Executives from the world’s largest mining company have urged Donald Trump to uphold the Paris climate pact, while warning the “whole world will be in trauma” if the incoming US president follows through on tariffs against China.

BHP Billiton chief executive Andrew McKenzie told shareholders in Brisbane that he hoped Trump maintained US support of the Paris agreement and built on crucial cooperation with China on climate action begun by his predecessor.

BHP Billiton chairman Jac Nasser said Trump’s pledge to apply 45% blanket tariffs on Chinese imports would trigger a damaging trade war but predicted this was part of his election campaign “rhetoric” which would not materialise.

Nasser also said it would take years for the mining giant to fully resolve the fallout from its Brazilian mine disaster, as advocates for devastated communities again raised concerns about the exclusion of some from a compensation process and with the pace of its environmental clean up.

The fallout from the Samarco mine disaster, along with plummeting oil and iron ore prices have wreaked havoc with BHP Billiton’s bottom line with the Anglo-Australian mining giant posting a record full-year loss of $US6.39bn ($A8.29bn) in August.

McKenzie told the annual general meeting that BHP Billiton – which was questioned by one shareholder about the prospect it would be marooned in the future selling “dinosaur products” – welcomed the COP21 agreement on emissions cuts to limit global warming.

“We do hope that President Trump doesn’t actually tear up the agreement of the United States to support that and also the very strong bond that president Obama and Xi Jinping forged on that because we see this is a strong foundation for future action,” McKenzie said.

Asked about the impact on BHP if the US went ahead with tariffs against China – which accounts for $14b or 41% of the miner’s earnings – Nasser said: “Woah. I can’t explain Donald Trump to you.”

He said the US election had thrown up “quite a lot of rhetoric, some of which will happen and some of which will not”.

Nasser said that “some of the policies that have been listed at this stage will probably be moderated over time”, later telling reporters “the wall [between the US and Mexico] became a fence”.

But he said “the whole world will start to be in complete trauma if tariff levels of that size and magnitude are put on across the board” and that other countries were certain to retaliate.

The company held a minute’s silence at the start of the annual general meeting in memory of the 19 victims of the Samarco dam collapse last year, after a request from dissident shareholders on behalf of the affected communities.

It maintained its rejection of criminal charges laid by Brazilian prosecutors against the company and current and former employees, saying it would fully fund legal defences.

Last month 26 people were charged, 21 for qualified homicide, for their alleged roles in the disaster, which sent a tidal wave of mining waste hundreds of miles through the Minas Gerais region in November 2015.

A Brazilian executive told shareholders a foundation set up by BHP Billiton to fund the initial humanitarian response, compensation and the environmental clean up had made particular progress in recent weeks.

The company flagged a bigger round of compensation for those affected by the bursting of the tailings dam, including hundreds made homeless, in the new year.

Nasser said “many challenges” remained for the company in making good on the disaster, which has also left hundreds homeless.

“Some will take years to resolve fully. There will be setbacks,” he said.

“But let me be very clear: we remain committed to doing the right thing.”

Nasser said the Samarco disaster was a “key consideration” in the board decision to award McKenzie no performance bonuses in 2016, which was “consistent with Andrew’s view”.

Rodrigo de Castro Amédée Péret, a Franciscan friar from the area who attended BHP Billiton’s AGM in London last month, said in a statement that locals had “lost everything, without receiving any real compensation”.

“Instead of reparations for the victims, what is becoming evident is the blatant corporate capture of our government by transnational companies,” he said.

Natalie Lowrey, of Australia’s Mineral Policy Institute, said BHP and its business partners were ignoring those most affected by the tailings dam collapse, by denying them “meaningful participation in decision-making about the clean-up and compensation”.

Lowrey, who had requested the minute’s silence, said locals wanted “for everyone who has been affected to be recognised – the companies shouldn’t be picking and choosing who gets help”.

McKenzie told reporters after the meeting that the company had “so much to do and we have to be impatient” in the wake of the disaster.

He acknowledged concerns raised last month in London that “some parts of the population felt less consulted than they would have wished”.

He said the company wanted the recovery and compensation process “highly determined by the local community and not external agencies” and “clearly we’ll get feedback”.

“I hope we’re perfect but I would expect that there would be pockets we will not reach and then we’ll have to compensate,” McKenzie said.

“Everybody involved will make claims but those claims will therefore have to be appropriately judged both in terms of whether there is a claim there and what is the appropriate size and that’s what the whole process is.

“And for the larger claims, clearly for that to be fair and in light of how the foundation was designed, that will take a bit more time than just providing some emergency cash which was what we did just after the accident.”

As of last month, BHP had booked $2.2bn (£1.8bn) of costs linked to the accident and issued 7,000 “financial assistance” cards to allow affected people to buy food, adding that the firm had made a “superhuman effort” to support people.