Trump’s international approval ratings plummet, even among far-right groups

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Most of the world is not especially fond of Donald Trump, who as U.S. President has burdened trade with tariffs, launched a war that drove up energy prices and threatened to use the world’s most potent military to annex land that belongs to allied countries.

Mr. Trump has been President again for only 18 months. But in that time, international opinion of the U.S. has plummeted, with Canadians showing some of the most precipitous declines in views of America’s reliability and contributions to global peace, according to a survey of attitudes in dozens of countries by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center.

The findings reflect “opposition around the world to Trump putting up barriers between the U.S. and the rest of the world,” said Richard Wike, Pew’s director of global attitudes research.

Mr. Trump’s first term also provoked global displeasure, but his return to office has brought a new complexion to that ill feeling, one that is “reminiscent of what you saw during the George W. Bush era, which is opposition to the use of hard power by the U.S.,” Mr. Wike said.

Never in more than two decades of Pew polling have Canadians held such unfavourable opinions of the U.S. In other countries that once enjoyed close relations with the U.S., including the U.K., Italy and South Korea, views have similarly soured to historic lows. Indeed, across the 36 countries where Pew conducted its survey, people expressed greater faith in the leadership of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin than in Mr. Trump.

For Canada, what has changed is a broader perception of the U.S. as a country, not just its leadership. While Canadians retained largely sunny views of their southern neighbours under Mr. Bush, two-thirds of Canadians now hold dim opinions of America. The percentage of Canadians who looked favourably upon the U.S. was nearly twice as high under Mr. Bush.

The Pew surveys of 42,151 people, conducted this spring, offer a unique globe-spanning insight into how Mr. Trump’s agenda is damaging America’s reputation in much of the world, but also how rapidly such destruction can be reversed.

In Canada, for example, confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing in global affairs fell to 27 per cent near the end of Mr. Bush’s second term, in 2007. Two years later, after the inauguration of Barack Obama, that had risen to 89 per cent, before falling again to 22 per cent in 2017 after Mr. Trump took office the first time. It climbed to 77 per cent under Joe Biden in 2021, yet now stands at 20 per cent.

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“We’ve always assumed there’s a reservoir of goodwill toward the United States in a lot of places that can help America’s image come back after periods in which it’s pretty negative,” Mr. Wike said.

“The question over time is whether that reservoir runs out. Do people kind of lose faith in the U.S. because of actions it’s taken in the world, or because of perceptions about the health of its democracy? Those are open questions.”

Mr. Trump is not universally unpopular. In Israel, which has partnered closely with the White House in its recent wars, more than 80 per cent of people continue to hold favourable views of the U.S. In Hungary, which until recently was led by the conservative Viktor Orbán, two-thirds of people consider the U.S. a reliable partner, up from four years ago. (The Pew surveys were largely conducted before Mr. Orbán was voted from office.)

In a number of countries, Mr. Trump’s second term has not plumbed the depths of international opprobrium directed toward previous administrations. In Germany and Spain, distaste for the U.S. has yet to reach the levels of the early 2000s, when the Bush administration waged war on Iraq.

Confidence in Mr. Trump is highest in the Philippines (68 per cent) and lowest in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (4 per cent). Only a few countries feel positive about the U.S. President’s role in global affairs − including Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana − while such confidence is below 15 per cent in Turkey, Sweden, Mexico, Pakistan and Malaysia.

The strongest international disapproval of Mr. Trump is for his threats to annex Greenland, his tariffs and the conflict in Gaza; a slightly greater number, although still a distinct minority, approved of his approach to international humanitarian aid and immigration.

Bleak international opinion of the U.S. is shared by at least one group of Americans − those who tend to vote as Democrats. On a question about whether the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people, only 38 per cent of Democrat-leaning voters agreed, as did 39 per cent of those surveyed around the world. Fully twice as many Republican-oriented voters in the U.S. answered in the affirmative.

Democrats and people elsewhere in the world held similarly low views − just 35 per cent − about the U.S. as a contributor to world peace and stability. Republicans, by contrast, overwhelmingly see their country as globally helpful in this regard.

Yet conservatives around the world are growing less enamoured of Mr. Trump. Pew also surveyed people in a half-dozen countries who lean toward the far right. Their affection for the U.S. President, once seen as a powerful talisman for a broader movement, has narrowed considerably in the past year, falling from 60 to 31 per cent among populist conservatives in Greece, contracting by a third in Italy and declining from 62 to 48 per cent in the U.K. Only in Hungary do a majority of far-right supporters maintain confidence in Mr. Trump.

It is a striking sign of just how deeply the world deplores the U.S. President.

“Attitudes toward Trump are largely negative,” Mr. Wike said. “There’s exceptions here and there, but they’re largely negative.”