Trump, Merkel and the U.S.'s waning global clout
For a third year in a row, Germany is on top. An annual Gallup survey that polled respondents in 135 countries and territories over their views of four major world powers — the United States, Germany, Russia and China — placed Europe’s largest economy at the head of the pack, with a median global approval rating of 44 percent. The United States ranked further below at 33 percent, just about tied with China
“The image of the U.S. began the new decade in a weaker position globally than at most points in the previous two presidential administrations,” observed the Gallup report, pointing to the corrosive effects of Trump’s brash unilateralism and unvarnished xenophobia.
According to a Pew survey of respondents in 32 countries, 64 percent of people said they had no confidence in Trump as the United States’ leader. Those grim views are particularly acute in Europe, where Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama was far more popular. A December 2019 YouGov poll in Germany found that Trump was perceived as a greater threat than autocrats in Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang.
These polls were conducted before the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which has all the more soured global attitudes toward Trump’s America, site of the world’s single largest death toll and a sprawling, calamitous swath of infections that seemingly has no end in sight. Germany has managed the coronavirus with technocratic efficiency and a degree of unity wholly absent in the United States.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/07/28/trump-merkel-us-waning-global-clout/
