After Donald Trump’s election, U.S. allies and adversaries scrambled to evaluate whether his unorthodox rhetoric foreshadowed substantive shifts in U.S. foreign policy. The “America First” agenda raised questions about his administration’s willingness to defend and promote the liberal world order that the U.S. had instrumentally shaped since 1945.
Reflecting this uncertainty, the median approval rating of U.S. leadership fell from 48% in 2016 to a record-low 30% in 2017. To understand where the sharpest declines occurred, we examined salient country-level attributes often associated with key U.S. strategic partners. CONT.
Zacc Ritter, Gallup