President Donald Trump is rebuilding a key international constituency: Anti-Americans, one columnist wrote Monday.
Adrian Woolridge, global business columnist for Bloomberg, noted that anti-American sentiment is en vogue as Trump alienates international leaders.
Woolridge cited the March YouGov poll showing positive sentiment toward the U.S. has fallen 28 points since Trump was elected, and the columnist expects these numbers to continue falling.
"Trump embodies everything critics of the US have always warned about, multiplied several times over. Yankee arrogance? He and Vance, in the Oval Office, shamelessly bullied the leader of a nation victimized by the Russian president’s aggression. Yankee imperialism? Trump bragged to a cheering Congress that he will take over Greenland 'one way or another.' Yankee incompetence? His tariffs are destabilizing global stock markets and downgrading his own economy," wrote Woolridge.
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He noted that for centuries, the U.S. has aided anyone seeking to provide "stability and security" and to lead and spread democracy and "free-market capitalism."
"Those justifications are turning into dust," Woolridge wrote, lamenting that the U.S. is now the "source of global instability" with "erratic" swings.
"Under Trump, the US is groveling to the world’s biggest enemy of liberal democracy, Putin, and injecting massive instability into global markets," said Woolridge. If Trump continues on this path, the columnist predicted it'll only worsen for the U.S.
He also thinks that if Trump continues on his current course, anti-American sentiment will likely be "transformative" in Europe. Meanwhile, the columnist said, Trump's coattails will likely drag down populist politicians along with him.
Nigel Farage is one of the best examples, he said. The leader of Britain’s Reform Party is already pulling back on his attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a contentious Oval Office meeting. Now, Farage says Vice President J.D. Vance is "wrong, wrong, wrong" on British troops.
"Both the Labour and Conservative parties think Farage’s closeness to Trump could prove to be an electoral problem for Reform," he said.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on a huge down-swing, and analysts assumed that the Conservatives were headed for an October victory in the upcoming election. "That's no longer a foregone conclusion," wrote Woolridge.
"The genie of anti-Americanism is now not only out of the bottle but doing immense damage to the country’s long-term interests," he closed.
Read the full column here.
