Washington: Australians hold some of the least favourable views of America and Donald Trump in the world, research has found, with just 18 per cent saying they have confidence in the US president to do the right thing regarding global affairs.
The Pew Research Centre survey of more than 42,000 people across 36 countries found most of the world now holds an unfavourable opinion of the United States, while half feel Washington is not a reliable partner, and fewer than a quarter have confidence in Trump.
It comes as banter and trash talk between Australian and American soccer fans has occasionally bubbled over into open hostility during the World Cup, prompting debate on social media about Australian views of the US.
The study found 76 per cent of Australians had an unfavourable opinion of the world’s most powerful nation – significantly more than the United Kingdom (58 per cent), Canada (66), Japan (50), Spain (67) and France (70).
Only Sweden, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey and the West Bank/East Jerusalem (polled as a separate country by the Pew Research Centre) held more unfavourable views. The US was the most popular in Israel (where 81 per cent have positive views), Ghana (68), Nigeria and Kenya (63 each).
In Australia, the proportion of people who rated the US as a reliable partner crashed to 37 per cent, down from 79 per cent in 2022 when Joe Biden was president, mirroring trends in most other countries.
“This downward turn in opinion has taken place in several nations with which the US has longstanding economic and security ties,” the researchers noted, giving Canada as an example. “Large declines have also been measured in some of America’s key Asia-Pacific partners.”
Australians also hold some of the most unfavourable views of Trump himself, with 82 per cent saying they have no confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs. That is roughly on par with Canada, Thailand, Italy, Germany and France.
Chinese President Xi Jinping won the trust of more Australians than Trump, with 23 per cent saying they had confidence in him to do the right thing, compared with 18 per cent for Trump. Xi was trusted more than Trump in most of the surveyed countries, often by much bigger margins than in Australia.
Across the 36 countries, there was little support for how Trump dealt with major foreign policy issues. About three-quarters of respondents disapproved of his handling of Iran, tariffs and the conflict in Gaza, as well as the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The global survey was taken between February and May 2026, meaning the negative views towards Trump were recorded at the same time as a sustained rise in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. In every country, most or all interviews took place after the launch of the Iran war on February 28, researchers said. The non-partisan Pew Research Centre has examined attitudes to the US for more than two decades.
The results came as Australia’s Lowy Institute also detected a drop in sentiment towards the US in its annual poll. Trust in the superpower to act responsibly fell to a record low of 31 per cent, just 3 percentage points ahead of China.
But nearly three-quarters of Australians still rated the US alliance as “very important” or “fairly important” to national security, the Lowy poll found.
Notwithstanding recent World Cup tourism, fewer Australians are travelling to the US for leisure. Arrivals fell another 9.2 per cent in the first five months of 2026 compared with the same period last year, which had already declined from 2024. That was driven entirely by a 10.7 per cent drop in tourism visas; business visas ticked up slightly, and student visas climbed nearly 5 per cent.
This reflected a worldwide trend. Tourism visas granted to Italians fell 12.6 per cent in the five months to May, France was down 12.7 per cent, Germany 16.4 per cent and the UK 3 per cent, according to preliminary US Commerce Department data.
Visitors from Denmark – whose territory of Greenland is openly coveted by Trump for US “national security” purposes – are down 30 per cent from 2025.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
