President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission speaks to US President Donald Trump during a meeting at Trump's Turnberry golf course in Scotland in July. Trump is not only working to stop a transition away from fossil fuels in the US, he is pressuring other countries to relax their pledges to fight climate change and instead burn more oil, gas and coal. Photo / Tierney L. Cross, The New York Times
President Donald Trump is not only working to stop a transition away from fossil fuels in the United States.
He is pressuring other countries to relax their pledges to fight climate change and instead burn more oil, gas, and coal.
Trump, who has joined with Republicans in Congress to shred federal support for electric vehicles and for solar and wind energy, is applying tariffs, levies and other mechanisms of the world’s biggest economy to induce other countries to burn more fossil fuels.
His animus is particularly focused on the wind industry, which is a well-established and growing source of electricity in several European countries as well as in China and Brazil.
During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday NZT, Trump said he was trying to educate other nations.
“I’m trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I’ve done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying,” Trump said.
He said countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy and added, “I hope they get back to fossil fuels”.
Two weeks ago, the Administration promised to punish countries — by applying tariffs, visa restrictions and port fees — that vote for a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector.
Days later in Geneva, the Trump Administration joined Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries to oppose limits on the production of petroleum-based plastics, which have exploded in use in recent years and are polluting waterways, harming wildlife and have even been detected in the human brain.
Last month, the Trump Administration struck a trade deal with the European Union in which it agreed to reduce some tariffs if the bloc purchased US$750 billion in American oil and gas over three years.
That deal has raised concerns in some European countries because it would conflict with plans to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the burning of which is the main driver of climate change.
“They are clearly using various tools in an attempt to increase the use of fossil fuels around the world instead of decrease,” said Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s former special envoy for climate action.
Also last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned that the US could pull out of the International Energy Agency after the organisation predicted that global oil demand would peak this decade instead of continuing to climb.
Wright told Europeans in April that they faced a choice between the “freedom and sovereignty” of abundant fossil fuels and the policies of “climate alarmism” that would make them less prosperous.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said Trump’s goal was “restoring America’s energy dominance, ensuring energy independence to protect our national security and driving down costs for American families and businesses”.
Rogers added: “The Trump Administration will not jeopardise our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals”.
Energy experts and European officials called the level of pressure Trump is exerting on other countries worrying.
Last year, the hottest on record, was the first calendar year in which the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Along with that came deadly heat, severe drought and devastating wildfires.
This year is on track to be the second- or third-hottest on record, according to data from several agencies.
Scientists widely agree that to avoid worsening consequences of climate change, countries need to rapidly transition away from oil, gas, and coal to clean energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal power, and hydropower.
“At this moment in time it is absolutely imperative that countries double down, triple down, on their collaboration in the face of the climate crisis to not allow the active efforts for a fossil fuel world by the Trump Administration succeed,” Morgan said.
Trump routinely mocks the established science of climate change and his Administration has issued a report, written by five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that hundreds of the world’s leading experts have overstated the risks of a warming planet.
The President also has made no secret of his disgust for wind turbines and solar panels.
Those disparagements don’t end at the water’s edge.
In July, Trump visited his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, where 14 years ago he tried unsuccessfully to stop construction of an offshore wind farm that could be seen from another Trump golf resort in Aberdeen.
During that visit, Trump met Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, to discuss trade.
He denounced wind power as a “con job”. Von der Leyen sat expressionless next to Trump during a news conference after their meeting as the President falsely claimed that wind turbines drive birds “loco”.
In a separate meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain that week, Trump called wind energy “a disaster”.
Wind accounts for about 20% of the electricity mix in Europe, and EU countries plan to increase that to more than 50% by 2050.
“Wind needs massive subsidies, and you are paying in Scotland and in the United Kingdom, and in all over the place where they have them, massive subsidies to have these ugly monsters all over the place,” Trump said in his meeting with Starmer.
The arm-twisting goes far beyond Trump’s actions during his first term, some observers said.
As he did in 2017, Trump in January withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, a global pact among nearly 200 countries to fight climate change.
During the first term, Trump primarily focused his energy policy on withdrawing the US from global discussions about climate change while he promoted domestic fossil fuel production.
This time around, the Administration is “actively trying to undermine countries” on global warming, said David Goldwyn, president of Goldwyn Global Strategies, an energy consulting firm.
Several diplomats from other countries said that the Administration has used increasingly aggressive tactics to influence international energy policies.
In February, Wright addressed a conference in London via video and called net zero (when the amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere is equal to or less than the amount removed) a “sinister goal” and criticised a British law to reach net zero by 2050.
In March, the Trump Administration denounced the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by nations unanimously in 2015 and include ending poverty and hunger, and addressing climate change.
The Administration said “the Government of the United States must refocus on the interests of Americans”, and course-correct on things like “climate ideology”.
The Trump Administration declined to attend global negotiations this summer that are a precursor to annual United Nations climate talks to be held in Brazil in November.
It also skipped an April meeting of the International Maritime Organisation where the world’s largest shipping countries agreed to impose a minimum fee of US$100 for every tonne of greenhouse gases emitted by ships above certain thresholds as a way of curbing emissions. The body had been expected to formally adopt the fee in October.
But the Administration’s announcement this month that it would reject the maritime organisation deal shocked many with its blunt promise that the US would “not hesitate to retaliate or explore remedies for our citizens” against other countries that support the shipping fee.
Meanwhile, virtually all of the Trump Administration’s trade deals include requirements that the trading partners buy US oil and gas.
South Korea promised to buy US$100b worth of liquefied natural gas over an unstated period of time. Japan is also expected to invest US$550b in the US, partially focused on “energy infrastructure production”.
A White House statement said that the money would include liquefied natural gas and advanced fuels. The Administration said the US and Japan also were planning a “major expansion of US energy exports to Japan”. That is widely believed to be a reference to a proposed US$44b project to ship gas to Asia from the North Slope of Alaska.
Europe narrowly avoided a trade war with Trump by agreeing, among other things, to purchase US$750b in crude oil, natural gas, other petroleum derivatives and nuclear reactor fuel over three years.
On an annual basis, that would amount to more than three times the amount the bloc bought last year from the US.
“You see a more systematic attempt to be a fossil fuel first strategy to everything that they do,” said Jake Schmidt, director of international programmes at the Natural Resources Defence Council, an environmental group.
The Administration may slow the transition to clean energy by other countries but cannot stop it, Schmidt said.
Most countries that signed the Paris Agreement will submit more ambitious targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to the UN this year, although some may temper those plans because of the US position, he said.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Centre for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organisation, argued that the Trump Administration was doing the right thing by pressuring countries to reject renewable energy.
“Europe is coming to the US saying, ‘Help defend us against Russia, help us with Ukraine,’” Furchtgott-Roth said.
“Where at the same time, they’re spending US$350b a year on green energy investments that are slowing their economies.”
“It doesn’t seem to make very much sense to the Trump Administration,” she said, adding, “I think we’re going to see more pressure.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Lisa Friedman
Photographs by: Tierney L. Cross
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES