USA 2021
COMMENT
By Richard Wike, Jackob Poushter, Laura Silver, Janell Fetterolf and Mara Mordecal
TRANSITION FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN The election of Joe Biden as U.S. president has led to a dramatic shift in America’s international image. Throughout the Donald Trump presidency, publics around the world held the United States in low regard, with most opposed to his foreign policies. This was especially true among key American allies and partners. Now, however, a new Pew Research Center survey of 16 publics finds a significant uptick in ratings for the U.S., with strong support for Biden and several of his major policy initiatives.
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n each of the 16 publics surveyed, more than six-in-ten say they have confidence that Biden will do the right thing in world affairs. Looking at 12 nations that were surveyed both this year and in 2020, a median of 75% of respondents express confidence in Biden, compared with 17% for Trump last year. Presidential transitions over the course of the past two decades have had a major impact on overall attitudes toward the U.S. When Barack Obama took office in 2009, ratings improved in many nations compared to where they’d stood during George W. Bush’s administration, and when Trump entered the White House, in 2017, ratings fell
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In most countries polled, people make a stark distinction between Biden and Trump as world leaders. Nearly eight-in-ten Germans (78%) have confidence that Biden will do the right thing in world affairs; just 10% said the same about Trump a year ago sharply. U.S. favorability is up again this year: Whereas an average of just 34% across 12 nations had a favorable overall opinion of the U.S. last year, this year that median is at 62%.
In France, for example, just 31% expressed a positive opinion of the U.S. last year, matching the poor ratings from March 2003, at the height of U.S.-French tensions over the Iraq War. This year, 65% see the U.S. positively, approaching the high ratings that characterized the Obama era. Improvements of 25 percentage points or more are also found in Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands and Canada… Respondents in most of the surveyed countries make a stark distinction between Biden and Trump as world leaders. Nearly eight-in-ten Germans (78%) have confidence that Biden will do the right thing in world affairs; just 10% said the same of Trump a year ago. Similar differences are found in Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, and there is a difference of at least 40 percentage points in all nations where a trend from 2020 is available for comparison. This is also the case with views of the United States as a whole, with confidence in U.S. presidents having shifted dramatically over the past two decades, especially in Western Europe. In Germany, the UK, Spain and France – four nations surveyed consistently by the Pew Research Center – ratings for Bush and Trump were similarly low during their presidencies, while this year’s confidence in Biden is fairly similar to the ratings received by Obama while he was in office. Biden’s high ratings are partly linked to positive assessments of his personal characteristics, and here again the con-
