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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLittle sign of renewed respect for US
ASHINGTON - Asked on Monday, President Donald Trump's 500th day in office, what he considers his top foreign policy achievement, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders quickly replied: "The strengthening of relationships with a number of foreign leaders." The State Department said the same with a tweet: "After 500 days in office, U.S. leadership is back on the world stage as the result of @POTUS's policies."
It's no surprise that top administration officials have alighted on that claim. The president has been making it at every opportunity - during a rally last week in Nashville, at the U.S. Naval Academy commencement ceremony and in off-the-cuff remarks to White House reporters last week, just to name the latest audiences.
"We are respected again, I can tell you that. We are respected again," Trump told the Navy cadets. "A lot of things have happened. We're respected again."
The evidence - both in nonpartisan polls and in the increasingly critical remarks of exasperated allies - suggests otherwise.
The president's bravado is about to be tested dramatically, beginning with a visit Thursday from Japan's President Shinzo Abe. On the weekend, he is to attend a summit in Canada with other leaders of the G7 - the Group of Seven major powers - and then hold the most high-stakes event of all on Tuesday - his meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
After 16 months, however, leaders of long-standing allies like Abe, France's President Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May - all initially deferential to Trump and his famous ego - have grown frustrated and at times disapproving.
Significantly, so have their citizens, increasing the pressure on foreign leaders to distance themselves from Trump's America. Across 134 countries, the median approval of U.S. leadership dropped 18 points in Trump's first year, to a record low of just 30 percent, according to a Gallup survey released in January. That was before Trump's decisions to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and impose tariffs on a number of allies, which further alienated many of them.
The finding echoed a Pew Research Center survey last year that found in all but two of 37 nations polled, Trump got far lower marks than President Barack Obama; the exceptions were Russia and Israel.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/little-sign-of-renewed-respect-for-us/ar-AAyk0Z2?li=BBnb7Kz
TimeSnowDemos
(476 posts)I can tell you that the US is a global laughingstock now.
It's also seen and retrograde and willing to damage multi-generational alliances for little more than PR.
And to that end the rest of the world is working around the US. Thats the theme of the Trump Presidency abroad: the US is lost for an unknown amount of time and can't be relied on; time to solve problems and forge trade agreements without them.
syringis
(5,101 posts)A little comfort : we distinguish very well between Trump and the Americans.
He is the laughingstock.
TimeSnowDemos
(476 posts)More people I speak too question how America could have done this to themselves. During Iraq it was how the government could do it... People are less sure that this isn't the future of US politics instead of a blip.
YMMV OBV.
rpannier
(24,330 posts)Between him and his wife, there are at least 4 scandals that has the public less than happy. Some members of the LDP continue to be embarrassments and he is less-and-less able to control them as he did just a couple of years ago.
That combined with a growing feeling among the Japanese public that his 'closeness' to trump has profited Japan nothing
dalton99a
(81,520 posts)MAGA, my ass
syringis
(5,101 posts)MAGA : Made Allies Groan, Appalled
Not brilliant but it is all I could think off.