The Trump Doctrine and its Applications to US Relations with the European Union

The U.S. - EU relations were always perceived as a close partnership, which are based on the joint experience of many years of cooperation in various fields, from military-political to trade and economic. Nevertheless, domestic and foreign policy of the former U.S. president Donald Trump was largely tied to the solution of the proclaimed goal of “making America great again”. Therefore, one of his main priorities was the fight against the foreign trade deficit. As America's largest trading partner, European Union has faced unprecedented pressure from the Trump Administration to impose high tariffs on European goods and call for lifting unfair barriers on the way of American goods to Europe. It is also rather to mention the situation when Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, whereas, European Union ratified this document in 2016 and remains an active supporter of it. Moreover, Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program. The European Union then openly opposed Trump's decision to withdraw from the deal and announced that Europe would continue to comply with the terms of the JCPOA. Another area that caused tensions in EU-US relations was the cooperation within NATO alliance. Under the Trump Administration, the U.S. has consistently criticized the EU countries for not spending enough money on the defense. From the other side, the United States is still the guarantor of security in Europe and its defense against Russian aggression. From the provided patterns, it is obvious that challenges between the U.S and European Union became more stretched during the presidency of Trump, however there is still a strong interdependence between them. Therefore, the independent variable in this dissertation is Trump's way of conducting foreign policy. Dependent variables are challenges in the relations between the EU and the U.S. and different ways of conducting their foreign policies.