In early June, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States would seek withdrawal from, or renegotiation of, the Paris Agreement on climate change. There is a clear danger of overreaction by Europe. Before going too far down this road and committing itself to a confrontational path, however, European leadership should take a step back and assess the situation more broadly, David Livingston and Erik Brattberg of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace comments.

The EU and the United States still share many areas in which there is constructive work to be done, including on energy security, innovation, and trade. The Paris announcement was for some a jarring reminder of the Trump administration’s skepticism about multilateralism. Yet it could serve as catalyst for Europe to appraise where there may be mutual interests between the EU and the United States—including of a transactional nature—and work toward a new strategy of principled pragmatism for continued cooperation on affordable, secure, and sustainable energy systems on both sides of the Atlantic.

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