Biden’s Early Tenure Has Improved America’s Image Abroad

President Joe Biden inherited a tarnished American image abroad when he took office on Jan. 20 following four years of President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policies and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that called into question the status of the world’s oldest continuous democracy.

Nearly 100 days later as the United States and the world meets a symbolic milestone of Biden’s presidency, the Oval Office’s current occupant is overseeing a sizable improvement to the American brand across many allied countries, according to Morning Consult Political Intelligence tracking of global sentiment.

The latest surveys of adults in 14 other nations found that favorable views rose by an average of 9 points since Biden’s inauguration, with the largest improvement in international sentiment about the United States over the past three months occurring in Germany. Since Jan. 20, America’s favorability rating increased 22 percentage points in the country, with 46 percent of Germans now holding favorable views and 37 percent holding unfavorable views, down 25 points.

“Most Western Europeans, and Germans are most emblematic here, dislike a hawkish U.S. foreign policy, for which reason George W. had pretty bad approval ratings. With Trump, this effect just exponentiated,” said Dr. Christian Welzel, vice president of the World Values Survey Association and chair in political culture research at the Center for the Study of Democracy at Leuphana University Lüneburg in Germany. “Biden is widely considered as a more than welcome relief, especially with the return to the Paris Accord and his administration's attempt to recover the transatlantic bond.”

Biden’s message to the world since taking office has been “America is back,” as he put it in remarks at the State Department just two weeks after he took office, declaring diplomacy would be at the center of U.S. foreign policy. That new tone for the world, joined by his traditionalist approach to governing at home after four years of Trump’s volatility, appears to be resonating positively in much of the West.

Along with Germany, favorable views about the United States improved strongly in Japan (up 19 percentage points, to 55 percent) and France (up 17 points, to 46 percent) after dipping below water following America’s Trump-fueled turmoil over the results of the November election. 

And across Australia, Japan and many of the other European countries surveyed, America’s reputation – which had generally been on the upswing between Biden’s Nov. 7 victory and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot – has recovered from the weakening it experienced in the wake of the insurrection in Washington. 

“International opinion of the United States, in many nations, is genuinely contingent on American actions,” said Dr. David Farber, a University of Kansas professor who edited the book, “What They Think of Us,” on post-9/11 international perceptions of the United States. “People in many nations around the world are, I think, hopeful, that the election of Joe Biden marks a rejection of Trump’s ‘America First’ bullying and go-it-alone international policies and a return to a more collaborative, pro-democracy approach to international affairs.”

Sentiment about the United States has improved on a smaller scale since Biden’s inauguration in Brazil (where 74 percent hold favorable views), while it has been less responsive to America’s domestic situation in India and Russia, with the latter being targeted with some of Biden’s most aggressive international actions so far.

Perceptions about the United States got significantly worse in just one country: China. Nearly 3 in 4 Chinese adults hold unfavorable views of the United States, up 9 points since Biden’s inauguration. The figure is driven by 47 percent of Chinese adults who hold “very unfavorable views,” up 7 points over the same time period.

Closer to home, 68 percent of Mexican adults view the United States favorably – up 8 points since Biden’s inauguration, while the share with unfavorable views dropped by a similar amount, to 18 percent. In Canada, sentiment about the United States remains underwater, though the share with favorable views has increased 14 points, to 40 percent, over the past three months.