Whew! That was close.

A majority of countries at the U.N. shipping agency voted on Friday to postpone by a year a decision on a global carbon price on international shipping, after failing to reach consensus on the emissions reduction measure amid U.S. pressure.

The delay is a blow to the European Union and other countries including Brazil which have been pushing for the shipping industry to go greener and set out a price mechanism for decarbonisation.

Fortunately, the proposal was stopped by 8 votes. It is no surprise that countries, like the European Union and Brazil, want the shipping industry to reduce carbon emissions since doing so would not only benefit China (a major ship builder) but also would destroy the shipping industry as a whole. The UN’s proposal would do just that.

However, global shipping only contributes about 3% of the world’s carbon emissions and Trump was right to say that the UN’s scheme would raise the cost of shipping. There’s been an ongoing effort to do so thanks to efforts to decarbonize the global shipping industry.