U.S. Foreign Policy Tracker
Morning Consult’s U.S. Foreign Policy Tracker and companion indexes assess Americans’ views of the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy, including their top foreign policy concerns, whether public opinion skews toward isolationism or engagement, and whether Americans favor multilateral or unilateral solutions to global economic and military challenges. A methodological companion memo can be found here.
For U.S. and global multinationals, the tracker is intended to help government affairs, public policy, and risk management teams better understand the depth of Americans’ concerns about bilateral relations and their views on key policy issues in order to inform data-driven scenario planning and policy advocacy. For U.S. and global asset managers, the tracker is intended to provide data-driven inputs into investment strategies and facilitate more accurate pricing of risks arising from U.S. foreign policy.
The tracker updates quarterly. The latest data is from August 2024.
Key Takeaways
Inward-oriented issues continue to dominate Americans’ foreign policy concerns, led by immigration. Geopolitical flashpoints, including U.S.-China relations, the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and securing critical supply chains resonate less overall. Among the above issues, Americans see U.S.-China relations in greater need of attention from policymakers than the rest.
Americans are broadly in favor of U.S. isolationism relative to greater global engagement, with Republicans firmly supporting the former and Democrats currently wavering between greater isolationism and the status quo. Given these dynamics, we see limited potential for a U.S. foreign policy pivot in the direction of greater engagement in overseas affairs regardless of the 2024 electoral outcome, and advise U.S.-watchers to expect more stability than not.
In parallel, Americans are broadly receptive to the country’s growing reliance on tariffs as a tool of economic statecraft. By party affiliation, Democrats are roughly evenly split between favoring higher tariff rates and the status quo, while voters of all other stripes prefer the former. Come 2025, we expect these partisan dynamics to provide greater leeway for tariff hikes under a GOP administration than a Democratic one, albeit with greater flexibility to raise tariffs on China regardless of the 2024 election outcome (see our companion U.S.-China Relations Tracker for confirmatory data).
Americans’ penchant for isolationism belies their interest in multilateral dispute resolution mechanisms: Democrats and Republicans alike favor multilateralism to unilateralism by a moderate-to-wide margin in the context of resolving both military and economic disputes. The main outlier concerns U.S. involvement in international organizations, which continues to divide voters predictably along partisan lines, with Democrats in favor of greater involvement and Republicans opposed. In line with prevailing consensus views, we expect to see U.S. retrenchment from organizations like the United Nations and NATO should a GOP administration materialize post-November.
Data Downloads
Morning Consult Pro+ subscribers are able to access the data sets that power our reports and analysis. Learn more and get access.
Foreign Policy Priorities
Americans' top foreign policy priorities
Isolationism and Engagement
Morning Consult's Indexes of U.S. Isolationism and Engagement report the average shares of Americans who favor greater isolationism, stability or engagement in U.S. foreign policy across three thematic issue areas, including (1) soft power and foreign aid, covering attitudes toward involvement in other countries’ affairs and foreign aid provision; (2) overseas military engagement, covering support for U.S. troop deployments and involvement in military conflicts; and (3) trade and investment policies, covering preferences toward tariffs on foreign goods and barriers to inward foreign investment. Each index is computed as a simple average of shares corresponding to index response levels (isolationism, stability, and engagement) across all six component data series.
Morning Consult Indexes of Isolationism and Engagement
Component Series
The charts below provide our latest readings on American sentiment for key component series of the above indexes, including public preferences surrounding (1) U.S. involvement in other countries' affairs, (2) overseas troop deployments, and (3) trade and tariffs.
Involvement in other countries’ affairs
Overseas troop deployments
Trade and tariffs
Multilateralism and Unilateralism
Morning Consult's Indexes of U.S. Multilateralism and Unilateralism report the average shares of Americans who favor greater multilateralism, stability or unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy across three thematic issue areas, including (1) military policy coordination, covering attitudes toward addressing global military disputes in coordination with U.S. partners and allies as opposed to going it alone; (2) economic policy coordination, covering the same attitudes in the context of global economic disputes; and (3) policy coordination via diplomatic forums, covering attitudes toward U.S. involvement in international organizations. Each index is computed as a simple average of shares corresponding to index response levels (multilateralism, stability, and unilateralism) across all three component data series.
Morning Consult Indexes of Multilateralism and Unilateralism
Component Series
The charts below provide our latest readings on American sentiment for all component series of the above indexes, including public preferences surrounding (1) the resolution of military disputes, (2) the resolution of economic disputes, and (3) and U.S. involvement in international organizations.
Resolution of military disputes
Resolution of economic disputes
Involvement in international organizations
Companion Research & Analysis
- Morning Consult’s U.S. Foreign Policy Sentiment Indexes Methodology Primer: A companion methodology primer for the indices featured in this tracker.
- Counter/Consensus Email Briefing: Morning Consult Counter/Consensus newsletter is a biweekly, publicly available briefing that provides pithy, empirically-grounded forecasts derived from our political data assets, and frequently touches on key issues in U.S. foreign policy.
Companion Data Assets for Pro+ Subscribers
- Trended Data: Trended data for all data series featured in this tracker among select demographics is available for Morning Consult Pro+ subscribers via the “Data Downloads” section of this page. See “Commercial Data Access” below for additional details on access to demographic data beyond that presented in this tracker and companion data file.
Supplementary Commercial Data Access
All data featured in this tracker derives from a tracking survey fielded in the United States from July 2022 onwards, with broader demographic coverage available for enterprise or public sector use. Contact us with inquiries regarding commercial access.
Methodology
Data featured in this tracker derives from surveys conducted among representative samples of roughly 2,000 U.S. voters, each with an unweighted margin of error or +/-2 percentage points. The survey began fielding in July 2022.
All data was collected through Morning Consult’s proprietary survey research capabilities. All interviews are conducted online. Data is weighted to approximate representative samples of U.S. voters.
Consult our Global Political Intelligence Methodology Primer for additional details on sampling and data collection procedures, weighting and representativeness, margins of error, and question wording for our broader Political Intelligence data product.
About Morning Consult
Morning Consult is a global decision intelligence company changing how modern leaders make smarter, faster, better decisions. The company pairs its proprietary high-frequency data with applied artificial intelligence to better inform decisions on what people think and how they will act. Learn more at morningconsult.com.
Email [email protected] to speak with a member of the Morning Consult team.
Jason I. McMann leads geopolitical risk analysis at Morning Consult. He leverages the company’s high-frequency survey data to advise clients on how to integrate geopolitical risk into their decision-making. Jason previously served as head of analytics at GeoQuant (now part of Fitch Solutions). He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University’s Politics Department. Follow him on Twitter @jimcmann. Interested in connecting with Jason to discuss his analysis or for a media engagement or speaking opportunity? Email [email protected].
