California Governor Gavin Newsom arrived in the Amazon city of Belém with a message for the COP30 summit: his state will continue to be a ‘trustworthy partner’ in climate policy and green technology, despite Washington’s abandonment of the effort.
A strident political foe of U.S. President Donald Trump, Newsom has for months tipped a bid for the White House in 2028. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he is expected to meet with officials from some of the 195 governments participating in this year’s U.N. climate talks.
He planned meetings with a range of subnational leaders, including the governor of the state of Pará, location of the summit.
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Although California is only one of 50 US states, its economy is the fourth largest in the world, making it an important player in influencing energy markets and policy.
‘The reason I’m here is the absence of leadership from the United States,’ he said at an investor forum in São Paulo on Monday. ‘This vacuum is jaw-dropping.’
Newsom touted California’s embrace of green technology, highlighting that the state has seven times as many jobs in renewable energy as in fossil fuels and reminding people that electric vehicle giant Tesla was founded in California. This contrasts sharply with climate change denial and Washington’s determination to increase the global use of polluting fossil fuels.
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Newsom also lamented that the U.S. rollback on clean energy policy is ceding the rapidly growing green technology market to China.
‘China gets it,’ Newsom told investors. ‘The United States is toast in terms of competitiveness if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, in supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone here, in the EU, elsewhere, in Africa.’
Not only does China dominate the markets for electric vehicles, renewable energy components and batteries, he said, but it is also a leader in software, while U.S. automakers like General Motors are “trying to recreate the 19th century,” Newsom said. GM recently slowed its production of EVs.
The United States clearly dodged this year’s COP30 summit, with Trump falsely declaring climate change a hoax.
Some diplomats feared that Trump’s Republican administration might try to derail the summit from afar.
Newsom, a Democrat, said last month that he is considering a presidential run in 2028. He has begun to replicate Trump’s brash messaging style on social media.
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Last week, California voters supported his proposal to redraw the state’s congressional districts to compensate for redistricting in other states with the aim of increasing the number of congressional seats held by Republicans.
Newsom told investors in São Paulo that Trump was emulating Russia and Saudi Arabia by turning the United States into a ‘petrostate’ and adopting Chinese-style ‘state capitalism’ to the detriment of the free market. He criticized Trump’s aggressive tariff policies as ‘madness from an investment perspective’.
‘I feel like he’s taking a little bit of inspiration from President Xi, not President Reagan. What the hell is going on?’ he said.
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