John Kerry comes up empty in China climate talks

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry announced during a press conference in China on Wednesday that his visit to the nation failed to yield any significant climate agreement.

Kerry told reporters that, while he and his Chinese counterparts engaged in "frank" discussions about fighting global warming, they couldn't solidify any formal agreement. He added that the U.S. and China — the world's two largest polluters — will need additional time to hash out a climate deal between the nations.

"We came to Beijing in order to unstick what has been stuck for almost a year, and that’s the in-person dialogue between the United States and China," Kerry said, E&E News reported.

"We had very frank conversations, but we came here to break new ground, which we think is important at this stage, and it is clear that we are going to need a little more work to be able to complete that task, which we still believe, both of us, is doable," he continued.

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And the climate czar said the U.S. and China will continue in the coming weeks and months to negotiate on an "accelerated" schedule, according to Bloomberg.

"We’re not finished finding the pathway with clarity on both sides that will allow us to achieve what we need to achieve," Kerry said.

Kerry's trip to China and meetings with Chinese officials came about a year after climate talks between the two nations stalled in response to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's, D-Calif., high-profile trip to Taiwan. The State Department confirmed in May that Kerry had quietly restarted climate talks with China and that his office was planning future in-person meetings.

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Since assuming the SPEC position, Kerry has engaged in various private talks with Chinese counterparts, including two 2021 meetings in China. Following a regional climate summit in April 2021, though, Kerry told CNBC that solving climate change was "not about China."

However, Kerry's role in the Biden administration has been criticized by top Republican lawmakers who have also taken issue with his negotiations on behalf of the U.S. with China. In 2021, President Biden appointed Kerry to be SPEC, a position that hadn't previously existed, didn't require Senate approval, and gives him a spot on the president's cabinet and National Security Council.

"Despite not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, John Kerry is still negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party to push a radical, Green New Deal agenda detrimental to American interests," House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement to Fox News Digital earlier this week.

"President Biden granted his Climate Czar the ability to unilaterally set foreign policy and bind the United States to international agreements without consent from Congress," Comer continued. "China now recognizes that this is an opportunity to take advantage of this Administration’s weak leadership that consistently puts the priorities of Americans last."

In one of his first actions leading the Oversight Committee, Comer opened a probe in February into Kerry's office over its negotiations with China. And in May, Comer again promised "intense scrutiny" of Kerry's China climate talks.

"The Biden Administration's continued attempts at appeasing Communist China are pathetic," Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Republican Conference, said this week. 

"While the CCP is conducting cyber espionage attacks on U.S. executive agencies, operating an intelligence collection facility in our backyard, and buying up U.S. agricultural land next to sensitive military installations, Joe Biden continues to pander to the CCP by sending John Kerry to Beijing, ignoring their aggressions, to engage in futile discussions about climate change with the world’s biggest polluter," she added.