BERLIN — Friedrich Merz embarks on his first trip to the Persian Gulf region as chancellor on Wednesday in search of new energy and business deals he sees as critical to reducing Germany’s dependence on the U.S. and China. The three-day trip with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates illustrates Merz’s approach to what he calls a dangerous new epoch of “great power politics” — one in which the U.S. under President Donald Trump is no longer a reliable partner. European countries must urgently embrace their own brand of hard power by forging new global trade alliances, including in the Middle East, or risk becoming subject to the coercion of greater powers, Merz argues. Accompanying Merz on the trip is a delegation of business executives looking to cut new deals on everything from energy to defense. But one of the chancellor’s immediate goals is to reduce his country’s growing dependence on U.S. liquefied natural gas, or LNG, which has replaced much of the Russian gas that formerly flowed to Germany through the Nord Stream pipelines. Increasingly, German leaders across the political spectrum believe they’ve replaced their country’s unhealthy dependence on Russian energy with an increasingly precarious dependence on the U.S. Early this week, Merz’s economy minister, Katherina Reiche, traveled to Saudi Arabia ahead of the chancellor to sign a memorandum to deepen the energy ties between both countries, including a planned hydrogen energy deal. “When partnerships that we have relied on for decades start to become a little fragile, we have to look for new partners,” Reiche said in Riyadh. ‘EXCESSIVE DEPENDENCE’ Last year, 96 percent of German LNG imports came from the U.S, according to the federal government. While that amount makes up only about one-tenth of the country’s total natural gas imports, the U.S. share is set to rise sharply over the next years, in part because the EU agreed to purchase $750 billion worth of energy from the U.S. by the end of 2028 as part of its trade agreement with the Trump administration. The EU broadly is even more dependent on U.S. LNG, which accounted for more than a quarter of the bloc’s natural gas imports in 2025. This share is expected to rise to 40 percent by 2030. German politicians across the political spectrum are increasingly pushing for Merz’s government to find new alternatives. “After Russia’s war of aggression, we have learned the hard way that excessive dependence on individual countries can have serious consequences for our country,” said Sebastian Roloff, a lawmaker focusing on energy for the center-left Social Democrats, who rule in a coalition with Merz’s conservatives. Roloff said Trump’s recent threat to take over Greenland and the new U.S. national security strategy underscored the need to “avoid creating excessive dependence again” and diversify sources of energy supply. The Trump administration’s national security strategy vows to use “American dominance” in oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy to “project power” globally, raising fears in Europe that the U.S. will use energy exports to gain leverage over the EU. Last year, 96 percent of German LNG imports came from the U.S, according to the federal government. | Pool photo by Lars-Josef Klemmer/EPA That’s why Merz and his delegation are also seeking closer ties to Qatar, one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of natural gas as well as the United Arab Emirates, another major LNG producer. Last week, the EU’s energy chief, Dan Jørgensen, said the bloc would step up efforts to to reduce it’s dependence on U.S. LNG., including by dealing more with Qatar. One EU diplomat criticised Merz for seeking such cooperation on a national level. Germany is going “all in on gas power, of course, but I can’t see why Merz would be running errands on the EU’s behalf,” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. ‘AUTHORITARIAN STRONGMEN’ Merz will also be looking to attract more foreign investment and deepen trade ties with the Gulf states as part of a wider strategy of forging news alliances with “middle powers” globally and reduce dependence on U.S. and Chinese markets. The EU initiated trade talks with the United Arab Emirates last spring. Gulf states like Saudi Arabia also have their own concerns about dependencies on the U.S., particularly in the area of arms purchases. Germany’s growing defense industry is increasingly seen as promising partner, particularly following Berlin’s loosening of arms export restrictions. “For our partners in the region, cooperation in the defense industry will certainly also be an important topic,” a senior government official with knowledge of the trip said.  But critics point out that leaders of autocracies criticized for human rights abuses don’t make for viable partners on energy, trade and defense. Last week, the EU’s energy chief, Dan Jørgensen, said the bloc would step up efforts to to reduce it’s dependence on U.S. LNG., including by dealing more with Qatar. | Jose Sena Goulao/EPA “It’s not an ideal solution,” said Loyle Campbell, an expert on climate and energy policy for the German Council on Foreign Relations. “Rather than having high dependence on American LNG, you’d go shake hands with semi-dictators or authoritarian strongmen to try and reduce your risk to the bigger elephant in the room.” Merz, however, may not see a moral contradiction. Europe can’t maintain its strength and values in the new era of great powers, he argues, without a heavy dollop of Realpolitik. “We will only be able to implement our ideas in the world, at least in part, if we ourselves learn to speak the language of power politics,” Merz recently said. Ben Munster contributed to this report.

French energy giant TotalEnergies announced Thursday that it is restarting its natural gas project in Mozambique, after a massacre at the site led to the company being accused of complicity in war crimes in November. “I am delighted to announce the full restart of the Mozambique LNG project … The force majeure is over,” TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said at a relaunch ceremony attended by Mozambican President Daniel Chapo. The project, billed as Africa’s largest liquefied natural gas development, was suspended in 2021 in the wake of a deadly insurgent attack. A 2024 POLITICO investigation revealed that Mozambican soldiers based inside TotalEnergies’ concession just south of the Tanzanian border, subsequently brutalized, starved, suffocated, executed or disappeared around 200 men in its gatehouse from June to September 2021. In December 2025, the British and Dutch governments withdrew some $2.2 billion in support for the project, with the Dutch releasing a report that corroborated many elements of the POLITICO investigation.  TotalEnergies has denied the allegations, saying its own “extensive research” into the allegations has “not identified any information nor evidence that would corroborate the allegations of severe abuses and torture.” The Mozambican government has also rejected claims that its forces committed war crimes. The revelations nonetheless prompted scrutiny from French lawmakers and criticism of TotalEnergies’ security arrangements in conflict zones. The Mozambique site has been plagued by an Islamist insurgency. “Companies and their executives are not neutral actors when they operate in conflict zones,” said Clara Gonzales of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. “If they enable or fuel crimes, they might be complicit and should be held accountable.” Speaking Thursday in Mozambique, Pouyanné said activity would now accelerate. “You will see a massive ramp-up in activity in coming months … a first offshore vessel has already been mobilized,” he said. According to a statement by the company, construction has resumed both onshore and offshore at the site, with around 4,000 workers currently mobilized. The project is roughly 40 percent complete, with the first LNG production expected in 2029. TotalEnergies holds a 26.5 percent stake in the Mozambique LNG consortium. A relaunch clears the way for billions of dollars in gas exports.

BRUSSELS — The European Union will step up efforts to diversify away from American liquefied natural gas following U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland, EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen said Wednesday. Calling the events of recent week a “clear wake-up call,” Jørgensen said growing geopolitical instability — from Russia’s war in Ukraine to rising tensions with Washington — means the EU can no longer assume energy ties are immune from security shocks. “These are very turbulent times,” Jørgensen told journalists at a briefing in Brussels. “What has made the situation more serious and complex is the strained relationship to the U.S. and the fact that we have an American president that does not exclude using force against Greenland,” he said. The U.S. already supplies more than a quarter of the EU’s gas, up from just 5 percent five years ago, with dependence set to rise further as a total ban on Russian gas takes effect. But Jørgensen said the Commission is now actively seeking alternative suppliers to the U.S. and plans to deepen energy ties with a range of countries in the coming months, including Canada, Qatar and Algeria. “Canada for sure, Qatar, North African countries,” he said, adding that Brussels is also working to secure non-Russian sources of nuclear fuel for member countries that still rely on Moscow. While stressing that Brussels does not want a trade war with Washington, Jørgensen acknowledged mounting concern inside the EU that it risks “replacing one dependency with another” after rapidly pivoting from Russian gas to U.S. LNG following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “It has never been our policy to start trading less with the U.S., and we don’t want trade conflicts,” he said. “But it is also clear that geopolitical turmoil … has been a wake-up call. We have to be able to take care of ourselves.” The commissioner said he had not yet spoken with his U.S. counterpart since Trump’s remarks on Greenland, and said the EU has not set a formal threshold for how much U.S. LNG would be considered too much. For now, American gas remains “essential” to replace Russian supplies, he said.

LONDON — Keir Starmer’s government has a crunch decision to make: Whether to keep heating much of the British state via a firm linked to Russian fossil fuels. Under an existing public sector deal, TotalEnergies Gas & Power — a U.K. subsidiary of French energy giant TotalEnergies — supplies the gas used to heat No. 10 Downing Street, the Treasury, and other parts of Whitehall.  That agreement, worth up to £8 billion, expires early next year. Officials are preparing a public tendering process for its replacement, which will be awarded later this year and will run from 2027 to 2030.  But TotalEnergies retains ties to fossil fuel trade with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Now, pro-Ukrainian campaigners and parliamentarians — including the Labour chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Ukraine — want ministers to rule out its subsidiary from winning the new contract.  In a letter to Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who oversees government procurement body the Crown Commercial Service, they warn that “continuing a contract with companies involved with Russia’s energy sector is inconsistent” with the U.K.’s repeatedly-touted goal of undermining Russia’s fossil fuel revenues, which are used to finance its war on Ukraine.    “In view of escalating Russian hybrid attacks against the U.K., and ongoing brutal attacks across Ukraine, public sector procurement must align not only with sanctions but also with government foreign policy, including efforts to deter and disrupt Russian aggression,” they write.  The letter — co-ordinated by campaign groups Razom We Stand and B4 Ukraine —  is co-signed by Labour MP Alex Sobel, who chairs the Ukraine APPG, as well as Green MPs Carla Denyer and Siân Berry, both former party co-leaders. Sobel, who has visited Ukraine seven times since the full-scale invasion, last month called for “maximum pressure on Russia.” OUT IN THE COLD Svitlana Romanko, executive director of Razom We Stand, said that “brutal Russian attacks on our energy systems” had knocked out “energy and heating systems across Ukraine in -20C weather.”  “We implore the U.K. government to end their contract with TotalEnergies,” she said.  Under the existing gas deal, public buildings in Whitehall, and other public sector buildings around the U.K. including NHS hospitals, are supplied with gas for heating and cooking by TotalEnergies Gas & Power.   While the contract itself complies with the U.K.’s ban on Russian gas imports, it has been condemned by Ukrainian campaign groups and Labour MPs because of TotalEnergies’ continued ties to Russian fossil fuels.    The firm holds a 20 percent stake in the Yamal liquefied natural gas facility in Siberia, from where it continues to import Russian gas to Europe under long-term contracts which it says it cannot break.  A TotalEnergies spokesperson said the firm “condemned Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.” The firm “operates legally within the framework of the energy policy and sanctions policy defined by the authorities of the European Union and its member states,” they added.  TotalEnergies has been the gas supplier of choice for the U.K. public sector since 2019, under the two successive CCS procurement contracts.   The new contract — known as Supply of Energy 3 — is now being prepared. A tender notice is expected to be published in June and a contract awarded in December.  A Cabinet Office spokesperson declined to comment on a live procurement process.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is on track to get nearly half its gas from the United States by the end of the decade, creating a major strategic vulnerability for the bloc as relations with Washington hit an all-time low. New data shared with POLITICO shows Europe is already importing a quarter of its gas from the U.S., a figure that is set to soar as the bloc’s total ban on Russian gas imports is phased in. It comes as an increasingly belligerent U.S. President Donald Trump flirts with seizing Greenland, a territory of Denmark, in a move that could destroy the NATO alliance and throw transatlantic relations into crisis. Tensions escalated over the weekend when Trump announced he would put new tariffs on European countries including France, Denmark, Germany and the U.K. until a deal to sell Greenland to the U.S. was reached, prompting calls for the EU to retaliate with drastic trade restrictions of its own. The EU’s growing reliance on imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas “has created a potentially high-risk new geopolitical dependency,” said Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, lead energy analyst at the the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the think tank that produced the research. “An over-reliance on U.S. gas contradicts the [EU policy] of enhancing EU energy security through diversification, demand reduction and boosting renewables supply,” she said. Alarm over this strategic weak spot is also growing among member countries, with some EU diplomats fretting that the Trump administration could exploit the new dependency to achieve its foreign policy goals. While “there are other sources of gas in the world” beyond the U.S., the risk of Trump cutting off supplies to Europe in the wake of an incursion in Greenland “should be taken into account,” one senior EU diplomat told POLITICO, who like others in this article spoke on condition of anonymity. But “hopefully we’ll not get there,” the official added. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the EU went to drastic lengths to wean itself off Russian natural gas, which in 2021 made up 50 percent of its total imports but now accounts for only 12 percent, according to data from Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic think tank. It accomplished this largely by switching imports of pipeline gas from Russia with liquefied natural gas shipped from the U.S., which at the time was a firm ally. The U.S. is already the biggest exporter of LNG, and its product now accounts for around 27 percent of EU gas imports, up from 5 percent in 2021. France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium are the largest importers; non-EU member the U.K. is also a major importer of U.S. LNG. A raft of new deals with U.S. energy companies could raise that figure to as high as 40 percent of the EU’s total gas intake by 2030, and to around 80 percent of overall LNG imports into the bloc, according to data from IEEFA, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes clean energy. CHANGES AFOOT Despite efforts to switch away from fossil fuels, Europe still relies on carbon-emitting natural gas for a quarter of its total energy needs. Gas is used to generate electricity, heat buildings and power industry. European consumers and manufacturers already face some of the highest energy costs in the world, `making it hard for the EU to refuse cheaper gas from the U.S. despite Washington’s threatening language. An LNG tanker unloads Egyptian liquefied natural gas at the Revithoussa terminal near Athens. | Nicolas Koutsokostas/NurPhoto via Getty Images EU countries have already committed to diversifying their gas imports under new laws passed last year, but officials warn this will be difficult to achieve in the short term, given that the global supply of LNG is limited to just a few countries. They’re pinning their hopes on new production in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, expected in 2030. On top of the future energy deals — including a commitment to buy €750 billion of U.S. energy products as part of last year’s trade agreement — the EU is set to pave new inroads for U.S. gas under a sweeping overhaul of Europe’s energy infrastructure. For instance, the EU has restated its commitment to two major gas pipelines that will connect Malta and Cyprus to mainland Europe, which could facilitate still more flows of American gas. The U.S. is also looking to build a pipeline linking Bosnia to EU-member Croatia. ‘NO ALTERNATIVE‘ To some, the EU’s growing dependence on U.S. gas highlights that it should hasten its transition to renewables as a replacement for fossil fuels. Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, a Socialist EU lawmaker, said demand for natural gas has fallen sharply across the bloc as the green transition picks up, even if demand for U.S. LNG is increasing as an overall proportion of intake. “If we have the courage to keep calm and carry on making profitable investments in efficiency and renewables, we will reduce EU gas demand so much that we will reduce our dependence on U.S. LNG, even as we fully phase out Russian gas,” Pellerin-Carlin told POLITICO. The lawmaker also argued that Trump was unlikely to weaponize LNG supply to the EU as Russian President Vladimir Putin had done, since it would severely damage the interests of key Trump donors in the U.S. LNG industry, who are desperate to find new buyers to absorb soaring supply of the fossil fuel. The issue of U.S. LNG dependence is addressed by a broader EU commitment to energy diversification that was baked into a wider ban on Russian gas set to take effect this year, according to diplomats familiar with the matter. The official line, however, is that the U.S. remains a “strategic ally and supplier,” one of the diplomats said. “The dependence is certainly there, but we’re kind of stuck where we are,” said one European government official. “There’s really no alternative.”

LONDON — Prime Minister Keir Starmer usually goes out of his way not to annoy Donald Trump. So he better hope the windmill-hating U.S. president doesn’t notice what the U.K. just did. In a fillip for the global offshore wind industry, Starmer’s government on Wednesday announced its biggest-ever down payment on the technology. It agreed to price guarantees, funded by billpayers to the tune of up to £1.8 billion (€2.08 billion) a year, for eight major projects in England, Scotland and Wales. The schemes have the capacity to generate 8.4 gigawatts of electricity, the U.K. energy department said — enough to power 12 million homes. It represented the biggest “wind auction in Europe to date,” said industry group WindEurope. It’s also an energy strategy that could have been tailor-made to rankle Trump. The U.S. president has repeatedly expressed a profound loathing for wind turbines and has tried to use his powers to halt construction on projects already underway in the U.S. — sending shockwaves across the global industry. Even when appearing alongside Starmer at press conferences, Trump has been unable to hide his disgust at the very sight of windmills. “You are paying in Scotland and in the U.K. … to have these ugly monsters all over the place,” he said, sitting next to Starmer during a visit to his Turnberry golf course last year. The spinning blades, Trump complained, would “kill all your birds.” At the time, the prime minister explained meekly that the U.K. was seeking a “mix” of energy sources. But this week’s investments speak far louder about his government’s priorities. The U.K.’s strategy — part of a plan to run the British power grid on 95 percent clean electricity by 2030 — is a clear signal that for all Starmer’s attempts to appease Trump, the U.K. will not heed Washington’s assertions that fossil fuels are the only way to deliver affordable bills and secure supply. “With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” said Starmer’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a former leader of the Labour party. “With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” said Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. | Pool photo by Justin Tallis via Getty Images While not mentioning Trump or the U.S., he said the U.K. wanted to “stand on our two feet” and not depend on “markets controlled by petrostates and dictators.” WIND VS. GAS The goal of the U.K.’s offshore wind drive is to reduce reliance on gas for electricity generation. One of the most gas-dependent countries in Europe, the U.K. was hit hard in 2022 by the regional gas price spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The government ended up spending tens of billions of pounds to pay a portion of every household energy bill in the country to fend off widespread hardship. It’s a scenario that Miliband and Starmer want to avoid in future by focusing on producing electricity from domestic sources like offshore wind that are not subject to the ups and downs of global fossil fuel markets. Trump, by contrast, wants to keep Europe hooked on gas — specifically, American gas. The U.S. National Security Strategy, updated late last year, states Trump’s desire to use American fossil fuel exports to “project power.” Trump has already strong-armed the European Union into committing to buy $750 billion worth of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a quid pro quo for tariff relief. No one in Starmer’s government explicitly named Trump or the U.S. on Wednesday. But Chris Stark, a senior official in Miliband’s energy department tasked with delivering the 2030 goal, noted that “every megawatt of offshore wind that we’re bringing on is a few more metric tons of LNG that we don’t need to import.” The U.K.’s investment in offshore wind also provides welcome relief to a global industry that has been seriously shaken both by soaring inflation and interest rates — and more recently by a Trump-inspired backlash against net zero and clean energy. “It’s a relief for the offshore sector … It’s a relief generally, that the U.K. government is able to lean into very large positive investment stories in U.K. infrastructure,” said Tom Glover, U.K. country chair of the German energy firm RWE, which was the biggest winner in the latest offshore wind investment, securing contracts for 6.9 gigawatts of capacity. A second energy industry figure, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said the U.K.’s plans were a “great signal for the global offshore wind sector” after a difficult few years — “not least the stuff in the U.S.” The other big winner was British firm SSE, which has plans to build one of the world’s largest-ever offshore wind projects, Berwick Bank — off the coast of Donald Trump’s beloved Scotland.

BRUSSELS — On the same day world leaders arrived at the COP30 summit in Brazil to push for more action on climate change, Greece announced it will start drilling for fossil fuels in the Mediterranean Sea — with U.S. help. Under the deal, America’s biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, will explore for natural gas in waters northwest of the picturesque island of Corfu, alongside Greece’s Energean and HELLENiQ ENERGY. It’s the first time in more than four decades that Greece has opened its waters for gas exploration — and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming it as a victory in its push to derail climate action and boost the global dominance of the U.S. fossil fuel industry. It comes three weeks after the U.S. successfully halted a global deal to put a carbon tax on shipping, with the support of Greece. “There is no energy transition, there is just energy addition,” said U.S. Interior Secretary and energy czar Doug Burgum, who was present at the signing ceremony in Athens on Thursday, alongside U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and the new U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle. “Greece is taking its own natural resources, and we are working all together toward energy abundance,” Burgum added, describing Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a leader who “bucks the trend.” Only a few hours later, U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterrez made an impassioned plea for countries to stop exploring for coal, oil and gas. “I’ve consistently advocated against more coal plants and fossil fuel exploration and expansion,” he said at a COP30 leaders’ summit in Belém, Brazil. Donald Trump was not among the many world leaders present. NOT LISTENING “America is back and drilling in the Ionian Sea,” said Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador, at the Athens ceremony. Drilling for natural gas — a fossil fuel that is a major contributor to global warming — is expected to start late next year, or early 2027. Greece’s Minister of Environment and Energy, Stavros Papastavrou, hailed the agreement as a “historic signing” that ends a 40-year hiatus in exploration. Last month, Greece and Cyprus — both major maritime countries — were the only two EU countries that voted to halt action for a year on a historic effort to tax climate pollution from shipping. Greece claimed its decision had nothing to do with U.S. pressure, which several people familiar with the situation said included threats to negotiators. Thursday’s ceremony took place on the sidelines of the sixth Partnership for Transatlantic Energy Cooperation (P-TEC) conference, organized in Athens by the U.S. and Greek governments, along with the Atlantic Council. Greece aims to showcase its importance as an entry point for American liquefied natural gas (LNG), bolstering Europe’s independence from Russian gas. LNG from Greece’s Revithoussa terminal is set to reach Ukraine this winter through the newly activated “Vertical Corridor,” an energy route linking Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova.

President Donald Trump is no longer content to stand aloof from the global alliance trying to combat climate change. His new goal is to demolish it — and replace it with a new coalition reliant on U.S. fossil fuels. Trump’s increasingly assertive energy diplomacy is one of the biggest challenges awaiting the world leaders, diplomats and business luminaries gathering for a United Nations summit in Brazil to try to advance the fight against global warming. The U.S. president will not be there — unlike the leaders of countries including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, who will speak before delegates from nearly 200 nations on Thursday and Friday. But his efforts to undermine the Paris climate agreement already loom over the talks, as does his initial success in drawing support from other countries. “It’s not enough to just withdraw from” the 2015 pact and the broader U.N. climate framework that governs the annual talks, said Richard Goldberg, who worked as a top staffer on Trump’s White House National Energy Dominance Council and is now senior adviser to the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “You have to degrade it. You have to deter it. You have to potentially destroy it.” Trump’s approach includes striking deals demanding that Japan, Europe and other trading partners buy more U.S. natural gas and oil, using diplomatic strong-arming to deter foreign leaders from cutting fossil fuel pollution, and making the United States inhospitable to clean energy investment. Unlike during his first term, when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement but sent delegates to the annual U.N. climate talks anyway, he now wants to render them ineffective and starved of purpose by drawing as many other countries as possible away from their own clean energy goals, according to Cabinet officials’ public remarks and interviews with 20 administration allies and alumni, foreign diplomats and veterans of the annual climate negotiations. Those efforts are at odds with the goals of the climate summits, which included a Biden administration-backed pledge two years ago for the world to transition away from fossil fuels. Slowing or reversing that shift could send global temperatures soaring above the goals set in Paris a decade ago, threatening a spike in the extreme weather that is already pummeling countries and economies. The White House says Trump’s campaign to unleash American oil, gas and coal is for the United States’ benefit — and the world’s. “The Green New Scam would have killed America if President Trump had not been elected to implement his commonsense energy agenda — which is focused on utilizing the liquid gold under our feet to strengthen our grid stability and drive down costs for American families and businesses,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.” ‘WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE PARIS AGREEMENT DIE’ The Trump administration is declining to send any high-level representatives to the COP30 climate talks, which will formally begin Monday in Belém, Brazil, according to a White House official who declined to comment on the record about whether any U.S. government officials would participate. Trump’s view that the annual negotiations are antithetical to his energy and economic agenda is also spreading among other Republican officials. Many GOP leaders, including 17 state attorneys general, argued last month that attending the summit would only legitimize the proceedings and its expected calls for ditching fossil fuels more swiftly. Climate diplomats from other countries say they’ve gotten the message about where the U.S. stands now — and are prepared to act without Washington. “We have a large country, a president, and a vice president who would like to see the Paris Agreement die,” Laurence Tubiana, the former French government official credited as a key architect of the 2015 climate pact, said of the United States. “The U.S. will not play a major role” at the summit, said Jochen Flasbarth, undersecretary in the German Ministry of Environmental Affairs. “The world is collectively outraged, and so we will focus — as will everyone else — on engaging in talks with those who are driving the process forward.” Trump and his allies have described the stakes in terms of a zero-sum contest between the United States and its main economic rival, China: Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they say, are a complete win for China, which sells the bulk of the world’s solar, wind, battery and electric vehicle technology. That’s a contrast from the approach of former President Joe Biden, who pushed a massive U.S. investment in green technologies as the only way for America to outcompete China in developing the energy sources of the future. In the Trump worldview, stalling that energy transition benefits the United States, the globe’s top producer of oil and natural gas, along with many of the technologies and services to produce, transport and burn the stuff. “If [other countries] don’t rely on this technology, then that’s less power to China,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who served in the U.S. Transportation Department during Trump’s first term and is now director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. TRUMP FINDS ALLIES THIS TIME Two big developments have shaped the president’s new thinking on how to counteract the international fight against climate change, said George David Banks, who was Trump’s international climate adviser during the first administration. The first was the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats passed and Biden signed in 2022, which promised hundreds of billions of dollars to U.S. clean energy projects. Banks said the legislation, enacted entirely on partisan lines, made renewable energy a political target in the minds of Trump and his fossil-fuel backers. The second is Trump’s aggressive use of U.S. trading power during his second term to wring concessions from foreign governments, Banks said. Trump has required his agencies to identify obstacles for U.S. exports, and the United Nations’ climate apparatus may be deemed a barrier for sales of oil, gas and coal. Trump’s strategy is resonating with some fossil fuel-supporting nations, potentially testing the climate change comity at COP30. Those include emerging economies in Africa and Latin America, petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, and European nations feeling a cost-of-living strain that is feeding a resurgent right wing. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright drew applause in March at a Washington gathering called the Powering Africa Summit, where he called it “nonsense” for financiers and Western nations to vilify coal-fired power. He also asserted that U.S. natural gas exports could supply African and Asian nations with more of their electricity. Wright cast the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050 — the target dozens of nations have embraced — as “sinister,” contending it consigns developing nations to poverty and lower living standards. The U.S. about-face was welcome, Sierra Leone mining and minerals minister Julius Daniel Mattai said during the conference. Western nations had kneecapped financing for offshore oil investments and worked to undercut public backing for fossil fuel projects, Mattai said, criticizing Biden’s administration for only being interested in renewable energy. But now Trump has created room for nations to use their own resources, Mattai said. “With the new administration having such a massive appetite for all sorts of energy mixes, including oil and gas, we do believe there’s an opportunity to explore our offshore oil investments,” he said in an interview. TURNING UP THE HEAT ON TRADING PARTNERS Still, Banks acknowledged that Trump probably can’t halt the spread of clean energy. Fossil fuels may continue to supply energy in emerging economies for some time, he said, but the private sector remains committed to clean energy to meet the U.N.’s goals of curbing climate change. That doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. The administration’s intent to pressure foreign leaders into a more fossil-fuel-friendly stance was on full display last month at a London meeting of the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization where U.S. Cabinet secretaries and diplomats succeeded in thwarting a proposed carbon emissions tax on global shipping. That coup followed a similar push against Beijing a month earlier, when Mexico — the world’s biggest buyer of Chinese cars — slapped a 50 percent tariff on automotive imports from China after pressure from the Trump administration. China accused the U.S. of “coercion.” Trump’s attempt to flood global markets with ever growing amounts of U.S. fossil fuels is even more ambitious, though so far incomplete. The EU and Japan — under threat of tariffs — have promised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on U.S. energy products. But so far, new and binding contracts have not appeared. Trump has also tried to push China, Japan and South Korea to invest in a $44 billion liquefied natural gas project in Alaska, so far to no avail. In the face of potential tariffs and other U.S. pressure, European ministers and diplomats are selling the message that victory at COP30 might simply come in the form of presenting a united front in favor of climate action. That could mean joining with other major economies such as China and India, and forming common cause with smaller, more vulnerable countries, to show that Trump is isolated. “I’m sure the EU and China will find themselves on opposite sides of many debates,” said the EU’s lead climate negotiator, Jacob Werksman. “But we have ways of working with them. … We are both betting heavily on the green transition.” Avoiding a faceplant may actually be easier if the Trump administration does decide to turn up in Brazil, said Li Shuo, the director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington. “If the U.S. is there and active, I’d expect the rest of the world, including the EU and China, to rest aside their rhetorical games in front of a larger challenge,” Li wrote via text. And for countries attending COP, there is still some hope of a long-term win. Solar, wind, geothermal and other clean energy investments are continuing apace, even if Trump and the undercurrents that led to his reelection have hindered them, said Nigel Purvis, CEO of climate consulting firm Climate Advisers and a former State Department climate official. Trump’s attempts to kill the shipping fee, EU methane pollution rules and Europe’s corporate sustainability framework are one thing, Purvis said. But when it comes to avoiding Trump’s retribution, there is “safety in numbers” for the rest of the world that remains in the Paris Agreement, he added. And even if the progress is slower than originally hoped, those nations have committed to shifting their energy systems off fossil fuels. “We’re having slower climate action than otherwise would be the case. But we’re really talking about whether Trump is going to be able to blow up the regime,” Purvis said. “And I think the answer is ‘No.’” Nicolas Camut in Paris, Zia Weise in Brussels and Josh Groeneveld in Berlin contributed to this report.

The Trump administration is ramping up the pressure on the European Union to repeal or overhaul a regulation on corporations’ greenhouse gas pollution — in the latest example of the United States’ willingness to wield its economic might against an international climate initiative. It comes less than a week after the U.S. scored a surprising victory over a proposed United Nations climate fee on shipping, in what one Trump Cabinet member described Wednesday as an “all hands on deck” lobbying blitz. In its newest effort, the Energy Department joined the government of Qatar in warning the EU that it’s risking higher prices for “critical energy supplies” unless it alters or deletes its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. “It is our genuine belief, as allies and friends of the EU, that the CSDDD will cause considerable harm to the EU and its citizens, as it will lead to higher energy and other commodity prices, and have a chilling effect on investment and trade,” the department and the Qataris said in an open letter Wednesday to European heads of state and EU members. During a press conference later in the day, European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert declined to discuss the European Parliament’s negotiations over the climate directive. The new pressure on the EU comes after months of attempts by President Donald Trump and his appointees to blunt climate regulations at home and abroad that threaten to impinge on U.S. “dominance” in fossil fuels. And lately he’s succeeded in drawing some countries to the United States’ side. ‘WIN FOR THE WORLD’ On Friday, U.S. pressure succeeded in thwarting a proposal by U.N.’s International Maritime Organization to impose the first worldwide tax on climate pollution from shipping. The maritime body had been widely expected to adopt the shipping fee at a meeting in London, but instead it postponed the initiative for at least a year. Fellow petro-giants Russia and Saudi Arabia lobbied for the pause, and EU members Greece and Cyprus helped that effort by abstaining from the final vote. The aftermath of that vote continued to affect European climate diplomacy this week, temporarily upending internal EU discussions about the bloc’s negotiating position for next month’s COP30 summit in Brazil. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were exultant Wednesday in outlining the pressure they had brought to bear to block the maritime fee. Wright said he phoned 20 countries while Rollins handled nations such as Antigua and Jamaica in what she characterized as an “all hands on deck” effort. The effort also included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Wright said. Wright added that he had personally written a Truth Social message that Trump posted the night before the vote, in which the president warned that the “United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping.” (Trump changed “three or four words on it,” the secretary said.) “We’re going to come back to realistic views on energy,” Wright said at an event hosted by America First Policy Institute. “That’s a win not just for America, that’s a win for the world.” EUROPEAN CLIMATE PRESSURE The EU has already said it will not scrap its corporate climate directive, though it may dismantle a civil liability provision in a bid to simplify the law. But revising the directive has been a challenge for Europe because lawmakers are divided on how far to roll back sustainability reporting obligations for companies. The rule, which the EU put into force last year but still needs to be adopted by member states, would require companies to identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe. Europe’s move to wean itself off Russian energy supplies since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has forced the continent to increase its reliance on U.S. liquefied natural gas imports. But U.S. gas producers have warned that the climate directive will increase the cost of doing business with customers in the EU. In the letter, DOE and Qatar said the climate directive “poses a significant risk to the affordability and reliability of critical energy supplies for households and businesses across Europe and an existential threat to the future growth, competitiveness, and resilience of the EU’s industrial economy.” The governments also advise the EU to repeal the directive or, barring that, rewrite key provisions dealing with the penalties and civil liabilities for companies that don’t comply with the regulation. The U.S. and Qatar also want the Europeans to change language requiring companies to provide transition plans for climate change mitigation. Marianne Gros contributed to this report from Brussels.

BRUSSELS — A weeks-long stalemate holding up the latest package of sanctions against Russia was ended Wednesday night after Slovakia lifted its veto, the Danish presidency of the Council of the EU confirmed. The bulk of the package — the 19th to be imposed on Moscow since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago — focuses on sapping the Kremlin’s war chest by imposing restrictions on energy traders and financial institutions, many of them in third countries. Companies helping the Russian war effort will be targeted, in addition to 117 new tankers considered to be part of the shadow fleet that ships Russian fossil fuels in violation of the oil price cap. Earlier this week, energy ministers from 27 member countries agreed by qualified majority to a landmark phaseout of Russian gas, against the objections of Slovakia and Hungary. Slovakia had vowed to hold up the sanctions package unless it was given assurances on how to combat high energy prices and aid heavy industries like car making. Austria and Hungary had also expressed concerns over the sanctions package but lifted their veto in recent days. Slovakia was the last country blocking the new restrictions — and had sought concessions in the statement to be agreed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels. “All our demands … were included [in the statement],” a Slovak diplomat confirmed to POLITICO. The summit will seek to stress the EU’s support of Ukraine, in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s pressure on Kyiv to cede territory to Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to join parts of the meeting in Brussels. Leaders are expected to emphasize the need to further hit Moscow with hefty sanctions over its war against Ukraine. Defense spending as well as the use of frozen Russian assets to support Kyiv are all on the agenda. The sanctions package will also significantly expand the number of non-Russian companies banned from doing business with the bloc in a bid to prevent Moscow from circumventing the restrictions. Defense spending as well as the use of frozen Russian assets to support Kyiv are all on the agenda. | Sergey Shestak/EPA Specifically, the bloc seeks to add export controls on another 45 companies that are deemed to be working together to evade sanctions. Those include 12 Chinese, two Thai and three Indian entities that have enabled Russia to circumvent the bloc’s sanctions. The package also restricts the movement of Russian diplomats within the EU. They will have to notify other EU governments of their movements before crossing the border of their host country. The package will now go through a so-called written procedure, where capitals have until Thursday morning to speak up. If no one does, the text is approved.