Through much of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, as the United States’ popularity around the world has ebbed and flowed, the country has been able to fall back on a baseline of international support established in the previous century. There have been moments when the United States’ global image declined substantially, such as during the unpopular military interventions of President George W. Bush and the dramatic retrenchment from international engagement of President Donald Trump’s first term. But each time, the country’s reserves of soft power and its long-standing international reputation sustained it, and its foreign approval ratings eventually bounced back.

Since Trump’s return to office in January 2025, however, cracks are beginning to emerge in those foundations. His trade and immigration policies and his use of U.S. military power have yielded a wave of international disapproval that in its nature and depth has few recent historical parallels. A new Pew Research Center survey of public opinion has found that in many of the 36 countries surveyed, attitudes toward the United States are the most negative they have been since Pew began tracking them in 2002.

Ordinary citizens are now critical of Trump in ways they were not during his first administration. As was the case during his first term, they believe Trump is breaking with the United States’ history of international engagement and leadership. But much of the world now also believes that Trump’s use of the United States’ substantial hard power is threatening global stability in ways that were not apparent during the first administration. Moreover, during previous ebbs, people in other countries have not tended to question the basic values promoted by the United States, even if they strongly disagreed with specific policies. By contrast, today, the world has grown increasingly pessimistic about the state of American democracy itself. In less than two years of Trump’s second presidency, a growing number of non-Americans have come to believe that the U.S. government does not respect the individual liberties of its own people.

As a result, much of the world is losing faith in the United States’ ability to serve as the leader of a liberal international order. And these new reservations, deeper than those of the past, may prove hard to reverse.

LAND OF THE LESS FREE

The worsening health of democracy has become a problem in countries around the world. According to Freedom House’s annual assessment, the average level of global freedom across more than 200 countries and territories has decreased for 20 consecutive years. The decline has been especially steep in the United States. Earlier this year, the research institute V-Dem downgraded the country from a “liberal democracy” to an “electoral democracy,” stating that “democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965,” the year of the Voting Rights Act’s passage.

Across the 36 nations surveyed by Pew this year, a minority of........

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