President Donald Trump’s reckless approach to international relations has driven away America’s traditional partners, which increasingly see the U.S. as a threat, according to a new poll.
The survey, carried out by consultants Kekst CNC for the Munich Security Index, questioned 11,099 people in G7 nations, the most advanced economies, and in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa last November. It was carried out before Trump’s disruptive rhetoric became reality with a clandestine operation to abduct the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and before Trump threatened military force in a bid to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally.
These instances won’t have done much to quell the growing feeling that, for many around the world, America as a reliable international ally is a thing of the past.
Donald Trump’s repeated taunting of Canada as America’s “51st State,” and subsequent punitive tariffs, informed the most dramatic shift. As measured by the index, which is expressed in trends rather than percentages, Canadians are now almost as likely as Chinese respondents to regard the U.S. as a threat to their country’s security.
Across every country surveyed, the net number of people who see the United States as an ally declined, the index shows. In many emerging markets, aggressive U.S. trade policy and confrontational rhetoric appear to have eroded long-standing confidence.
In Europe, anxiety over U.S. foreign policy has been compounded by Trump’s attempt to force allies to concede control of the mineral rich Artic island of Greenland, he says, for “security reasons,” and his threat to punish opposition with tariffs.
The White House said it would impose an additional 10-percent tariff on goods from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland starting Feb. 1, an amount that could rise to 25 percent by June unless a deal is reached for a “complete and total purchase of Greenland.” Trump has since cooled on his Greenland rhetoric, but it often re-emerges in fits and starts, creating a sense of anxiety.
Indeed, a new survey from Politico’s polling partner Public First found pretty much the same thing. It surveyed 10,000 people across four allied nations: the U.K., Canada, Germany and France, where a majority of people viewed the U.S. as an unreliable ally, rather than one their nations could count on.
This included half the adults polled in Germany and 57 percent in Canada.
Officials visiting the Munich Security Conference in Germany this week were preparing for further displays of U.S. antagonism, though nerves were somewhat eased by the absence of both Trump and Vice President JD Vance. “I hope it’s boring,” one European foreign minister told the Financial Times ahead of the conference.
Notably, however, Britons remain the most positive about America among the nations surveyed, providing a rare outlier in the broader trend of declining U.S. favorability.
Trump did damage to the country’s image in Europe with his Greenland threats, YouGov European tracker data, monitoring attitudes in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain from Jan. 9 to 27, showed.
In five of these countries, perceptions are the worst they have been since YouGov started tracking in 2016.
Unsurprisingly, opinion was most negative in Denmark, where 84 percent of Danes now have an unfavourable view of the U.S. That figure is up from 70 percent in November 2025, and when compared to an average of 36 percent over Joe Biden’s term as president, it is damning for Trump.
The White House has been approached for comment.
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