Countries are on the verge of approving global rules to curb shipping pollution — but the Trump administration hasn’t given up on throwing a wrench in the process.
The International Maritime Organization is meeting this week and expected to sign off on a proposal that nations endorsed in April. The U.N. agency sets binding regulations for the global maritime industry, and the measure would ultimately put a tax on shipping emissions.
Several Trump officials have called the proposal a “European-led neocolonial export of global climate regulations” and have sought to strong-arm nations into rejecting it by threatening tariffs and other trade barriers.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on the social media site X on Wednesday that the U.S. would be a “hard NO” on the IMO measures and called on other nations to stand alongside the U.S., linking to an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that said the plan is an attempt by “climate-obsessed politicians to entrench their agenda before voters in democracies can kill it.”
But with the measure still headed for passage, the U.S. is making a last-minute push to change the rules of adoption, according to nonprofit observers. Under the U.S. proposal, which would still require a vote, even if the measure passes at this week’s meeting, it wouldn’t be finalized unless enough countries reiterated their support in the coming months.
“We are actively engaging with countries on the extremely flawed proposal, as well as exploring and preparing to act on remedies including tariffs, visa restrictions, and/or port levies,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to POLITICO’s E&E News ahead of the meeting. “We will also be engaging our like-minded partners and allies to propose they take similar measures.”
It’s the latest move by President Donald Trump to not just abandon U.S. efforts to combat rising temperatures but to try and coerce other countries to follow suit.
How we got here
The IMO regulates the shipping industry and is a rare example of a U.N. body that can issue binding regulations.
The measure up for approval is known as the IMO Net-Zero Framework. It is part of the IMO’s efforts to zero out shipping emissions by around 2050 — a commitment the organization’s 176 member countries agreed to in 2023. The U.S. was among those countries, agreeing to the goal during the Biden administration.
The framework — which 63 countries endorsed in April 2025 — would amend an international treaty known as MARPOL to enact a carbon intensity standard. That standard would get stricter over time, encouraging forcing industry to switch from polluting fossil fuels to lower-emission alternatives. Ships that don’t meet the standard would need to pay a fee, which would go to a fund aimed in part at helping industry make the transition.
Among the countries that supported the proposal were Brazil and China. Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf oil nations voted against it.
In a statement issued last week, Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the proposal would be “disastrous” for industry and raise the price of goods for consumers. They threatened nations that vote for it with possible sanctions, “commercial penalties,” port fees and visa restrictions.
This week’s vote is being closely watched as a measure of how successful the U.S. is in getting countries to bend to its will. If the U.S. fails, it may be forced to the negotiating table. If it succeeds, that could set a worrying precedent.
How much it will cost
The Trump administration’s most prominent argument is that the IMO agreement will raise shipping costs globally and make goods more expensive.
It might also be the least convincing, said James Lightbourn, founder of Cavalier Shipping, a maritime industry consultancy.
That’s because the types of retaliation the Trump administration is suggesting, such as tariffs and port fees, would likely have the same effect, he said. The threats also come as the U.S. rolls out port fees on Chinese ships in an effort to counter that country’s shipbuilding dominance.
Making the switch to low-carbon fuels will be expensive, say industry analysts. But the exact impact of the regulations — if they pass — is still uncertain.
In the near term, the impact on freight costs will be relatively minimal, said Stuart Nicoll, a director at Maritime Strategies International, a London-based consultancy. The fees on high-emitting fuels like oil will start in 2028 and rise, but by 2035, some of the rewards for using low-carbon fuels may start to outweigh the penalties.
“The cost for shipowners and, by extension, shippers will depend very much on how quickly alternative fuels can be made available at much lower prices,” Nicoll noted in an email. “Widespread use also requires the currently stalled interest in ammonia and methanol dual-fuel engines to revive.”
The U.S. is well positioned to produce some of those alternative fuels, said Jonathan Lewis, director of transportation decarbonization at the Clean Air Task Force. But he said he doubted the Trump administration would pursue it.
The LNG angle
George David Banks, who led international climate policy during Trump’s first term, attributed the administration’s animosity toward the IMO measure to its trade agenda.
“It’s pretty clear from the early stages of the administration that the administration was going to root out programs they believed were inconsistent with the president’s agenda or undermined economic security — and climate got caught up in that,” Banks said. “At first glance, they probably look at [the] IMO and think this is an unfair trade practice.”
But Lewis of the Clean Air Task Force sees the climate elements of the IMO deal as more niggling to Trump.
“I think it comes down to the Trump administration’s antipathy toward climate beneficial technologies,” Lewis said. “They don’t see that as something that the United States should pursue.”
The IMO agreement would also frustrate a transition within the maritime sector toward natural gas as a primary shipping fuel, he added.
The agreement wouldn’t ban liquefied natural gas or biofuels, but ships that run purely on LNG would eventually have to pay a penalty. That would likely lead to less LNG use than the Trump administration — and a cohort of prominent shipping companies — would like, said Lightbourn of Cavalier Shipping.
“This is something that is important to the U.S. given that the country has an abundance of natural gas that could be sold as a marine fuel to commercial cargo vessels and be supportive of the domestic oil and gas industry,” he said.
Another point of opposition: the measure stands to benefit China at a time when the U.S. and China — the world’s two largest economies and carbon polluters — are in an ongoing battle over trade and supply chains.
That’s because the net zero measures are expected to stimulate demand for new vessels that can comply with the new regulations, or retrofits of ships to allow for emission-reducing technologies. And China is the world’s largest shipbuilding nation.
What’s next
Climate groups observing the meetings say they expect the measure to pass regardless of U.S. tactics. And, they say, the U.S. knows it.
That has prompted the U.S. delegation to make a last-minute push to alter the rules of adoption.
Here’s how it would work. For the agreement to be adopted, two-thirds of the countries present need to vote in its favor. Over the following months, before the agreement enters into force, those countries can choose to opt out. The IMO considers countries that don’t actively opt out to remain behind the agreement.
The U.S., however, is pushing for “explicit” adoption, where countries will need to come back and voice their support for the agreement before it can take effect.
“That is the Achilles heel,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping program director for Brussels-based clean energy advocacy group Transport & Environment. The change would give the U.S. time, he said, to bully enough countries into not sending their acceptance to the IMO.
Analysts, industry and even climate advocates acknowledge that the IMO’s carbon-cutting measures aren’t perfect. A coalition of major oil tanker companies, including Saudi Arabia’s Bahri, have concerns about the deal, Reuters reported.
Still, many companies see them as necessary for an industry that accounts for around 3 percent of global emissions and growing.
Without them, “shipping would risk a growing patchwork of unilateral regulations, increasing costs without effectively contributing to decarbonization,” a coalition of shipping associations, including the World Shipping Council and the International Chamber of Shipping, said in a letter last week.
Brazil, the host country for next month’s COP30 climate talks, once opposed the IMO agreement. But now the country is hoping the measure will pass.
“We would very much like to see the agreement go forward,” Tatiana Rosito, secretary of international affairs at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, said in an interview with E&E News. “This would be a very good signal for COP30.”
Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly attributed a Wall Street Journal op-ed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was written by the paper’s editorial board.
