> China is now seen as a more positive influence than the US. It’s the first time this has been the case during the ten years we have tracked this question. Across the 29 countries covered, an average of 49% say China will have positive effect on world affairs, up 10 points on six months ago.
That's the real change.
The drop of America is consistent with it's president behaviour towards its allies, but it's still surprising that it's so intense that now China seems better for the world than it was a few months ago, even though nothing really changed.
I have seen estimates that dissolving USAID has caused 10,000 excess deaths, so far.
They threatened three countries with military invasion.
They placed real punitive tariffs on most of the world besides Russia.
They began abducting legal foreign residents and sending some to a foreign prison camp, and not complying with legal orders to return them.
They are responsible for a surge of detained foreign visitors at the border in prison like conditions, sometimes with limited access to their embassies.
They disavowed NATO, saying Europe would have to be responsible for its own security.
I could go on, but China is in fact a more reliable and a more responsible world actor than the US now.
They did get to respond publicly to the trade war threats against them and seem to be doing pretty well in supporting the global rules based order as part of that.
I think people tend to think in relative rather than absolute terms here. US going unpredictable makes China seem relatively better, which doesn't translate so well on some absolute scale.
Possibly a better poll would be to arrange the countries in order of trustworthiness etc.
China is not openly and repeatedly threatening to invade its allies militarily. And I say "allies", but at this point it's rather "partners". And those ex-allies wish they did not depend so much on the US.
It is reasonable view point considering history that you don't necessarily have allies. Well Europe had them. But most of the world being screwed over time after time have extremely good reasons to not trust west.
China being all about business is very reasonable, both sides will try to do best for themselves. Which is power dynamic that you can trust to continue.
Of China? Technically, I believe, no, in the sense of having a mutual defense pact; practically, yes, at least, more so than they are of, say, the US (with whom they also do not have a mutual defense pact), which has legally designated Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally".
Not nearly high enough. And the rest of the world is watching a good chunk of that disapproving half sit on their thumbs while he tears the country apart.
Oh, look! More blanket generalizations that ignore the very much discussed discourse around Biden's faculties, the democratic party's tactics during their campaign and shift towards Harris, and the many nuances behind why people chose to vote for Harris as opposed to Trump.
I've made no generalizations. I simply used OP's con artist phrase to highlight the fact that not all voters did what OP intimated. I'm sure that there are those who voted for Trump that did feel he was a con artist, to use one example.
Perhaps slapping some quotes over "recognize a con artist" in my first comment would've helped clarify things.
Oh knock it off. As an American this mentality is so dumb. It's not a gotcha. It just shows how many Americans either voted for him or didn't vote at all, which is a vote for trump.
So really, the vast majority of Americans, in practicality, voted for trump.
The honest truth is that americans voted against democrats, not for republicans. Your mentality shows how ignorant people are willfully being. Many people sat out the election because all candidates were garbage, and democrats made it worse.
Democrats put up a BLACK WOMAN as their candidate and then acted surprised that a majority of americans said "no thanks". Then democrats like to act like "Oh we would have won if more people just voted", which ignores the reality of what happened.
I suspect a little of both. Plus some people were turned off by the forced democratic “primary”. I remember similar sentiments when Hillary ran. I just realized Trump has only won when running against a woman. I think we’re just not quite ready for a female president, for whatever reason.
For what it's worth, I don't disagree with some of what you're saying. I just don't feel like it's productive to engage with someone who starts off a conversation by telling someone to "Knock it off" and then proceeds to call their perspective dumb. I'm happy to chat, but your attitude and tone suggest that your heels are firmly dug in and you aren't actually interested in a constructive dialogue. I could be wrong, but your doubling down by attacking my politeness suggests that maybe I'm not. At any rate, I'll pass.
You can't maintain that if the primary "consumers" of those exports are not actual allies.
Yes, all the more reason why attacking our allies is pure insanity.
A lot of the countries we just attacked in the "trade war" are the same ones who buy our Treasury bonds.
"Tariff Man" failed to make this obvious connection until after it was demonstrated to him. T-Bill yields jumped half a percent in a week after he made a complete fool of himself with "Liberation Day" in the WH rose garden. With one act of utter stupidity, "Tariff Man" cost the country more than DOGE has saved.
Oh for sure, they're not doing a good job. My point is only that I don't believe the status quo was maintainable, so "they could've just maintained the status quo" isn't a good position either.
My point is that something demonstrably worse than the "status quo" is actually regression --- the opposite of progress --- one of the dumbest possible positions.
In other words, unforced economic suicide is certainly an option to end the status quo --- but not a very good/desirable one.
>Only six months ago 52% of Canadians saw the US as a positive influencer; now only 19% feel the same. This 33-point fall is the largest recorded for any country.
Not shocking, we’re all bundled into a clown car, you get that lurching “here we go” feeling.
Surprised it could get any lower. We elect clowns to office and exalt psychopaths to leadership in industry. What happened to community and civic duty?
> “[Ford said] ".. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
> "Odd," said Arthur. "I thought you said it was a democracy."
> "I did," said Ford. "It is."
> "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
> "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
> "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
> "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
> "But," said Arthur, going in for the big one again, "why?"
> "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.”
Hence why we need to work for direct democracy. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to get there because it is not in the interest of your representatives, or so they believe.
People love to harp on sleepy joe but the administration continued to function and move things forward even with an aged out leader. Trumps complete disregard for leadership and laws has made it a much bigger joke imo.
That’s a horrible conclusion. It’s anti-constitutional and exactly why you have unchecked power now. We have checks and balances. The courts and congress are the safeguards.
And yet, this one is the one that's torching the US's reputation across the world. What does that tell you? Maybe the rest of the world thinks Trump is worse than an empty suit?
I spent last weekend in Toronto. What I found interesting was how many Canadians just couldn't accept how stupid 51 % of Americans are. I had to break down who these people were to try and help them get it. The USA never had a good reputation abroad anyway, but now they have completely shit the bed. When you tell someone abroad you're American, you have to follow through immediately with I didn't vote for the loser, and half of America didn't either.
Trump and his Administration along with the Republicans have shit the bed and in some perverted way love it and keep shitty the bed. How do we get through the next 4 years with a complete clown in office is anyone's guess. My only hope as an Independent is that the Democrats take the House and Senate in 2 years.
Thanks for this, I'm interested in hearing more anecdotes about Americans traveling abroad recently. I'll be in Italy and Greece for a few days each starting late next week and I'm curious (maybe slightly nervous) about how interactions and conversations with locals will go.
Can we talk about how HN's "flag" feature is being used to suppress topics that tech-right folks don't want to hear? Every single post critical of Musk or Trump gets flagged to oblivion these days.
Same, and FWIW I just recently noticed that [flagged] stories will continue showing up on the 'Top X' feeds (if they're popular enough), but they drop off if you're browsing the 'Homepage' feed.
I think it's more that every single post about Musk or Trump gets flagged to oblivion these days. (I mean, that's about the same thing, because just about every post that's about them is critical of them.)
Some of it is Musk fanboys and Trump shills and Russian political operatives and such. I'm sure some of that is going on.
But some of it is just regular HN users who are sick and tired of political stories. There have been a huge increase in political stories in the past three months. And even if some of the stories are interesting, to some people, the second story in 12 hours isn't interesting, and the third similar story this week also isn't interesting.
Some people are here instead of Reddit for a reason. They don't want HN to turn into Reddit. So they tend to flag political (or politics-adjacent) stories, unless they are directly tech-relevant - and maybe even then.
I agree with you but FWIW I think a lot of folks on this site want HN to be Reddit. I think a lot of people these days use HN as another big subreddit and modulate their content and voting behavior on that basis. If anything, I think a lot of people left Reddit because they disapproved of the API changes and began to use HN the same way they used Reddit because they felt that HN's ownership aligned with their ideas of how to run a site better. The draw to them is the different ownership not different decorum or voting behaviors. If anything, the decorum and voting behavior on Reddit is probably their expectation for engaging with upvote-based social media. You can see this behavior leaking into a lot of other threads on this site, not just the political ones.
I don't flag these stories, but I do think this "fight" is one we'll eventually lose. The majority of users here want to use HN as another Reddit. They don't really care about what made HN different. As such I think it's time for us to accept the new normal. Our party is over.
I think that was kind of the point? The political right in America felt that a "good reputation" was costing us too much. They seem to care about other things more than their reputation.
I find it interesting that the US reputation in South America seems pretty good.
Pretty sure that the US reputation dropped during Trump's first term, but this time he surely has broken his personal record. Also I think this time it's not only Trump: his oligarchs probably had an influence on that (starting with Musk and his Nazi salutes).
Of course, the threats to invade Canada and EU territories (amongst others) had an impact, too. As for the tariffs, I really feel like it's helping China's reputation: they stay strong against the bully who seems to be about to lose that battle.
South America is also having its Trump moment currently, even if it's not as extreme.
But with Milei in Argentina, Noboa in Ecuador, Bolsonaro in Brasil and the upheaval in Chile and Colombia, there's plenty of far-right stupidity to go around and keep supporting Trump even if he's not playing nice.
And there's also the elephant in the room that's Venezuela. You see it with Venezuelans all the time. Even though they're being targeted by the Trump administration, they all still love him as if he were some sort of messiah just because he's opposed to Maduro.
The USSR saved a ton of people from Nazi occupation also, does that mean they enjoy carte blanche to do whatever and threaten whoever and invade whoever and do whatever they want and anyone who dislikes them should be left defenseless?
Maybe our reputation is slipping because we are needlessly threatening and taunting our allies, because we are detaining random tourists with legal visas to scare them, and because our President doesn't understand 1st year collegiate economics
and yet - somehow Russia is in an active European land war, Germany seems poised to yet again try to control the continent as the largest EU memeber. You know, let them have it.
Why? The article is about how nations are perceived.
Given the current climate, I’m not surprised that China is perceived as a more positive role than the US.
From my own perspective; They seem to be interested in maintaining stability in international trade, which keeps peace and allows people to keep their jobs.
America is a free market who uses its military to keep shipping and global trade free from interference. We deport some illegal immigrants.
China is a communist country with real life re-education camps. They manipulate markets and steal intellectual property. They’ve been cozied up to authoritarian and oppressive regimes, like Russia, for a long time.
> China is a communist country with real life re-education camps. They manipulate markets and steal intellectual property. They’ve been cozied up to authoritarian and oppressive regimes, like Russia, for a long time.
Yes, definitely agree.
> America is a free market who uses its military to keep shipping and global trade free from interference. We deport some illegal immigrants.
I think everything you said about China applies to America now, just for shorter period of time than for China. America's government officials say things that are indistinguishable from Kremlin propaganda. Directives and tariffs are put in place to directly manipulate markets in other countries. America is now deporting immigrants that were allowed to stay in America to prisons where human rights are violated. America's Secretary of Health is advocating for labor and re-education camps.
With China, I feel like we know how insidious they are and what they do. With America, we have no clue how far it will go.
So out of two evils, currently I expect China to be the lesser one. That really says something.
China is an apartheid state with actual concentration camps. Hundreds of millions of people in forced labor, several hundred million more in deplorable living conditions, the world's largest polluter, and has ambitions of invading their neighbor. They are also the main supporter of Russian occupation of Ukraine while ignoring sanctions to conduct business with Iran supplying them with materials to make drones and bombs.
The average non-party Chinese family lives in a less 60 SQ meters home. Works 60 hours a week, has no assets, and is marketed cigarettes by the government.
People bitching about the US and praising China are ridiculous.
I don't disagree, but like I said to the other responder: All this applies to America now and we don't know how much worse this will get.
> People bitching about the US and praising China are ridiculous.
It's not bitching about the US and praising China. It's "Which one of these do you think is the lesser evil?". Until very recently, most people would pick China. With the current momentum, more people are picking America. Maybe the situation stabilises in America, and people start seeing China as the bigger evil again. Maybe it keeps the current trajectory, then definitely America.
If not pure propaganda it's ignorant delusion. The US removing a small number of criminals illegally in the country draws massive correlations to Nazi Germany, meanwhile China has 1 million+ people in actual concentration camps simply based on their ethnicity.
The fact that other countries aren't standing up to China as much as the US is now is the thing that's really mind bending.
Maybe if you run an international business? So like, 0.01% of citizens?
I actually kind of like that the US is no longer being put on a pedestal. Let someone else have a turn. See how they do, maybe good things will happen.
Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Meta, Tesla and many more US companies operate internationally and their valuations are based on their ability to serve billions of people globally. You will have very different valuations, profits and salaries if those end up with a market of 330M people instead.
I suspect that more than %0.01 of the Americans will be impacted.
Is it a bad thing if those giant tech companies come back down to earth? I would argue no. They do not provide value, they extract it, generally, and play shitty games with taxes.
What good does Meta provide to humanity? Why do I pay netflix to watch ads? Why does google ignore their own search api directives when I put a word in quotes? (To show ads) The only possible actual value amazon created is AWS, the rest is peddling garbage products from garbage vendors. Apple lost the plot somehow with their sw/hw stack, they could use a wakeup. And tesla, ironically, seems poised to be the first domino to tip, the cybertruck is a disaster.
If those companies have such a significant impact on global citizens, they probably should blow up, that isn't a "good thing" at all, that much influence.
Those writing JS at Meta won't start making cars. It's just that US will become poorer overall and some might feel better for themselves that they are not in Software. If you are anti-USA I guess that's something desired.
I believe US farmers export 20% internationally. And most of the farmers I know have told me only a small handful of farmers are in that group of exporters, the biggest players. The "little guy" will be fine.
20% of farmers are big enough to skip the wholesalers and sell internationally. The other 80% sell to local wholesalers to sell internationally. And even though most wheat et al is consumed in the US, a significant amount is exported. A small drop in demand can have a massive impact on price.
That's the real change.
The drop of America is consistent with it's president behaviour towards its allies, but it's still surprising that it's so intense that now China seems better for the world than it was a few months ago, even though nothing really changed.
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