In a stunning turn of events, the UN’s plan to institute the first-ever global tax on carbon emissions, only recently portrayed as all but inevitable, has been scuttled by the Trump administration.
For several years now, the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) — the body that regulates international shipping — has been pushing for a tax to be levied on shipping companies for supposed excessive carbon consumption, to be collected by the United Nations and redistributed as the global body sees fit, in the name of climate equity. Billed as a necessary expedient to help bring about global net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the new carbon tax was widely expected to be adopted at this month’s IMO London summit, in spite of Trump’s vocal opposition. As such, it would become the very first bona fide global tax imposed by the United Nations, and would provide for the very first time a stream of revenue independent of contributions by member states.
Trump Card
But a funny thing happened on the way to IMO summit. It turned out that, for once, Trump was serious in his opposition to a globalist scheme, and completely uninterested in any “transactional” outcome. After correctly branding the proposed carbon tax as an “unconstitutional global tax,” Trump wrote on Truth Social the day before the IMO vote on the measure:
I am outraged that the International Maritime Organization is voting in London this week to pass a global Carbon Tax. 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!
Marco Rubio also weighed in on X:
This week, the UN is attempting to pass the first global carbon tax, which will increase energy, food, and fuel costs across the world. We will not allow the UN to tax American citizens and companies.
The Trump administration underscored its opposition by threatening trade sanctions on countries supportive of the tax, a move that prompted a number of countries that previously had supported the tax or had abstained from voting to change their position. Argentina, for example, abstained from voting in April, when October’s meeting was being planned, but has since switched to a “No” vote. Besides the United States, many petroleum producing nations, like Saudi Arabia and Russia, opposed the measure, as did some Caribbean island nations with economies crucially dependent on cruise ships. The supporting bloc was anchored by China, the EU, Brazil, and the U.K.
Failure — for Now
In the end, the measure failed by a vote of 57 to 49 — but only temporarily. The globalists, unwilling to give up on their cherished project of instituting a global tax system so close to fruition, managed to switch the vote from an up or down vote on the measure itself to a motion to table the proposal for one year, until the next IMO summit. The proposal is going to be resurrected again and again until the politics are once again propitious for the UN and its agenda.
Many of the most important globalist agenda items, from the creation of the World Trade Organization and the International Criminal Court, to the launch of the European Union and the euro, took decades, and multiple failed attempts before reaching fruition. A UN-administered global tax system has been a pet project of globalists such as C. Fred Bergsten for decades, with many different options on the table, from carbon taxes to taxes on international e-commerce.
Not so important is what type of tax ends up being levied; the critical thing, in the eyes of globalist schemers, is that the UN acquire some kind of taxing authority independent of the say-so of member states. Right now, the carbon tax on shipping happens to be center stage, but thanks to the efforts of the Trump administration, this dangerous globalist innovation (the ultimate expression of taxation without representation, by the way) has been set aside, at least temporarily.
