THE IMPACTS OF THE UNITED STATES WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PARIS AGREEMENT TOWARDS THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

The issue of climate change has been happening for the past years and gradually raising concern from all over the world. Several efforts have been made in order to combat this issue with the Paris Agreement as the latest one. Regardless of the importance of the Paris Agreement, the United States (US) made a decision to withdraw under the administration of Donald Trump. This decision raised concerns from many parties including from the European Union (EU), the long standing and close partner of the United States. Thus, this qualitative research will discuss the impacts of the US’ decision towards the transatlantic relations between the US and the EU. Using the theory of Complex Interdependence as the main theory, this research finds several things. The first one is that the withdrawal is the result of Donald Trump's perception of the climate change issue and the Paris Agreement. The second one is that in response to the US withdrawal, the EU decided to build cooperation with the other parties, which are China and Canada. This research shows that the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is impacting the transatlantic relations between the US and the EU in the bilateral level to some extent that showed by the discontinuation of several cooperation, which are the EU-Energy Star cooperation and US-EU Energy Council and the continuation of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade.