Hot Spots

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Hot Spots

10/23/2018

Global Attitudes Towards the United States

I’ve been meaning to get around to the latest from the Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends report.

Pew surveyed people from 25 countries and among the findings was President Trump’s international image remains poor, while ratings for the United States are much lower than during Barack Obama’s presidency.  [I’m not opining in this column....just stating what Pew found.]

To wit:

27% of those surveyed have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, 70% have no confidence.

50% have a favorable view of the U.S., 43% unfavorable.

In Germany, just 10% have confidence in Trump, while three-in-four people say the U.S. is doing less these days to address global problems, and the share of the public who believe the U.S. respects personal freedoms is down 35 percentage points since 2008.

In France, only 9% have confidence in Trump, while 81% think the U.S. doesn’t consider the interests of countries like France when making foreign policy decisions.

Only 25% of Canadians rate Trump positively, more than six-in-ten (63%) say the U.S. is doing less than in the past to address global problems, and 82% think the U.S. ignores Canada’s interests when making policy.

Mexico is where President Trump gets his lowest ratings on the survey: Just 6% in the United States’ southern neighbor have confidence in him.

An exception to this pattern is Israel, where Trump’s positive rating jumped to 69%, up from 56% in 2017.

Across the ten EU nations surveyed, a median of just 43% offer a favorable opinion of the U.S.

Among this group, only 30% of Germans have a favorable view of the United States, 44% of Swedes, 34% in the Netherlands, 50% in the UK, 38% in France, 70% in Poland, and 42% in Spain.

But in four of the five Asia-Pacific nations polled, the U.S. gets a positive rating of over 50%: Japan 67%, South Korea 80%, Philippines 83%, and Australia 54%.  Only Indonesia is below 50% favorable at 43%.

[Just 30% of Japanese have confidence in Trump, however.]

Only 39% of Canadians have a favorable view of the U.S., which is awful, and 32% of Mexicans.  Brazil is at 55% favorable, but Argentina is only 32%.

The country giving the U.S. its lowest rating in the survey, and the place where the biggest drop in U.S. favorability has taken place over the past year, is Russia; just 26%, compared with 41% in 2017.  Also, the share of Russians with a positive view of Trump has dropped from 53% to 19%.

At least when it comes to the question, ‘who would you prefer as the leading power in the world,’ the United States or China....

71% of Canadians prefer the U.S., 15% China

76% in Sweden prefer the U.S., 14% China

67% in the UK prefer the U.S., 17% China

58% in Germany prefer the U.S., 19% China

In Japan the ratio is 81/8 U.S.

South Korea it’s 73/11 U.S.

Source: pewresearch.org

Hot Spots will return in a few weeks.

Brian Trumbore

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