By any measure, the world is entering an era in which climate diplomacy is inseparable from economic power.
Yet as China steps confidently onto the global stage, the United States, under Donald Trump, appears determined to step back from it. Washington’s choice to sidestep a major climate summit in Brazil this month was not a minor diplomatic oversight. It was a strategic mistake — one that Beijing is exploiting with unnerving speed.
According to recent reporting, China emerged from the Brazil gathering not merely as a participant but as the de facto leader of the forum. Its delegation stitched together new partnerships across the Global South, offered green-technology cooperation, and spoke with authority about the structures that will govern tomorrow’s energy economy. It was, in short, exactly the sort of scene in which the United States once claimed natural primacy. Not anymore.
This is the troubling reality. China understands that whoever shapes the rules of the coming green transition will wield extraordinary influence — over supply chains, investment flows, and technological standards. These are not abstract questions for academics. They are the battlegrounds of global power in the 21st century. And on that field, America is barely showing up.
Donald Trump’s White House is treating multilateral climate engagements as disposable, as though they are symbolic sideshows rather than the arenas in which the next generation of economic rules is being forged. By refusing to attend the Brazil summit, the administration did more than snub its hosts. It left a vacuum. Beijing happily filled it.
It would be comforting to imagine that China’s increased presence is simply a reflection of its industrial might. But it is the result of intentional strategy. Beijing has been relentless in its pursuit of leadership on green technology: in solar, wind, batteries, rare earth processing, electric vehicles — the commanding heights of the future economy. Global climate diplomacy is the natural extension of that industrial power.
Trump’s disengagement gives China something even more valuable: credibility. When the U.S. declines to participate, China has the stage nearly to itself, free to present its initiatives as pragmatic and globally minded. It can court emerging economies with green investment deals while the U.S. offers no alternative vision. It can frame its own industrial push as a form of benevolent leadership rather than raw self-interest. In geopolitics, perception matters — and China has grasped that faster than Washington.
The irony is that Trump campaigned on limiting China’s rise. Yet in the realm that increasingly defines global competition, his administration is enabling it. Climate policy is no longer a niche concern; it is the architecture through which future trade, manufacturing, and diplomatic influence will flow. America’s absence from that architecture weakens not only the climate agenda but its own strategic standing.
Europe sees the danger plainly. With Washington missing in action, Brussels has been forced into deeper engagement with Beijing simply because that is where the momentum now lies. For Europe, this is not an ideological choice; it is a practical one. Someone must lead. Someone must provide the capital, the partnerships, the standard-setting vision. If the U.S. won’t do it, China will. That is the uncomfortable truth.
And yet the United States does not have to consign itself to the sidelines. The retreat is political, not inevitable. American innovation remains unmatched. Its research institutions, private sector and state-level climate leadership could still shape global norms — but only if the federal government chooses engagement over absence.
That is the heart of the matter. The Trump administration is not merely failing to turn up at summits. It is forfeiting the wider contest for influence. It is signalling to allies and adversaries alike that America is content to let others write the rules. That is not “America First”. It is America diminished.
The consequences will endure long after this administration. Once China secures its position as the indispensable leader of global green finance, supply chains and standard-setting frameworks, it will be extraordinarily difficult to dislodge. Future American presidents will find the diplomatic terrain already carved up, the alliances already structured, the technological pathways already aligned with Beijing rather than Washington.
Climate diplomacy is not charity. It is strategy. Beijing knows this. Europe knows this. Much of the Global South understands it instinctively. The only major power pretending otherwise is the United States under Donald Trump.
If Washington continues to look away, it will wake up one day to find that the 21st century has been shaped without it — and shaped by a rival it once sought to contain. America’s place in the world is not lost. But at this rate, China won’t need to take it. The U.S. will simply have given it away.
