The United States is becoming less popular globally in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to new data.
The 2025 Democracy Perception Index summarizes attitudes toward democracy, geopolitics and global power players, and canvassed more than 110,000 respondents across 100 countries.
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A majority of people surveyed had an overall negative perception of the U.S., marking a steep decline from last year. America’s reputation took a particularly massive hit in EU countries — perhaps unsurprisingly, as U.S. President Donald Trump has called the bloc “horrible,” “pathetic” and “formed to screw the United States.”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO chief and founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation that coauthored the index, said he was “not surprised that perceptions of the United States have fallen so sharply.”
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Meanwhile, China kept improving its global standing, overtaking the U.S. for the first time and recording mostly positive perceptions in all regions except Europe. Russia, the reputation of which tanked in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is still (slightly) more unpopular than the U.S. — though its image is also improving.
Trump’s reputation is in line with that of his country. The survey showed he’s less popular worldwide than his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Putin and Xi Jinping.
Trump recorded the worst score among a range of political, cultural and spiritual leaders that includes X owner Elon Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the late Pope Francis, Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian.
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Israel emerged as the country with the worst global reputation of those included in the poll, especially in the Middle East and South Asia. Israel is unpopular even in European countries that have historically been its allies, such as Germany, signaling growing discomfort with its government’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank.
Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes.
The data used in this story came from an online survey conducted by Nira Data and the Alliance of Democracies between April 9-23, 2025. The sample was 111,273 drawn across 100 countries, with an average sample size of around 1,100 respondents per country. Nationally representative results were calculated based on the official distribution of age and gender for each country’s population.
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