How do views of Trump compare with other global leaders?

By Richard Wike, Laura Silver, Moira Fagan and Jonathan Schulman

Table of Contents

About this research

This Pew Research Center report looks at views of the U.S., U.S. President Donald Trump, and opinion of the role the U.S. is playing in the world.

Why did we do this?

Pew Research Center does research to help the public, media and decision-makers understand important topics. We have studied global views of the United States for more than two decades. We did this study to understand how people in other countries view the U.S. and Trump, now in the second year of his second administration.

Learn more about Pew Research Center and our international surveys.

How did we do this?

We surveyed 42,151 people across 36 countries: Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the U.K., and the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Interviews were conducted from February 8 to May 13, 2026. We designed the surveys so we could talk about the views of the adult population in each country. Here are the survey questions used for this report, along with responses, and the survey methodology.

Across 36 countries, a median of 23% of adults have confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs.

A bar chart showing Confidence in world leaders across 36 countries surveyed

Confidence in Trump is lower than confidence in French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Of the leaders asked about, only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives lower marks.

These findings come from a new Pew Research Center survey of 42,151 adults in 36 countries, conducted Feb. 8-May 13, 2026. They are part of a larger report on global views of the United States and its president.

Where do people have more positive views of Trump than other leaders?

Colombia, Hungary, Israel and the Philippines stand out as four countries where views of Trump are more positive than views of other leaders we asked about.

In Colombia, 43% have confidence in Trump – higher than the 37% who have confidence in Macron and the roughly third or fewer who have confidence in the other leaders.
In Hungary, 44% have confidence in Trump, compared with around a third or fewer who say the same of Macron, Xi or Putin. Confidence in Netanyahu and Zelenskyy is even lower.
In Israel, 66% have confidence in Trump, while only a third or fewer have confidence in the other leaders. (We did not ask about confidence in Netanyahu.)
In the Philippines, 68% have confidence in Trump, while 61% have confidence in Macron and around half or more have confidence in the other leaders.

In some other countries, including several middle-income nations (as defined by World Bank lending groups) like Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria and Peru, Trump is among the leaders rated most positively. In most of these countries, confidence in Trump is similar to confidence in either Xi or Macron.

A bar chart showing How views of Trump compare with views of other world leaders

Where do people have more negative views of Trump than other leaders?

Trump is either the leader with the lowest confidence rating or tied for lowest in many countries. This is the case, for example, in the United States’ neighbors to both the south and north:

In Mexico, 11% have confidence in Trump, compared with 18% who have confidence in Netanyahu. Around three-in-ten have confidence in Putin and Xi.
Canadians have similarly low levels of confidence in Putin (18%), Trump (20%) and Netanyahu (23%) and relatively more confidence in Xi (35%), Macron (59%) and Zelenskyy (65%).

In three European countries – France, Germany and Greece – confidence ratings for Trump are among the lowest of the leaders asked about, often tied with Putin, Netanyahu or both. For instance, 16% of Germans have confidence in Trump and similar shares say the same about Putin (15%) and Netanyahu (15%), a sharp contrast to the 72% of Germans who have confidence in Macron.

Trump tends to receive particularly low marks relative to other leaders in the Muslim-majority publics surveyed. Among Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, for example, only 4% have confidence in Trump – similar to the 2% who say the same of Netanyahu, but much lower than the roughly four-in-ten who have confidence in Putin and Xi. In Malaysia, too, Trump ties with Netanyahu for the lowest rating.