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Americans’ perceptions of their country’s allies and enemies are hard to change

Despite the president’s best efforts, they see Mexico as a friend and Russia as a foe

By THE DATA TEAM

A SPAT between the leaders of America and Turkey escalated this week. In response to Turkey’s detention on cooked-up charges of an American pastor, Donald Trump ramped up tariffs on Turkish exports of steel and aluminium, and the Turkish lira fell 20% against the dollar. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, retaliated by raising tariffs on imports of American-made cars, drinks and tobacco, and encouraged Turks to boycott American products. “The Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar!” Mr Trump tweeted.

Turkey is just the latest example of Mr Trump trying to upend long-standing American relationships. Promising to be “tough” with his diplomacy, the president has upset some of his country’s closest allies, and sought to build bridges with a few of its avowed enemies. What effect has Mr Trump’s maverick style had on ordinary Americans’ perceptions of who is on their side and who is not?

YouGov, a pollster, has asked a representative sample of Americans, on behalf of The Economist, to rate certain countries on a scale from ally to friendly to unfriendly to enemy. Despite recent wobbles in relations with its prime minister, Theresa May, Britain is perceived to be America’s closest ally, with Americans rating it as somewhere between “ally” and “friendly”, on average. Canada, Japan, Germany and Israel all follow, firmly in the friendly zone. A widening partisan gap shows that Mr Trump has had some influence on his supporters—Republicans now see Canada and Germany as less friendly, and Israel as more friendly, than Democrats do—but the differences remain modest.

The largest partisan split in foreign relations is reserved for America’s southern neighbour. Democrats view Mexico as “friendly” on average, whereas Republicans view it with indifference, perhaps swayed by Mr Trump’s demonisation of the country. The overall national average, however, remains comfortably positive. Similarly, relations with China, Iran and Russia have become strained during Mr Trump’s presidency. As a result, Americans view these countries as somewhat more unfriendly. Republicans are more untrusting of all these countries than Democrats are, with the exception of Russia, whose head of state Mr Trump has attempted to charm. Mr Trump’s North Korean rapprochement in June has helped improve perceptions of the country somewhat.

Do Americans think that their president’s actions generally reflect their views on foreign policy? Perhaps not. Voters’ perceptions of Mr Trump’s attitudes towards other countries tend to be starkly different from their own. Americans think that Mr Trump is more unfriendly towards Britain, Canada, Japan, Germany and Mexico than they would be, by around 40 percentage points on average. In contrast, they see him as friendlier towards North Korea and Russia than they would appear to like.

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