✪ The Globalist Elites Are At It Again

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he vote at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) returns in October 2026. The same scheme, the same UN-administered fund, the same transfer of American wealth to international bureaucrats accountable to no voter anywhere. The European Union is already regrouping. Small island nations are already lining up with their hands out. The clock is ticking.

This fight should already be over. Last October, the Trump Administration stared down the IMO and killed; at least temporarily, what would have been the first global carbon tax on any industry. Secretaries Marco Rubio, Chris Wright and Sean Duffy issued a joint statement threatening visa restrictions, port fees and sanctions on any country that voted yes. The IMO blinked. Member states voted 57 to 49 to postpone for a year.

A Trump Administration official told international negotiators this week that American efforts to derail a global initiative to lower shipping industry climate pollution are gaining traction.

A U.S. negotiator warned other countries in a closed-door meeting that efforts to rein in climate pollution from ships has “no prospect” of success.

Rear Admiral Wayne Arguin, a career Coast Guard official who leads the American delegation to the U.N. International Maritime Organization, suggested the so-called Net-Zero Framework would fail to be adopted if it’s brought up again for a future vote.

In addition to the U.S. outlining its opposition, several countries submitted alternative plans, including Liberia and Japan. However, for many nations, the existing proposal already amount to a compromise which was already hammered out over years of hard-fought negotiations.

“The framework, as approved in April 2025, was a carefully designed and curated package,” Michael Mbaru, a maritime expert with Kenya’s climate envoy office, told reporters earlier this month. If the carbon tax is jettisoned, the whole package could fail, he said.

President Donald Trump called the proposal the “Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping.” He is correct.

At the center of the initiative is a proposed carbon tax on ships and a related sustainable fuel standard, both of which would help the industry meet an IMO commitment established in 2023 to zero out shipping sector carbon emissions by 2050. The framework has become a key target of the Trump Administration as it seeks to cripple international action to tackle global warming.

Since delaying the vote last fall, the Trump Administration has sought to persuade other countries to oppose the measure by circulating a diplomatic cable warning nations not to adopt the carbon tax and its related climate measures. It’s also pushing to undermine proposed penalties on liquefied natural gas as a shipping fuel.

It says support for the framework “has continued to erode” and calls for consideration of alternative proposals that align “with demonstrated market readiness.”

However, postponed is not killed. The vote returns this October, and the EU is pressing hard to resurrect the levy. Washington needs to be ready to fight it again, and this time finish the job.

Here is what the IMO is preparing to vote on. Ships would pay a carbon penalty of $100 to $380 per metric ton of excess CO₂. The revenue; projected at $11 to $13 billion per year, flows into a UN-administered Net-Zero Fund. Officially that fund is designated for “green fuels” and “just transitions.”

However in practice, it is a permanent revenue stream and slush fund for the same international agencies which have held decades of climate summits while global emissions have continued to rise; with a well-documented history of incompetence, graft and waste.

Small island nations and developing countries are already lining up with their hands out, seeing the levy not as a tool to cut emissions but as a fresh source of climate reparations. The fund’s architects have promised the lion’s share will flow to the poorest states for “capacity building” diplomatic language for wealth transfer on a global scale, administered by bureaucrats who do not answer to voters anywhere.

Meanwhile, American families will get stuck paying the bill. Higher shipping costs don’t stay at sea. They flow straight into the price of every imported good: clothes, electronics, medicine, car parts, food. etc. The Trump Administration’s own analysis warned shipping costs could jump 10% or more.

That’s not abstract climate justice. It is a regressive tax falling hardest on working Americans who are already facing inflation fatigue.

And for what? Global CO₂ emission levels still continue to rise even in places with aggressive carbon pricing already in place. Europe’s Emissions Trading System hasn’t stopped continental emissions from growing in several sectors. China still emits more CO₂ than all industrial nations combined, burns more than half the world’s coal, and is building hundreds of new coal plants designed to run for 40 years or longer; while lecturing the West about “climate responsibility.”

China also operates the world’s largest commercial fleet. Under the IMO framework, Chinese state-owned shippers will pay the levy and pass the cost to American importers. American families would in effect, be funding the UN bureaucracy and subsidizing Beijing’s trade dominance at the same time. That’s a really bad deal by any measure.

The EU will argue the United States helped to develop this framework for years before deciding to reversing course. That’s true and it’s an argument for walking away permanently instead of accepting a bad deal strictly out of previous diplomatic inertia. If a policy is wrong, it doesn’t matter if earlier administrations supported it. That is not any reason to continue. It’s a reason to celebrate someone with common sense finally said no.

The correct position for October 2026 is the same as it was for last Fall: no centralized UN fund, no deal. If trading partners want to address shipping emissions, there is a better path; support leading American innovation in cleaner marine fuels. Negotiate bilateral agreements which institute verifiable standards; and keep the revenue and accountability at home with elected governments answerable to their own citizens.

The pattern never changes. Every United Nations climate levy starts off with noble language and ends with a self-perpetuating bureaucracy skimming their cut off global trade. If this one passes, aviation, agriculture and consumer goods will be next. The tax will continue to ratchet up each year while emissions continue their stubborn climb largely driven by the growing Asian need for more reliable electricity generated from coal.

Trump and his team did the American people a huge service last Fall; however, the job is not yet finished.

Washington should return to the IMO this October with the same message: American sovereignty and American wallets will not be a new revenue source for the United Nations or bargaining chips for bureaucrats in London and Geneva.

Kill the fund. Kill the levy. And if our trading partners don’t agree, make the consequences completely clear. ✪