The UN’s International Maritime Organization is not normally a place that grabs the headlines. But the scenes that unfolded in London earlier this month were unprecedented. The US government, led by the President and his secretary of state, invested enormous political capital to threaten, cajole and intimidate other countries to destroy a climate deal countries had agreed in principle only 6 months earlier.
“The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping,” wrote Trump on social media. The threat was clear: vote for this deal and face punishment from the world’s superpower. US bullying was successful and IMO member states agreed to a year-long postponement. If you read Trump’s statement on the IMO it becomes clear, getting an ambitious deal in 12 months’ time will be very, very hard.
Trump is not the first US president to torpedo international deals. Bush did the same. Even Obama sabotaged European climate leadership, forcing it to abandon parts of its aviation carbon market, and then cooking up the unimplementable, useless CORSIA offsetting scheme at the UN aviation body (ICAO) in 2016.
But make no mistake, what happened at the IMO was different. Trump’s administration doesn’t want weaker climate ambition, it wants to destroy clean energy and climate action. And it will use the USA’s formidable power to achieve this goal. The sooner we fully accept the implications of this, the better.
First, too many Europeans still think making concessions to Trump is a good strategy (not just on climate, sadly). As the ‘negotiations’ reached a crescendo, proposals to abandon and postpone came from all angles. Some EU states suggested sacrificing the EU's own shipping climate rules to appease him. Trump and his Gulf State allies killed the deal anyway, but they will remember what Europe was willing to sacrifice.
Second, what happened in London was entirely predictable. Did Europe really think they could pass a global climate deal, (wrongly) dubbed the first global carbon tax, without a huge fight? The real battle was waging outside the IMO walls where the US Secretary of State was making phone calls. Europe and its allies weren’t fighting back at that level. If Europe is not willing to seriously face off with Trump, it can forget about global deals.
Third, let’s face it, the IMO deal was not great. It would have created a huge new market for crop-based biofuels like palm oil and soybean oil at a time when the world’s rainforests are at breaking point. It would have expanded LNG in shipping and would have done very little to boost genuinely clean shipping technologies. This is a feature, not a bug, of attempts to regulate globally (CORSIA being the prime example). So we can keep trying to find a compromise that will suit Trump and Saudi Arabia, or we can try something different.
A new approach to global climate deals
Many people say the Paris Agreement is the crowning achievement of climate multilateralism. I agree. However, Paris was only possible AFTER the humiliation of the Copenhagen COP, where Europe abandoned its ambition to have a ‘globally binding’ rule. Indeed, since the Paris Agreement, countries themselves decide their own level of emissions reductions through so-called nationally determined contributions .
The EU Commission has made carbon pricing a key pillar of its global climate and energy vision (this is mainly about CBAM). Why not extend that logic to shipping and aviation? Nations like the UK can build their own systems to match this and price emissions from these polluting sectors. This could be expanded to Türkiye, Africa (Djibutti and Gabon have already put a similar system in place since 2023), Latin America, Canada and Asia. The US doesn’t have to take part.
The IMO may have failed once more, but that does mean international climate action is doomed. Europe can and must lead the way. But only if it accepts the implications of what happened in London. That means, no more concessions to Trump and the petrostates, a much more robust diplomatic posture and an acceptance that international climate action will require a new approach.
Countries like Chile and Namibia who voted in favour of the IMO deal have a lot to gain from an e-fuels future powered by renewable energy and are significantly investing in home-grown e-fuels. There is nothing to stop progressive states from working together to deploy the renewable fuels through, for example, green shipping corridors. These are the countries that will benefit from the economy of tomorrow, not the geopolitical games of yesterday.
