A Climate Plan for Shipping Would Have Helped China. Trump Was Right to Stop It.

U.S. liquified natural gas exports have increased 25% since last year. (Kathleen Flynn/Bloomberg)

About the author: Leslie Palti-Guzman is the founder of Energy Vista, a strategic advisory firm. She hosts the Energy Vista podcast and is a nonresident fellow at the Center for International Studies and at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

Climate advocates had hoped that a new global fuel levy and net zero framework would be adopted at the latest meeting of the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that oversees the shipping industry. Instead, member states voted 57-49 to delay those measures for at least a year. The U.S. was accused of bullying and intimidating other representatives into voting against the framework, a move aligned with the Trump administration’s broader pushback against green policies.

It is easy to blame the U.S. for derailing the climate deal—but that would be an overly simplistic interpretation.

The U.S. representatives’ push for a delay was more about the U.S.-China rivalry for maritime dominance and the lack of readiness of alternative fuel sources. The fuel levy and net zero framework would have penalized liquified natural gas producers in the U.S. and pushed the industry to leapfrog directly to fuels that aren’t yet commercially ready. Both would have given China a leg up.

In August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy argued the IMO’s proposed standards would benefit China over U.S. interests. The fuel standards—which would have required large vessels phase out fossil fuels, including low-methane LNG, starting in 2028—would “conveniently benefit China by requiring the use of expensive fuels unavailable at global scale,” they wrote in a joint statement. “These standards would also preclude the use of proven technologies that fuel global shipping fleets, including lower emissions options where U.S. industry leads, such as LNG.”

This would come as China’s shipbuilding and marine engineering systems are growing increasingly sophisticated and dominant. Such a threat is precisely why the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office opened a Section 301 investigation into the Chinese maritime industry earlier this year. If the net-zero framework had been adopted, Beijing would have benefited from new demand for its green-energy ships, which already account for 70% of global ship orders, and it alternative fuel sources.

China is both a major consumer and producer of methanol, with a well-developed coal-to-methanol and renewable-to-methanol industry. China recently announced the construction of a large-scale facility using renewable energy to produce green methanol for shipping.

Green methanol, however, has a low energy density and takes up cargo space. And it is expensive. Unless global subsidies appear, it isn’t yet a competitive option. Neither is ammonia—another alternative fuel that China dominates globally in production. Ammonia may be zero-carbon when burned, but its coal-based production process is carbon-intensive. There is a cleaner production process available through electrolysis, but supply chains to do that don’t exist yet.

LNG is the missing link. The framework ignored that LNG is a proven and readily available fuel that should be used as the maritime industry transitions to even cleaner energy sources. Switching to LNG offers clear benefits: higher efficiency, and lower emissions. LNG emits 20-30% less carbon dioxide during combustion than other fossil fuels. LNG will make even more sense once ships reduce methane leakage and organizations that certify low-methane and responsibly sourced gas, such Project Canary, Mamii, and MiQ, can verify those ships’ supply as environmentally safe.

Abandoning LNG in a premature push to adopt ammonia or methanol could undermine business continuity and discourage investments. It would also disadvantage the world’s largest LNG exporter: the U.S. Producers in the U.S. are already stretched to find new centers of LNG demand to absorb the doubling of its export capacity by 2030.

And yet, China joined the U.S. in voting to delay the net-zero framework. Its vote was at odds with its recent support for stricter ship carbon rules, but it was a pragmatic move nonetheless. China recognizes that technological unreadiness and uneven access to alternative fuels are still major obstacles. Perhaps China granted Washington this political win as a strategic move within the context of the two countries’ trade discussions.

China may already be planning ahead for IMO’s next vote on the net-zero framework in October 2026. The U.S. should do the same, as the contest for leadership in maritime standards intensifies.

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