Never has being abroad as an American felt more awkward than in 2026. If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet in the past decade, you’ve probably seen the jokes — usually made by Europeans — about how Americans are any combination of stupid, ignorant and uncultured. While these were clearly framed as jokes in the past, they have now moved well past that.
Accelerated by the chaotic, incoherent and isolationist foreign policy choices made in Washington, D.C. over the past year, Europeans, long considered some of our strongest partners, have now begun to view the United States as a looming threat. A YouGov poll from February 2026 found that in Western Europe, U.S. favorability is at an all-time low, and citizens in Spain, Italy, the U.K. and Germany consider the United States to be a bigger threat than North Korea or China.
And this is not just limited to Europe; in a 2026 Gallup poll, global approval of U.S. leadership is now lower than that of China. This is a continuation of a trend from the previous year, when the U.S. became less popular in a majority of countries surveyed. Additionally, in 2024, Gallup found 44% of countries were “U.S.-aligned,” but by 2025, that figure had dropped to just 16%. So what’s happening here?
I’m not going to bury the lede here: the rapid degradation of America’s image on the global stage has been accelerated by Washington’s actions since Donald Trump took office in 2025. The first Trump administration’s foreign policy was incredibly damaging, from withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and imposing travel bans to his flirtatious relationship with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. But despite all of that, once Trump’s first term ended, much of the damage was reversible. The difference is that this time, the damage is permanent.
The extent to which the second Trump administration has managed to push almost every ally away from them is remarkable. In response to threats to take Greenland by military force and to withdraw from NATO, Europe has slowly distanced itself from U.S. foreign policy. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to aid the U.S. bombing campaign in Iran is one such breaking point, as is Trump-endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s loss in his recent election. Orban, who was already behind in the polls, invited Vice President J.D. Vance to speak at a rally just days before the election, which increased support for the opposition.
Also problematic is our Middle East foreign policy, specifically the war with Iran, ongoing support for an Israeli government committing genocide in the Gaza Strip and illegally bombing and invading Southern Lebanon. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. strikes has forced the conflict onto billions of people worldwide through rising fuel costs. With jet fuel having doubled in price over the past two months and gas prices rising in all 50 states and around the world, these impacts are now tangible. But they aren’t the first economically damaging policy that the Trump administration has pursued.
Trump’s tariffs, beyond being costly, have been a massive point of contention between the administration, partners and rivals. What’s most striking about this administration’s tariff policy is that they’ve managed to inflict some of the most unnecessary self-inflicted wounds. Economist after economist has pushed back against the administration’s use of tariffs, as they are inflationary and raise costs for both importers and consumers. In a geopolitical sense, Trump’s haphazard tariff rollout alienated some of our closest allies, including Canada, a country with which we are still locked in a trade war. That Canada and the E.U., in particular, have not just merely rolled over is significant and speaks to a larger shift in global power.
The world has realized that we are no longer reliable partners, and this isn’t just because of Trump; he is merely the symptom. When Trump took office in 2016 with his isolationist agenda, it might have concerned other nations, but it wasn’t exactly unprecedented. This was in the midst of the U.K.’s Brexit referendum, and populist parties across the rest of the E.U. were gaining popularity. The issue is that once the U.S. re-elected Trump for a second, more extreme term, it proved that the first time wasn’t a one-off. This electoral volatility makes the U.S. an unreliable partner for forming international alliances. If every four years, a new president reverses their predecessor’s actions, then how can we be trusted to uphold any long-term agreements?This says that just getting rid of Trump won’t repair the damage done to our reputation. Once we’re past Trump, we will need to reckon with a world that no longer sees us as the bastion of freedom that we’ve long believed ourselves to be. MAGA will have to come to terms with the fact that even among other far-right parties, they are deeply unpopular and are now deeply underwater at home. With Trump out of contention due to term limits, they will need to shift their strategy to win back electoral viability. What form that takes will likely, in part, determine how trustworthy we can be considered as a nation. Whether we can recover our global image hinges on a sustained, consistent commitment to being a willing participant in the wider world. But recent history shows that that’s unlikely to be the case.