The United Nations was set to enact a proposed global carbon tax that would have unduly burdened American interests — until the Trump administration threatened financial retribution on any country that voted to push it through.
Last week, the Trump administration was locked in a showdown with the United Nations over a proposed carbon tax on shipping, warning that if passed, the tax would cost Americans and shipping companies billions of dollars.
After the U.S. threatened retaliation against the nations that supported the scheme, the U.N. announced it will delay the vote for one year.
The regulations had been initially approved in April by the U.N.’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) by a vote of 63-16. A second vote by the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) was to be held this past week with a majority of nations expected to support the plan.
The regulations put forth by a global authority amount to what U.S. leaders called “taxation without representation.” The tax was being brought in furtherance of a goal of “net zero” carbon emissions from ships and boats by 2050.
Shipping companies that used fossil fuel-powered vessels that failed to meet the environmental benchmark would have been required to acquire “remedial units,” either by operating “green” ships that collected “surplus units” or by paying into the IMO Net Zero Fund (NZF) created through the new regulations.
However, the Trump administration was quick to communicate its opposition to the plan.
On October 10, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy issued a joint statement denouncing the regulations and promising consequences for those who supported them.
“President Trump has made it clear that the United States will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or harms the interests of the American people,” they wrote.
“Next week, members of the IMO will vote on the adoption of a so-called NZF aimed at reducing global carbon dioxide gas emissions from the international shipping sector. This will be the first time that a UN organization levies a global carbon tax on the world.”
They warned that the tax could raise shipping costs as much as 10 percent or more. In response, the secretaries suggested the administration would consider taking the following steps:
- Investigations and Port Blocks: Launch probes into anti-competitive practices by flagged countries and potentially bar their registered vessels from U.S. ports.
- Visa Restrictions for Crew: Raise C-1/D maritime visa fees/processing costs, mandate re-interviews, and revise quotas.
- Commercial Penalties: Apply fines via U.S. contracts for new ships, LNG terminals/infrastructure, and other penalties on NZF-favoring flagged vessels.
- Extra Port Fees: Levy additional charges on ships owned, operated, or flagged by NZF-supporting countries.
- Sanctions on Officials: Target those promoting “activist-driven” climate policies harming U.S. consumers.
As the U.S. gathered opposition from other nations, President Donald Trump made his views on the regulatory scheme clear on Truth Social.
“I am outraged that the International Maritime Organization is voting in London this week to pass a global Carbon Tax,” Trump wrote.
“The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form. We will not tolerate increased prices on American Consumers OR, the creation of a Green New Scam Bureaucracy to spend YOUR money on their Green dreams. Stand with the United States, and vote NO in London tomorrow!”
Hours later on Friday, the IMO announced that it would delay the vote for one year.
Rubio said on X following the announcement, “This is another HUGE win for @POTUS. Thanks to his leadership, the United States prevented a massive UN tax hike on American consumers that would have funded progressive climate pet projects. Our country will continue to lead the way and put America FIRST.”
The face-off followed Trump’s September speech to the U.N. in which he chastised the organization for unfair and fraudulent energy policies that harm compliant nations and unfairly redistribute wealth to nations like China.
At that time, Trump pointed out that while U.N. experts have spent decades warning about both global warming and global cooling, none of their doomsday predictions have ever come to fruition. When those narratives failed, climate alarmists adopted the term “climate change,” a label so vague that it allows them to blame everything on climate change.
“It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump said.
“If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” he warned. “The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction.”
In addition, Trump claimed that “At extreme cost and expense, Europe reduced its own carbon footprint by 37 percent. Think of that. Congratulations, Europe, great job. You cost yourself a lot of jobs, a lot of factories closed, but you reduced the carbon footprint by 37 percent. However, for all of that sacrifice and much more, it’s been totally wiped out, and then some, by a global increase of 54 percent, much of it coming from China and other countries that are thriving around China, which now produces more CO2 [carbon dioxide] than all the other developed nations in the world.”
Americans should breathe a sigh of relief because we finally have an American leader that doesn’t sell our country out to globalist scams under the guise of environmental action.
Shipping accounts for roughly three percent of carbon emissions — a drop in the bucket — but the costs would be catastrophic.
“This is the first instance we can find of the U.N. claiming the ability to levy a tax — the revenues from which will be paid directly into a U.N.-controlled fund,” the Wall Street Journal stated. “That’s bad enough as an invitation to opaque special dealing and corruption. But the IMO also contemplates using the funds for ‘just-transition initiatives in developing countries’ and to ‘mitigate negative impacts’ of climate change on ‘vulnerable States.’ In other words, this is another income redistribution scheme for whatever ideas the U.N. bureaucracy deems worthy.”
Echoing Democrat New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” these regulations are never actually about the climate — they are about transforming economies and penalizing developed nations.
And as Joshua Arnold wrote in his excellent article on the shipping tax, European nations are all too happy to penalize the United States.
European nations sold out their citizens to the demands of globalists like the World Bank and World Economic Forum long ago. Now they want to enforce their Marxist viewpoint of oppressor and oppressed nations on the United States, taking our wealth and giving it to other nations like Europe did to its own citizens.
In imposing such foolish regulations, Europe finds itself floundering, as Trump has pointed out. But now it seeks to do the same thing to U.S. shipping.
Take what Finland said in support of the carbon regulations: “Finland finds that this global emission reduction measure will even out the imbalance in international regulation of maritime emissions and level out the competitive environment, between the EU and the rest of the world, for business and industry that depend on shipping.”
Again, it’s not about ensuring cleaner air or saving polar bears — it’s about economic control.
The tax would distort shipbuilding markets. Currently “green” ships are not economically viable, which is why the U.S. relies on fossil-fueled ships that are far less expensive. But the tax would make using such ships so expensive that green ships would be inexpensive by comparison. Talk about picking winners and losers in the free market.
Meanwhile, China, the world’s biggest polluter and serial environmental offender, would profit because they have a prolific shipbuilding industry.
The world wants the United States to be the world’s piggy bank but also wants to inflict taxes and regulations that will bring about the piggy bank’s economic demise.
Thank God we have leadership in place that will no longer allow Americans to be crushed by globalist tyrants who want to spawn socialist economies via phony climate policies and “taxation without representation.”
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