Unreliable. Creating more problems than solving them. A negative force on the world stage. This is how large shares of America’s closest allies view the U.S., according to new polling, as President Donald Trump pursues a sweeping foreign policy overhaul.
Pluralities in Germany and France — and a majority of Canadians — say the U.S. is a negative force globally, according to new international POLITICO-Public First polling. Views are more mixed in the United Kingdom, but more than a third of respondents there share that dim assessment.
Near-majorities in all four countries also say the U.S. tends to create problems for other countries rather than solve them.
The findings offer a snapshot of how Trump’s reshaping of U.S. foreign policy — including through an expansive trade agenda, sharp rhetoric toward longtime allies and reoriented military posture — is resonating across some of Washington’s closest allies.
When asked whether the U.S. supports its allies around the world or challenges them, a majority of Canadians say the latter, as well as just under half of respondents in Germany and France. In the U.K., roughly 4 in 10 say the U.S. challenges, rather than supports, its allies, more than a third say it cannot be depended on in a crisis, nearly half say it creates problems for other countries, and 35 percent say the U.S. is a negative force overall.
Trump has blurred traditional lines of global alliances during his first year back in office, particularly in Canada and Europe. He called Europe a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in a recent POLITICO interview and his sweeping National Security Strategyargued that the continent has lost its “national identities and self-confidence.”
By contrast, the strategy reserved less scathing language for Russia — even as U.S. allies in Europe gear up for what leaders have called a “hybrid war” with Moscow.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the administration’s approach when asked about European criticisms, saying the transatlantic alliance remains rooted in shared “civilizational” values. “I do think that at the core of these special relationships we have is the fact that we have shared history, shared values, shared civilizational principles that we should be unapologetic about,” Rubio said at a briefing last week.
But as Trump disrupts long-standing relationships, skepticism among allied leaders may be seeping into public sentiment, said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
“Public opinion in democracies often reflects elite opinion,” he said. “What you’re probably seeing there is that you do have politicians in these countries expressing skepticism about the United States and about the Trump administration, and that’s being reflected in the public opinion polling.”
Leaders across Europe and Canada recalibrate under Trump’s foreign policy agenda
That dynamic is playing out across Europe and Canada, as leaders across the countries try to keep the increasingly strained relationships intact.
In Germany, wavering U.S. military support for Ukraine, questions about Washington’s commitment to NATO and Trump’s tariff war have added urgency for Chancellor Friedrich Merz to move beyond the country’s long-established limits on defense spending and economic policy. Weeks before taking office, Merz secured a historic spending overhaul that unlocked hundreds of billions of euros for defense and infrastructure investments after years of self-imposed austerity.
“Every foreign policy statement by Trump is followed closely, and often discussed in light of what it may mean for U.S. policy shifts regarding European security issues, such as commitment to NATO, future U.S. troop presence in Europe, and support for Ukraine,” said Dominik Tolksdorf, a transatlantic expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
In France, where skepticism toward the U.S. has long run deep, President Emmanuel Macron has pursued personal diplomacy with Trump while using the president’s unpredictability to bolster arguments for greater European strategic autonomy.
“Handing over one’s sovereignty to another power is a mistake — De Gaulle said nothing else,” one high-ranking French military officer, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. Another defense official said Trump’s National Security Strategy had increased “awareness that something is not right.”
In the U.K., Trump remains polarizing, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer has largely avoided public confrontation. His priorities now include finalizing a U.K.-U.S. trade deal and coordinating a European response to Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine — without angering the White House, the delicate balance many allied leaders are trying to strike.
Canada, meanwhile, has seen the sharpest deterioration in relations, which have soured amid a punishing trade war and Trump’s intermittent rhetoric on annexation.
Flavio Volpe, the president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, described the economic disruption linked to Trump’s trade moves. “People lost their jobs — ones they worked their entire lives — and billions of dollars in Canadian capital evaporated in an unexplainable turn away from the bankable post-Cold War balance of power by the White House,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Democrats remain skeptical of the U.S. on the world stage
Overall, Americans still view their country more favorably than their allies do. Nearly half — 49 percent — say the U.S. supports its allies around the world. A majority, 52 percent, say it can be depended on in a crisis, and 51 percent say the U.S. is a positive force globally.
But Democrats — who have displayed deeply pessimistic views about their country since Trump’s return to office — hold far more negative views.
Almost half of voters who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris last year — 47 percent — also say the U.S. is a negative force in the world overall, compared with just 13 percent of Trump voters. Three in four Trump voters say the U.S. is a positive force in the world.
Many Democrats also don’t just express skepticism about the U.S., but view other countries and international blocs as stronger models: 58 percent of Harris voters say the European Union is a positive force in the world, and nearly two-thirds — 64 percent — say the same about Canada, greater than the shares who say the same about the U.S.
“This tracks with our other research on the rapid change of perceptions of the U.S. over the last year,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First. “Americans themselves are not blind to it.”
Prior to the 2024 election, strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans — 71 percent and 69 percent — said the U.S. was a positive force in the world over the course of its entire history, Public First polling from October of last year found.
Exactly one year later, Democrats have sharply changed their views, with 77 percent of Trump voters still saying the U.S. is positive, compared with just 58 percent of Democrats.
“That’s around 1 in 8 Democrats changing their views on the role the U.S. has played in its entire history, in just one year,” said Wride.
Voters who backed Trump last November overwhelmingly view the U.S. in a positive light, but subtle differences emerge within his coalition. Eighty-one percent of self-identifying MAGA Trump voters say the U.S. is a positive force in the world overall, compared with 71 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters. Still, 17 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters say the opposite, that the U.S. is a negative force.
POLITICO’s Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed reporting from the United Kingdom, Victor Goury-Laffont and Laura Kayali contributed from France, Nette Nöstlinger contributed from Germany and Nick Taylor-Vaisey contributed from Canada. Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing also contributed.
Politics
