Obama vs. Trump regarding the Paris Agreement

Environmental policy and climate change are a global current topic. The Paris Agreement of 2015 was to be the largest climate agreement to date, thanks to the involvement of developing countries in meeting the agreement's commitments. The United States were to play an important role here as the leader that Barack Obama and his administration intended to take. However, less than six months after the signing of the agreement by the United States, the incoming President Donald Trump resigned from it. This thesis aims to evaluate the different positions on the Paris Agreement of the two American ex-presidents through a comparative case study using the abstract typology of traditions of American foreign policy by Walter Russell Mead. This thesis examines the arguments of both presidential administrations on the issue of the Paris Agreement; the response of the world society to the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement; and determines which of the four traditions of American foreign policy, according to W. R. Mead, belongs to Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Descriptive, analytical and comparative methods are used to answer the questions. This thesis concludes that Obama, with his interventionist tendencies, belongs to the Wilsonian tradition, on the contrary, Trump with isolationist tendencies balances on the border of Jefferson and Jackson tradition. Furthermore, the wider world society reacted rather negatively to Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.