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"The world was on the brink of a climate milestone: adopting a global carbon tax for the shipping industry. Countries had spent years crafting the plan, hoping to throttle planet-warming pollution from cargo vessels. They had every reason to think the measure would pass when the International Maritime Organization (IMO) met in mid-October.
Enter Donald Trump. After returning to the White House for a second term, the president and his top officials undertook a monthslong campaign to defeat the initiative. The US threatened tariffs, levies and visa restrictions to get its way.
A battery of American diplomats and cabinet secretaries met with various nations to twist arms, according to a senior US State Department official, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. Nations were also warned of other potential consequences if they backed the tax on shipping emissions, including imposing sanctions on individuals and blocking ships from US ports.
Under that Trump-led pressure—or intimidation, as some describe it—some countries started to waver. Ultimately, a bloc including the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran voted to adjourn the meeting for a year, killing any chance of the charge being adopted anytime soon.
The US “bullied otherwise supportive or neutral countries into turning against” the net-zero plan for shipping, says Faïg Abbasov, a director at the European advocacy group Transport & Environment. With its intense lobbying at the IMO, the Trump administration was “waging war against multilateralism, UN diplomacy and climate diplomacy.”
At first glance, it might look like the US has exited the climate fight. The president is once again pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, and he may not send an official US delegation to next month’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil. But don’t be confused: America is still in the arena; it’s just fighting for the other side.
Since his return to Washington, Trump has used trade talks, tariff threats and verbal dressing-downs to encourage countries to jettison their renewable energy commitments (and buy more US oil and liquefied natural gas in the process). Just 10 months into his second term, the campaign is showing surprising success as key figures and countries increasingly buckle under the determined pressure.
Trump was elected to implement a “common sense energy agenda,” says White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers. He “will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.”
The strong-arming is happening on multiple fronts. Among the biggest is trade, where Trump has already compelled Japan, South Korea and the EU to pledge to spend on American energy and energy infrastructure. Japan, for instance, agreed to invest $550 billion on US projects, and talks are underway to steer some of that funding to a $44 billion Alaska gas pipeline and export site. South Korea has pledged roughly $100 billion in US energy purchases.
The EU, meanwhile, has vowed to spend some $750 billion buying American energy, including LNG, to secure lower tariffs on its exports to the US. Analysts have questioned whether those sales will fully materialize, since they’d require Europe to more than triple its annual energy imports from the US. But the public commitment by itself was a stunning move for a bloc that’s led the world in pushing policies to combat climate change.
Source: Epicurus-fan