New Delhi: Donald Trump has, on several occasions, claimed that he has ended up to 10 wars and global conflicts. However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center suggests that most people are not happy with the US President’s handling of world affairs.
The survey, conducted across 36 countries between 8 February and 13 May 2026, shows that Trump’s popularity in many countries has gone down over the past year while the overall ratings for the US are also negative.
For the survey, Pew interviewed over 42,000 people, mostly after the US and Israel launched a strike on Iran on 26 February.
Across the 36 countries, only 37 per cent people hold favourable views of the US and only 23 per cent have confidence that Trump is taking the right decisions concerning the world. There is no country where the attitude of people toward Trump has become more positive since last year.
Trump enjoys the best approval rating in the Philippines, where 68 per cent of the people have confidence in his leadership of world affairs. Israel comes second, where Jews hold more positive views of the US President than Arabs.
In the African countries of Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, too, majority people feel positive about Trump, while in Hungary and Colombia, over half of the people interviewed said they have confidence in him.
Trump got the lowest ratings in Jerusalem and Turkey, where only 4 per cent and 6 per cent have confidence in him, respectively. A majority of people in Sweden, Mexico, Pakistan, Malaysia, Netherlands, and France also do not have faith in Trump.
Among other world leaders, only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a lower rating than Trump, with people having more confidence in French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Dip in positive ratings for the US
When it comes to how the world sees the US today, the Pew survey shows that the opinions about the country are largely negative in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with seven in ten or more people in many of these nations rating the US unfavourable.
According to Pew, in many countries that it has surveyed since 2002, positive ratings for the US are either at or near the lowest they have ever been. These include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea and the UK.
The respondents were also asked about Trump’s handling of international issues, such as the Iran war, the Gaza conflict, and US immigration policies. Over 70 per cent are unhappy with the way Trump is dealing with the Iran war while only 18 per cent say that the way the President is handling the situation in Gaza is right.
Most people (65 per cent) across the 36 countries also don’t support Trump’s US immigration policies.