US image craters globally as Trump rated worse than Putin, Xi in new survey

In the summer of 2020, as the United States struggled through the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, researchers at Pew Research Centre conducted telephone surveys across thirteen advanced economies to measure how the world was viewing America. The results, compiled from interviews with over thirteen thousand adults conducted between June and August, painted a portrait of a nation whose standing had eroded sharply. Across all countries surveyed, a median of just fifteen percent of respondents believed the United States had handled the pandemic well. By comparison, most said the World Health Organisation and the European Union had managed the crisis competently. Even China, despite widespread skepticism about its pandemic response, received considerably better marks than America.

The damage extended beyond the pandemic itself. President Donald Trump's personal approval ratings fell below those of other major world leaders in nearly every country measured. Among the six leaders included in the survey—Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and Boris Johnson—only Merkel, the German Chancellor, enjoyed stronger confidence, with a median of seventy-six percent across all nations. Macron received largely favorable reviews. Putin and Xi, though overwhelmingly viewed negatively, still registered higher confidence than Trump. The American president's lowest point came in Belgium, where only nine percent of respondents said they had confidence in him to act rightly in world affairs.

The decline was particularly steep in America's traditional allies. In Britain, just forty-one percent expressed a favorable view of the United States—the lowest figure Pew had ever recorded in that country. France stood at thirty-one percent, a number that matched the country's opinion of America at the height of the 2003 Iraq War. Germany was worse still, with only twenty-six percent rating the country favorably. These were not marginal shifts but fundamental reversals in how long-standing partners perceived American leadership.

Japan and South Korea presented a more complicated picture. Japan showed Trump's highest approval rating among the nations surveyed, yet even there, only twenty-five percent of Japanese expressed confidence in him. South Korea remained the sole country where a majority still held a positive view of the United States overall, but the trajectory was alarming. Favorable views had plummeted since the previous year, and trust in Trump specifically had collapsed from 2018, when his diplomatic engagement with North Korea and the Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un had earned him genuine support. By 2020, only seventeen percent of South Koreans believed Trump would do the right thing in world affairs. Yet even as personal confidence in the president cratered, seventy-seven percent of South Koreans still regarded the United States as the world's leading economic power.

The survey revealed a pattern that cut across national boundaries. In every country measured, men rated the United States more favorably than women did. The gender gap was most pronounced in Denmark, where forty-two percent of men viewed the country positively compared with twenty-six percent of women. Views of Trump also tracked with political orientation: those who supported right-wing populist parties in their own countries were more likely to express confidence in him, though even among these groups his approval remained relatively low. The data suggested that America's image abroad had become entangled with partisan identity in ways that transcended borders, and that the pandemic had accelerated a decline in American standing that had been underway for some time.