced migration,” Stiell added.

“It will also mean less American manufacturing jobs, while every other major economy ramps up its clean energy investments, powering economic growth and energy security, and pushing renewables past coal as the world’s top energy source last year.”

In a blog post last week, Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said a future U.S. president would have the authority to rejoin the Paris Agreement on their first day in office, as then-president Joe Biden did in 2021. Schmidt and others said the country could also return to the UNFCCC without requiring a supportive vote in a divided and hyper-partisan U.S. Senate.

But while Stiell said the “doors remain open for the U.S. to re-enter in the future, as it has in the past with the Paris Agreement,” some leading climate diplomacy veterans were ready to move on.

“Seen from other countries, the experience is a familiar one,” the Guardian reports. “For much of the last 30 years, the rest of the world has been forced to persevere with climate action in the face of U.S. intransigence.” Now, “withdrawing from the UNFCCC will mean the U.S. no longer has a seat at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings, and withdrawing from the IPCC will mean the U.S. no longer has a veto over the summary for policymakers that accompanies its seven-yearly reports.”

That deliberate move to the sidelines amounts to a “gift to China,” said former U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said China will likely continue building up its own low-carbon economy.

“This commercial dynamism is happening increasingly between China and the Global South,” he told the Guardian. “These economic forces provide a more meaningful counter to Trump [than geopolitics].”

“The climate movement is bigger than any one nation,” added Power Shift Africa Director Mohamed Adow. “African nations and the Global South will continue pushing for climate justice, demanding that wealthy polluters honour their historical responsibilities, and building the clean energy future our people deserve.”

The Uttar Pradesh-based Indian Express says the U.S. withdrawal may not be all bad news.

“The absence of American scientists in IPCC could deprive the agency of state-of-the-art knowledge generated in the country’s institutions,” the paper writes in an editorial. “This would make global warming mitigation tougher. However, climate negotiations are testimony to undercommitment from the country that has spewed the greatest amount of GHGs. American withdrawal from environmental treaties should, therefore, be seen as a chance to reimagine the climate governance architecture.”

That should begin with an effort to “calibrate the deficits caused by U.S. withdrawal,” the Express adds. “The Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund were in poor health even before Trump’s presidency. The recently-operationalized Loss and Damage Fund is yet to get its act together,” with the U.S. an “historic defaulter” on most climate finance commitments.

“In the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal, a serious introspection on mobilizing funds and devising mechanisms to direct finances to countries that need them most should be the UNFCCC’s priority,” the editorial states.

Carbon Brief has a Q&A on the implications of the U.S. withdrawal for climate action.