U.S. Falls in U.S. News Best Countries Rankings
The whole world was watching the U.S. election. And for the most part, it didn't like what it saw.
More than 70 percent of survey respondents lost respect for U.S. leadership as a result of the toxic nature of the U.S. election, according to a poll conducted for the 2017 U.S. News Best Countries Rankings.
That sentiment, combined with global distaste for Donald Trump, played a role in the U.S. falling from the No. 4 Best Country to No. 7.
If the election had been global, about 60 percent of people would have backed Hillary Clinton, according to survey of more than 21,000 people from 36 countries in all regions of the world. Support for Donald Trump was lowest in Mexico, where only 4.6 percent of people supported Trump, and South Korea, where only 8.6 percent of people backed the president. His approval ratings were also low in European countries like France, Germany, Norway and Denmark.
The shifting global opinions of the U.S. is no surprise to foreign policy experts.
"It's pretty clear that Donald Trump ran and was elected as a nationalist who would look out, as he put it, just for American interests, and who thought the U.S. was doing too much and was being exploited by the rest of the world," says Thomas Wright, fellow and director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. "That has made the rest of the world very nervous."
To many people outside the U.S., the election of Donald Trump represents an unpredictable and dangerous move in U.S. foreign policy, says Jacob Parakilas with the British think tank Chatham House.
"Europeans look at Trump and see Berlusconi. South Americans look at Trump and see Hugo Chavez," he says. "And I think there's some truth to that, but obviously they had smaller countries with smaller economies and militaries in their command. Their potential impact was much smaller."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-falls-in-us-news-best-countries-rankings/ar-AAnVcK3?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=edgsp
