Estonian minister: US voluntarily giving up role as leader of free world

Minister of Health and Labour Jevgeni Ossinovski (SDE) was the first Estonian politician to publicly condemn U.S. President Donald Trump's Thursday decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, stating on Friday that the U.S. was quickly becoming a developing country.
"Barack Obama said upon leaving the office of the president: 'This is not a period. This is a comma in the continuing story of building America,'" Ossinovski, who is also chairman of the coalition Social Democratic Party (SDE), wrote on social media on Friday.
"At the time, large developing countries like India and China were against the Kyoto Protocol, referring to the right to polute until they reach the level of development of Western countries. Thus the Paris Agreement was a real breakthrough in the conservation of the planet and in the name of future generations, as every country in the world joined it.
"Thus, Trump's statement yesterday did not leave any doubt — the United States is voluntarily giving up its role as the leader of the free world and rapidly becoming a developing nation: in lieu of long-term goals affecting all of humanity, short-term and isolationist political interests are prioritized."
At the end of his statement, Ossinovski added the hashtag #MakeOurPlanetGreatAgain, a reference to French President Emmanuel Macron's unprecedented English-language public address from Élysée Palace on Thursday evening in which he called on the world to "make our planet great again."
Trump announced on Thursday afternoon that the U.S. will be withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the sole countries not to follow the agreement, the latter of which found that the agreement was not tough enough.
Editor: Aili Vahtla