Dem
47
GOP
53
The Gallup Organization runs international polls as well as domestic ones. One poll asks whether people approve or disapprove of various world leaders, including those of the U.S. China, Russia, and Germany. Field work was done in 2025 in 130 countries. This was before the U.S. withdrew from 66 international organizations and was well before the U.S. attacked Iran. Here are the 2025 results along with results since 2007 comparing U.S. leadership with Chinese leadership:
The thing to note is that approval of the Chinese leadership is not high, but is pretty constant. From 2002 to 2012 China was led by Hu Jintao. Then Xi Jinping took over. Approval of U.S. leadership depends on who is president, with the world greatly preferring a Democrat—any Democrat—to a Republican. We suspect next year China will be way ahead of the U.S. unless China takes this opportunity to invade and take Taiwan.
Probably no one in Donald Trump's inner circle would dare to show him this graph. But if he saw it, he would probably scoff and say: "I don't care what the world thinks of me. Hell, I don't even care what half of Americans think of me." But world opinion has consequences. Canada, Australia and European countries are starting to move closer to China as less threatening and more reliable than the U.S. That has obvious trade, security, and other implications. Also, when Trump asked European countries to help open the Strait of Hormuz, no other country volunteered to help. If you recall, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, George H.W. Bush asked for help, and 40 countries responded.
In case you are curious, in 2025, Germany was at 48% and Russia was at 26%. We dare not think what this year's poll will show. (V)