How the US could shape the COP30 climate summit without even being there

By Andrew Freedman, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration does not intend to send a high-level delegation to the COP30 climate summit — or possibly any delegation at all. But that doesn’t mean the country’s influence won’t be felt at the talks.

As nations prepare to gather in Belém, Brazil, for the negotiations, which begin on Thursday with the leaders summit, the US is set to play the part of the elephant in the room. Even operating from afar, the US could have the power to blow up a deal in Belém. The Trump administration has recently taken aggressive stances to try to influence other countries’ climate policies, mainly by threatening hostile trade measures.

The US has estranged itself from official international climate negotiation processes while simultaneously exerting pressure on trading partners to water down or reject climate commitments. This paradox could have an impact on COP30, experts tell CNN.

It is not known whether the US will simply ignore COP or try to intervene to secure preferred outcomes.

The administration has publicly criticized the COP process and stated it does not plan to participate. “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told CNN.

The US will not send any high-level representatives to COP30, Rogers said. “The President is directly engaging with leaders around the world on energy issues, which you can see from the historic trade deals and peace deals that all have a significant focus on energy partnerships,” she said.

This practice of linking trade and climate so closely is an innovation of the Trump administration, said Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University who worked on US climate negotiations with China for the Obama administration.

In the absence of US leadership, she said that China, which is the world’s top emitter, may seek to assume more of a prominent, steering role at the talks. The European Union is also likely to take a strong role, though internal rifts have emerged within the EU regarding how aggressively to cut its own emissions.

Weakening resolve

Other countries have not followed the US out of the Paris Agreement, but the abrupt shifts in policy in Washington have affected the global mood. An administration that now heavily favors fossil fuels over renewables has reduced the incentives for other countries to submit ambitious plans for cutting emissions through 2035, experts said.

These plans were supposed to be delivered by virtually every country in the world in the run up to COP30. However, only about 60 countries delivered theirs to the UN on time, and the actions they outline fall far short of achieving the temperature targets contained in the Paris Agreement.

“I think there’s an undeniable fact, which is that with the US withdrawal for a second time, it’s definitely seeming to undermine ambition,” Gallagher said. “I think it’s just getting harder to make the case that global ambition is going to rise without pretty substantial engagement from the United States,” she said.

And now, instead of constructive engagement or simply disengagement, America has demonstrated a trend toward behavior that undermines aggressive climate goals. This was the case last month at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which regulates pollution from the international shipping fleet, where US diplomats acted in concert with major oil-producing nations to scuttle what would have been the world’s first carbon tax.

The long-heralded proposal would have imposed a tax on carbon pollution from global shipping to encourage a switch to cleaner-burning fuels. Officials in Washington — including President Donald Trump who released a scathing Truth Social post — were involved in turning up the pressure on diplomats at that meeting. The US threatened to retaliate via trade measures against countries who voted in favor. Neither Gallagher nor other experts expect similarly disruptive behavior from the US during COP30, but they couldn’t rule it out, either.

However, Kaveh Guilanpour of the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, for one, thinks any US intervention would be less effective at COP30 than it was at the shipping meeting.

“The rest of the world continues to be committed to the Paris Agreement. Countries realize that it is ultimately in their long-term interest that the Paris Agreement succeeds,” he said.

“The situation [with the global carbon tax] is very different from that of the Paris Agreement,” he said. “There was a very specific normative proposal under the IMO that the US pushed back against. Negotiations under the Paris Agreement, on the other hand, are largely over. It is now about implementing promises already made.”

Despite those differences, the IMO episode is an example of the US prioritizing its own trade interests over global interests to cut planet-warming pollution. Gallagher said it’s possible that the Trump administration will again seek to disrupt negotiations, from the sidelines of COP30. Only this time, the point of contention would likely be climate finance: Funding climate adaptation and renewable energy in the developing world is a big topic at COP30.

America’s options for swaying the negotiations themselves, however, are ironically limited, she said, because of the Paris withdrawal and lack of attendance.

“There’s very little that the Trump administration could do in Brazil,” Gallagher said.

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