California Governor Gavin Newsom reassured international governments and business leaders that California would remain a “reliable, consistent, and ambitious” partner on climate action. Newsom, attending the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, was the most prominent U.S. political figure at the conference, as the Trump administration declined to send senior representatives.
Newsom cited California’s long-standing commitments to clean energy deployment, zero-emission vehicle mandates, methane reduction, and climate finance partnerships as evidence of progress. “I’m here in the absence of leadership from Donald Trump, who’s abdicated responsibility on a critical issue,” he said, according to Sky News.
“I’m here to show up on behalf of my country. I’m here to showcase California’s leadership, dominance in the low-carbon greenco space,” he said. “I’m here because it’s about more than electric power, it’s about economic power, and I’m not going to cede America’s economic leadership to China.”
Newsom said Republicans were ceding the market to China. “China is flooding the zone and will dominate in the next great global industry,” he said.
“The United States of America is as dumb as we want to be on this topic, but the state of California is not,” he said, according to Reuters. “[W]e are going to assert ourselves, we’re going to lean in, and we are going to compete in this space.”
Newsom’s role at the conference emphasized that, with the Trump administration’s retrenchment on climate policy, states will be the leaders on climate policy. Newsom is a likely candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
At the conference, California signed a California–Chile MOU on methane, a California–Colombia MOU on sustainable development. Newsom has pursued a number of international MOUs and partnerships in 2025. Most recently, this includes an MOU with Kenya and an MOU with Brazil, both signed at the United Nations “Climate Week” in September.