The Trump administration has spent months pressuring countries to abandon the IMO's plan to tax shipping emissions. A recent U.N. meeting suggests the framework still has a narrow path forward.
The international plan to put a price on shipping pollution is still alive, despite a months-long pressure campaign by the Trump administration to kill it. At a U.N. meeting in London last week, a slim majority of countries voiced support for the International Maritime Organization's original Net-Zero Framework, as Grist reports, keeping a narrow path open for what would be the first global carbon tax on any industry.
The conventional read after months of U.S. opposition was that the framework was dead. Watered-down alternatives, submitted by Japan, Liberia, Argentina, Panama and others, were widely expected to dominate the talks. They didn't. Delegates instead spent most of their energy on the original plan, which would charge ships a per-ton fee on greenhouse gas emissions above a set threshold.
The stakes are big. Roughly 90 percent of global trade moves by sea, and the shipping sector contributes about 3 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, largely because vessels burn the heavy sludge left over from refining crude oil. The IMO's framework is designed to push that figure toward zero.
The Trump administration has threatened countries with visa restrictions, tariffs and port fees if they support the plan, arguing it would burden American consumers and businesses. U.S. officials urged member states to end consideration of the IMO Net-Zero Framework entirely. U.S. delegates also distributed leaflets at the meeting projecting country-by-country compliance costs, including one claiming Peru would face nearly $800 million in costs, figures that observers said relied on outdated assumptions.
Em Fenton, a senior director at U.K.-based climate group Opportunity Green, criticized the cost projections as self-interested misinformation that exaggerated potential impacts on developing nations. She described the negotiations themselves as collaborative and optimistic in tone.
The math, though, remains tight. Under IMO rules, opponents can block the framework with one-third of member countries, or with a smaller group that controls half of global shipping tonnage. Just four flag states — Liberia, Panama, the Bahamas and the Marshall Islands — account for roughly half of the world's registered ships, and several have already opposed the plan.
One counterintuitive piece of this story: the shipping industry itself largely backs the framework. A single global rule, the thinking goes, beats a fragmented mess of regional carbon schemes. David Loosley, CEO of shipping trade group BIMCO, wrote on LinkedIn after the meeting that the industry needs the IMO to serve as its global regulator. He argued that without consensus, global regulations would be ineffective and fail to create fair competition.
The earliest vote to adopt the framework is now scheduled for November, after a one-year delay triggered by U.S. intervention. Several details, including how revenue from the levy would be distributed, are still unresolved.
For readers tracking climate policy beyond the headlines, this fight is a useful tell. The question isn't whether decarbonizing shipping is technically feasible, or even whether the industry wants clear rules. It's whether a handful of flag states, leaned on by a single powerful government, can override a majority that wants to move. The answer arrives in November.
