The world cannot stand Donald Trump—a quite normal reaction to the man opening his mouth, of course. Their disgust continues to degrade our national relationships.
Just 30 percent of people interviewed in 134 countries last year approved of American leadership under Mr. Trump, a drop of nearly 20 percentage points since President Barack Obama’s final year and the lowest finding since the Gallup polling organization began asking the question overseas more than a decade ago. The decline was especially steep in Latin America, Europe and Canada. [...]
The survey showed that approval of American leadership has fallen 10 points or more in 65 of the 134 countries since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, while it increased by that much or more in just four countries: Belarus, Israel, Liberia and Macedonia. It fell by 40 percentage points in Canada (from 60 percent in 2016 to 20 percent in 2017) and 28 percentage points in Mexico (from 44 to 16 percent).
Among NATO countries, 18 of 28 had 10-point declines or more, including Italy (14 points), Germany (21 points), Britain (26 points), France (28 points), Belgium (44 points) and Portugal (51 points). Even in Norway, which Mr. Trump singled out last week for praise, saying he would rather immigrants come from there than Africa or Haiti, just 13 percent approved of Mr. Trump’s leadership, down 42 points from Mr. Obama.
The White House will no doubt respond to these results by saying they do not care, and Rex Tillerson's State Department may or may not have the manpower to respond to it at all. The impact of these world views, however, is that the United States has considerably less clout in the world and among our own allies than it did a year ago. Foreign leaders will get less grief at home from ignoring or opposing Trump than from cooperating with him.
Trump is weakening our status in the world by being obnoxious, unpredictable, and untrustworthy. It's a wee bit amazing that those traits apparently "work" when he's trying to sell overpriced apartments to foreign money launderers, but when put on the same stage as other world leaders he comes off like the effing Hamburglar.