Crisis in EU-US relations under Trump: an emotional contemptuous double game of misrecognition

With the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016, the transatlantic relations entered a renewed period of crisis. The former US administration challenged key international norms at the core of the EU’s identity–thereby testing the EU’s ability to rethink its position in the world. Against this background, studies have attempted to analyse the EU’s response vis-à-vis the US mainly from a realist and socio-psychological perspectives. Yet little attention has been given to the crucial emotional component underlying the EU’s response–related to EU’s recognition needs. Therefore, this article proposes to analyse the transatlantic crisis under the Trump administration through the lens of recognition theories and emotions in IR. Based on the emotion discourse analysis of public statements, it shows that dynamics of misrecognition and re-affirmation of identity have been at play in this recent crisis fuelled by the powerful emotion of contempt.