Much Of The World Doesn't Trust President Trump, Pew Survey Finds

A clear majority of people living outside the U.S. do not trust President Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, with fewer than one-third expressing confidence in him — an opinion also reflected in attitudes toward America generally, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

However, the metrics have improved somewhat for the president since a similar survey two years ago, increasing to 29% expressing confidence from 22%.

The survey published Wednesday was conducted in 33 countries from the spring to early autumn of last year, after relations between the U.S. and North Korea had thawed somewhat but just as tensions were ratcheting up between Washington and Tehran.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that the percentage of those surveyed who expressed "no confidence" in Trump (64%) was a mirror image of the 64% who expressed confidence in former President Barack Obama in a survey published in June 2017.

In the earlier survey, favorable views of the United States dropped from 64% at the end of the Obama presidency to 49% when Trump became president. That "favorable" opinion of the U.S. had edged up to 54% in the report published Wednesday.

The Pew study also sought to gauge respondents' opinions on other world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

They were most confident of Merkel (46%), who got the highest marks from respondents in the Netherlands (82%) and the lowest in Greece (22%). Overall, 41% of those surveyed said they were confident of Macron's handling of world affairs. He scored best among Germans (73%) and was viewed least favorably by respondents in Turkey (14%).