Trump says 'studying' Paris climate agreement

US President-elect Donald Trump today said he was "studying" the historic Paris climate deal, in comments suggesting he was softening his stance on the pact after previously terming it a "hoax" and pledging to withdraw from the agreement.

"Paris, I'm studying. I do say this - I don't want that agreement to put us at a competitive disadvantage with other countries. As you know, there are different times and different time limits on that agreement. I don't want that to give China or other countries signing agreements and advantage over us," Trump told Fox News.

Trump said he was "still open-minded (on climate change). "Nobody really knows. I'm somebody that gets it. And nobody really knows," he said.
 

Before the elections, Trump had said he would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, terming it a "big hoax" in his presidential campaign statement.

He, however, said as America was engaged on the issue of climate change, China - the world's biggest polluter - was "eating our lunch".

"Yes, I think it's a big scam for a lot of people to make a lot of money," he told the American network. "In the meantime, China is eating our lunch because they don't partake in all of the rules and regulations that we do," he said.

"If you look at what China is doing, if you look at what - I could name country after country. You look at what's happening in Mexico where our people - just our plants are being built. They don't wait ten years to get an approval to build a plant, OK? They build it like the following day or the following week," he said.

"We can't let all of these permits that take forever to get stop our jobs. I won because of the fact that people that are great, great American people have been forgotten. I call them the forgotten man and the forgotten woman. They've been forgotten. And you, in all fairness, and all of the folks in your world, and business, you forgot about these people. They're not going to forget about them in four years. They're already trying to figure out what happened. But I understood it because I understand our country," Trump said.