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YOU GOV
US Favorability likely to reach record lows
Among our Western European allies for sure.
The worldwide favorability of the US is very closely tied to the US President. To evaluate that, I extracted data from YouGov for the following 7 Western European countries:
- Spain
- Italy
- Britain
- France
- Germany
- Sweden
- Denmark
I grabbed as much data as I could from YouGov going back to the beginning of Trump’s first term in 2017. I am sure YouGov has more data but it is behind a paywall. Other pollsters have also a ton of related data. But, I also found them off-limit.
The facet graph below shows the % of responders in a given country who have a favorable view of the US.
All 7 countries follow the same pattern:
- A fairly steady and pronounced decline during Trump 1.
- A marked rebound during the first 2 years of Biden’s term. This is followed by a flattening and declining during his last 2 years.
- An accelerating cliff drop during the very early onset of Trump 2.
Denmark’s most pronounced cliff drop relative to other countries is due to Trump’s apparently serious intent to purchase Greenland that is a Denmark controlled territory. To this day it is not clear how the US would purchase Greenland. Who would it pay? How much? With what funds? When?
The most recent YouGov survey was conducted in mid February, when Trump had been in office less than a month.
I suspect that the YouGov survey conducted after Liberation Day (April 2, 2025) will show a continued and marked drop in US favorability.
In all cases, Trump 2 is faring worse than Trump 1 and a lot worse than Biden.
I wonder if such a US favorability metric among countries may represent a more objective measure of a US President’s performance compared to domestic job approval ratings that have become so polarized as to be meaningless. I arrive at this consideration after having done earlier research on the US economy before the November Elections. The US economy was flying on all cylinders. Even inflation had come way down and was within reach of the Fed’s target.
Yet, 51% of the voters were very upset about the economy and inflation in particular. And, they ended up voting for Trump who promised to implement broad based tariffs that are most inflationary. They are actually “stagflationary” as they increase inflation and reduce economic growth.
To argue the opposite, that broad based tariffs would reduce inflation and increase economic growth, does not make any economic sense.
I wonder if to improve our democracy for the welfare of both the US and our allies, we should open up voting in our US Presidential election to them [our allies]. They may grasp what’s best for the US better than we do apparently.
My idea is absurd. But, you get my point.
Doing otherwise [not opening our Election to allies], as we have just seen runs counter to their interest and the US too. We are not getting America First, we are getting America isolated and deflated (the stagnation bit).
As another option to improve our democracy I suggest another possibility. Within the ballot, share the relevant economic data so the public can readily be informed in seconds on how well (or badly) the US has done when compared with allies.
Here is the relevant data available near the end of Biden’s term (that I have extracted from my earlier article):
- First, let’s look at real GDP per capita growth (on an indexed basis) since before the onset of COVID. As shown, the US economic growth, as specified, had left all the allies’ economies in the dust.
- Next, doing the same for inflation. The inflation data shows that the spike in inflation was a worldwide problem associated with COVID-related supply chains dislocations. And, that by mid-2024, US inflation was not much of an issue anymore as it had come way down to close to 2.5% in line with the allies and close to the Fed’s targets.
These charts are not difficult to understand. If included within a voting ballot, they may have changed the outcome of the November Presidential Election.
Some may bring up immigration as an issue Trump weaponized to great political effect. But let’s be clear: he wasn’t interested in solving it — he made sure the House blocked a Biden proposal that would have improved the situation. As Vice President Harris rightly put it during the debate, ‘You don’t want to solve problems — you want to run on them.’ The truth is, Trump deliberately inflated the immigration issue for his own political gain. In reality, immigration isn’t the crisis he makes it out to be — it may actually be a long-term demographic strength that gives the U.S. a critical edge over much of the developed world. I’ve explored this idea further in an earlier article.
CLICK TO READ: U.S. Immigration is just fine.
THE END
Gaetan Lion is an independent researcher with expertise in economics, econometrics, investments, risk management, statistics, and quantitative analysis. His areas of interest include demographics, economics, investments, Climate Change, health care, sports, and politics.