U.S. Reputation Worsens Amid Tariffs Announcements
The world is seeing a resurgence in anti-Americanism, exacerbated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent tariff announcements. Data from Morning Consult shows that America’s reputation has worsened in 38 out of 42 markets polled around the world since the start of the year. Particularly severe drops were seen among some of America’s traditionally longest-standing allies, such as Canada (-44 percentage points) and South Korea (-38 percentage points), as well as European nations such as Sweden (-47 percentage points), France (-33 percentage points), Norway (-36 percentage points) and the United Kingdom (-31 percentage points).
Meanwhile consumers in Malaysia registered no difference in net favorability between January and March of this year, while Israel (+4 percent), China (+6 percent) and Russia (+24 percent) all saw increases in consumers’ favorability of the U.S. According to Morning Consult, the increase in Russia was likely due to Trump’s involvement in discussions on the war in Ukraine and his spat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a bilateral meeting. With regards to China, it is important to note that this chart reflects the net change in favorability and that even with the increase at the time, Chinese views of the U.S. remained highly negative overall. Additionally, this survey was taken before the latest escalations in the trade war with China, so China’s favorability score is likely out of date here. Net favorability is here calculated as approval of the U.S. minus disapproval.
The Morning Consult report further reveals that overall favorability of the U.S. has fallen by around 20 percentage points since the start of the year, with consumer markets in North America and Europe seeing particularly large declines. In addition to the tariffs, Morning Consult analysts explain that the two other events driving big declines in anti-American sentiment have been the war in Ukraine, with declines in U.S. favorability among Russian consumers, and the war in Gaza, with favorability for the U.S. dropping particularly in countries with large Muslim populations over its support of Israel.