Donald Trump’s ally-bashing, economy-busting second stint in the White House is putting America last, according to the results of a new survey.
The United States is now “less feared by its traditional adversaries” as historically friendly states “feel ever more distant,” per the results of a 21-country poll conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, first reported Thursday by The Guardian.
Crucially, the overwhelming majority of almost 26,000 respondents said they only expect China’s dominance on the world stage to continue rapidly expanding over the next ten years.
Trump has consistently railed against China for “ripping off our country for years.” He’s referred to the COVID-19 pandemic, which beset the tail end of his first administration, as the “China virus” and the “Kung Flu,” and threatened to “destroy” the powerful and repressive Asian nation.
The survey was conducted across 13 European countries—where only 16 percent of people still consider the U.S. an ally, against 20 percent who view America as a rival or enemy—along with Russia, India, Turkey, China, Brazil, South Korea and South Africa.
Authors of the report said the results suggest U.S. actions are “boosting China,” and that the MAGA leader’s newfound thirst for invading both allied and enemy nations indicate Trump now believes “it is better for a great power to be feared than to be loved.”
The survey further indicates that distance between the U.S. and its historic partners across the Atlantic will only continue to grow as European leaders face mounting pressure to be “realistic and daring at the same time” in relations with the White House.
Trump has kicked off the new year with what critics have billed as an all-out assault on the rules-based international order that has—by almost all metrics, and contrary to accepted MAGA narratives—traditionally benefitted U.S. interests.
Having spent much of 2025 publicly and privately lobbying to secure himself perhaps the most coveted honor on the planet, Trump has responded to his Nobel Peace Prize snub in November by bombing Nigeria, a key U.S. ally in Western Africa, and with a lightning invasion of Venezuela to kidnap despot Nicolas Maduro, who now faces narcoterrorism charges in a New York federal court.
Since Maduro’s capture, the MAGA leader and his allies have similarly threatened Iran, along with allies like Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Greenland, the last of which is a territory controlled by Denmark, a fellow NATO member.
Asked during an Oval Office sitdown with The New York Times last week if there is now anything that might constrain his increasingly aggressive foreign policy, Trump replied: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
