CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten highlighted grim new polling for President Donald Trump as he travels to China for his first official trip there since returning to the Oval Office.
The 79-year-old president departed Tuesday for Beijing, where a three-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to include two bilateral meetings and a state banquet.
The trip—the first by a sitting U.S. president since Trump’s 2017 visit—comes after Trump’s second-term tariff war with the superpower backfired horribly, with China-watchers warning that Xi is now holding all the cards heading into the summit.
As the visit gets underway, polling suggests voters remain largely unimpressed with Trump’s handling of China.
Fox News polling shows that Trump’s net approval on China has fallen from +9 points in his first term to -15 today.
“In term number one, China was a strength for Donald Trump. Americans really liked what he was doing vis-à-vis China, and no longer is that the case,” Enten said Wednesday, shortly after Trump arrived in China.
Enten said the decline is being driven in part by key voter groups that were central to Trump’s 2024 election: independent voters and non-college-educated white voters.
Among independents, his net approval on China has shifted from +9 in his first term to -42, while among non-college-educated white voters it has dropped from +34 to -3, Enten said.
He also pointed to broader international trends, citing Gallup data showing that global views of the United States have weakened relative to China since 2021. The U.S. net favorability has fallen from +11 to -15 over that period, while China’s has improved from -11 to -1.
“China’s image [is] improving, the United States’ image [is] going down under Trump just like his own numbers on China [are] going down here in the United States,” Enten said.
Trump’s China trip comes as his approval ratings are plummeting.
Polls have shown his popularity is lower than ever amid concerns over the economy and his deeply unpopular war with Iran.
The latest CNN/SSRS poll found that Trump’s net approval rating on the economy has plunged to -40, the worst level recorded for him on the issue.
Polls have also shown Trump’s approval rating falling deep underwater with the groups that were key to his success in 2024. That includes Gen Z men, non-college-educated white voters, and Hispanic voters.
“What we’re dealing with is a Donald Trump message that is not actually meeting the reality, and that is why non-college voters have been going away from the president of the United States and going away from Republicans as well,” Enten said in February.
