This is how Trump’s image looks globally policy

Pew Research Center data for 2025, which was based on a survey that included nearly 28,000 participants in 24 countries, revealed a low level of confidence in US President Donald Trump that did not exceed (34%), compared to (62%) who express shaky confidence in his ability to deal with global affairs.

These numbers reflect a noticeable shift in the world’s people’s view of American leadership, an image that the United States has harnessed enormous capabilities to maintain, as another highly influential dimension of soft power.

Public opinion may not necessarily translate directly into the positions of political elites or actual foreign policies, but it constitutes an indicative indicator and expresses a fertile political environment.

Trump and Obama

The political orientation represented by Trump is one of the factors explaining the decline in the level of global confidence in him compared to his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who enjoyed an average confidence of about 64% during his second term, according to Pew polls. This difference in confidence is not only due to differences in charisma, but rather reflects a fundamental difference in the foreign policy philosophy of each of them.

Obama’s rhetoric and behavior centered on a pluralist approach that gave centrality to partnership and gave weight to international institutions, even if it was sometimes at the expense of the fringes of the American movement. This reflected an institutional liberal vision that saw American hegemony also strengthen and become legitimate from adherence to the rules and standards established by Washington itself after 1945.

On the other hand, Trump has adopted an approach that some analysts, such as Adam Thiem, classify as an unusual transactional realism based on systematic skepticism about the feasibility of international commitments, and seeks to renegotiate them in a way that achieves benefits in accordance with the slogan “America First.”

Zero relationship with allies

Trump’s problem is not limited to the relationship with Washington’s opponents, but extends to the core of the relationship with its traditional allies.

When he conditions his commitment to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) on members paying their appropriate shares of defense expenses, the matter goes beyond the issue of sharing financial burdens and extends to the reliability of security commitments, as this translates into the possibility of Washington abandoning them when needed.

Thus, the Atlantic alliance is transformed in the European perception from a strategic guarantee based on mutual trust into a risky bet subject to immediate pragmatic calculations.

This undermines the customary nature of transatlantic relations that were historically built alongside a balance of interests based on shared values ​​and long-term strategic commitments that go beyond market logic.

Arrogance without confidence

(80%) of participants in the Pew poll described Trump as arrogant, while (65%) saw him as a danger, and only (28%) considered him honest, and (67%) saw him as a strong leader, which reveals an image in which recognition of strength is combined, but with discomfort in using it.

These descriptions reflect judgments at two levels:

• The level of values, where the extent to which his behavior is consistent with diplomatic and political standards that different peoples consider acceptable or legitimate.
• The level of interests, as societies evaluate the direct impact of his policies on their security and economy.

The most hated neighbor

Mexicans express the lowest levels of confidence in Trump, with 91% expressing no confidence in his ability to handle world affairs.

The general negative Mexican impression is due to the intersection of symbolic and procedural factors: on the symbolic level, the border wall project that Trump seeks to complete is seen as a national insult and the relationship between the two countries is reduced to the securitization of the border.

On the procedural level, it includes a number of policies, such as threats to mass deport undocumented Mexican immigrants, who constitute the largest immigrant community in the United States, threats to impose customs duties on Mexican exports, and a review of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Together, these policies transform the nature of the bilateral relationship between the two countries from a regional partnership, where Mexico is the largest trading partner of the United States, to a hierarchical relationship based on coercion. 80% of respondents globally described Trump as “arrogant.”

This transformation was accompanied by the collapse of the public image of the United States, as the percentage of Mexicans who view America positively fell from 61% in 2024 under the Biden administration to 29% in 2025, which is one of the largest collapses recorded in Pew polls.

In contrast, Nigeria leads the world in the level of trust in Trump at 79%, which reveals a variation in how Trump’s image is received across different political and cultural contexts. Emphasizing the relationship between internal political dynamics and the outlook on the leadership style that characterizes Trump.

There are evangelical and conservative currents spreading in Nigeria that find an echo in Trump’s religious-nationalist discourse, in addition to the country’s aspiration to strengthen the American role in confronting armed groups and threats in the Sahel region.

Image crisis in Europe

The greatest challenge facing the United States – in the context of eroding trust – is its noticeable decline in its traditional allies, especially in Europe, which have represented the institutional and value pillar of the transatlantic system since 1945.

The levels of confidence in Trump in European countries are the lowest in the world: Sweden (15%), Germany (18%), Spain (19%), and France (22%). While in Canada, the closest geographical ally, it reached only 22%.

Previous data indicate that this crisis began before Trump returned to power, but it worsened with expectations of his return.

In a European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) survey conducted in November, December and December 2024 – that is, two months before Trump’s inauguration and immediately after his electoral victory – across 14 European countries, only 22% of Europeans viewed the United States as an “ally who shares our values ​​and interests.”

51% saw it as a “necessary partner,” meaning that the relationship tends to be utilitarian and pragmatic rather than a value alliance. This represents a noticeable shift from 2023, when the percentage of those who saw America as an “ally” was (32%).

Europe has built its national security since the end of World War II on the assumption that the United States would be the military guarantor in the event of an existential threat. This assumption went beyond being a mere security arrangement, but rather became part of the psychological and social structure of how Europe defined itself after the World War.

When Trump calls this assumption publicly into question, he shakes the common European community doctrine on security.

Ukraine war

The Ukraine war amplifies these concerns, as the war represents a test of the reliability of the Atlantic commitment. According to a YouGov poll conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations in 2025, 73% of Europeans see Trump as a threat to peace and security in Europe, a difference of only 9 points from their assessment of Putin (82%).

While these polls do not indicate numbers about confidence in Trump’s management of the Ukraine file specifically, European concerns center around his tendency to conclude bilateral deals with Putin that may ignore European security interests, especially in light of his repeated admiration for “strong” leaders and his tendency towards direct negotiations without coordination.

These fears do not remain in the realm of latent feeling as much as they constitute a serious actual trend that may ultimately lead to a strategic outcome in which Europe reaches a higher degree of security independence, as uncertainty about the commitment of the American ally pushes Europe towards precautionary behavior aimed at building independent defense capabilities.

According to a May 2025 European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) poll of 12 European countries, there is growing support for increasing defense spending, with majorities in Poland (70%), Denmark (70%), the United Kingdom (57%), and Estonia (56%) supporting increasing national defense spending.

However, these trends collide with contradictions that stem from the complexity of the structure of security doctrine in Europe. While Europeans doubt Trump’s reliability, many of them (48%) still believe that the United States can be relied upon for nuclear deterrence, and (55%) believe that the American military presence in Europe can be relied upon, according to the poll.

Beyond the numbers

80% of respondents globally described Trump as “arrogant,” and this characterization refers to more than discomfort with his undesirable personal traits.

Antonio Gramsci, whose concepts of the international context were developed by Robert Cox, distinguished: Between two types of domination:

• Coercive force that imposes its will by force.
• Consensus is based on voluntary acceptance and legitimacy.

Gramsci described power, borrowing from Machiavelli, as “a centaur: half human and half beast, a combination of consent and coercion.”

American leadership of the international system has historically been based on a combination of overwhelming material power on the one hand, with relative acceptance in most cases from less powerful countries on the other hand, as countries, even non-allied ones, recognized Washington’s centrality in exchange for relative respect for their interests and sovereignty.

Negative perceptions undermine this acceptance through two mechanisms:

• First, when a leader is perceived as arrogant, his or her policies – even if objectively similar to previous policies – are interpreted as imposition of will rather than consultation, which weakens the legitimacy of hegemony.
• Second, perceived arrogance reduces states’ willingness to contribute to maintaining the Washington-led order. In this sense, this arrogance would upset the balance of this Gramscian synthesis and turn the relationship into a dictation that may be unpalatable or acceptable to international players.

Deterrence theory, as formulated by Thomas Schelling, is based on the assumption that political actors, despite their divergent interests, act with strategic rationality that is calculable and predictable.

But 65% of respondents describing Trump as “dangerous” indicates a degree of awareness that he may act unpredictably, whether this perception is accurate or not.

This realization in itself contributes to increasing the margin of uncertainty in the international arena, which disrupts one of the most important central factors upon which the international system rests, which is the ability to predict the behavior of the main actors.

The description “dangerous” carries connotations of impulsiveness and emotionality in reactions, which means a feeling of the possibility of making decisions that are not subject to standard cost-benefit calculations, but rather to personal or psychological considerations that are difficult to predict.

On the other hand, only 28% of respondents see Trump as honest, while credibility is the cornerstone of the logic of commitment in international relations.

Robert Jervis and Thomas Schelling asserted that the ability of states to build partnerships, enhance cooperation, and even manage conflicts depends on their believing each other’s pledges.

Populist ideology

The data also reveal consistent ideological polarization across countries. In the United Kingdom, Trump enjoys 59% confidence among the right, compared to 18% among the left, and this pattern is repeated in Poland, Germany, and most of Western Europe.

This polarization confirms that Trump represents a global ideological icon for right-wing populist movements, which consist of groups that are dissatisfied with liberal globalization, reject traditional democratic institutions, and are skeptical of cultural pluralism, and see Trump as a successful model for resisting “globalization elites” and restoring national sovereignty according to what conservative nationalist movements are promoting.

In conclusion, this Trumpian image is crystallizing in the world, forming an impression about the possible outcomes of the American political style of governance, whose internal dynamics affect foreign policy in a critical historical period that carries many indicators of the beginning of the formation of a new era for the international system.

The image of Trump will emerge in the minds of those contributing to the formation of this system as an American phenomenon that may be repeated at any moment.