U.S. Favorability in 45 Countries: Western Allies Cool Further, Emerging Economies Hold Warm. China Now Rates America Higher Than Canada Does.

Since our prior coverage of this survey's top-line findings, one data point has drawn sustained attention from analysts tracking the Western alliance's cohesion: the U.S. favorability score inside China now exceeds those recorded in Canada, Belgium, and Sweden, countries that have been formal American allies for decades.

The underlying dataset comes from Morning Consult's America Reputation Tracker, drawing on January 2026 survey responses across 45 countries. Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld compiled the country rankings.

Where America Still Has Friends

Israel and Nigeria share the top spot at 83% favorable. Morocco, Vietnam, and Peru round out the top five. India, the world's most populous country and a growing strategic counterweight to China, posts 62% favorability — the highest of any major economy in the survey and well ahead of longtime partners like Canada, Germany, and France.

Argentina also places in the top ten. The pattern across high-favorability countries is consistent: nations that view the U.S. as an active economic, security, or diplomatic partner tend to rate it well, regardless of whether they share a Western democratic tradition.

Where It Has Fallen Off

Nine of the ten lowest favorability scores belong to Western countries. The survey was conducted in January 2026, meaning it captures the early months of the second Trump administration, a period marked by tariff escalations against Canada and the European Union, public criticism of NATO burden-sharing, suggestions that Canada could become the 51st U.S. state, and stated interest in acquiring Greenland.

According to Morning Consult's data as reported by Visual Capitalist, Canada has responded by expanding economic cooperation with Europe and seeking closer engagement with China, a meaningful shift for a country whose economy is deeply integrated with the United States.

The China Number Is Worth Examining Closely

The strongest good-faith concern raised by critics of this framing is that a higher favorability score inside China doesn't reflect genuine alignment or trust. It may simply mean Chinese respondents have less visceral opposition to U.S. policy than Canadians who feel economically targeted. Survey methodology matters: responses in an authoritarian state may not capture what people actually believe, and Morning Consult's access and sampling in China is constrained in ways it isn't in liberal democracies. Those are real limits.

That said, the directional finding stands on its own terms. Even with sampling caveats, the fact that Canada, America's largest trading partner and a fellow NATO and Five Eyes member, scores below its chief geopolitical rival in how warmly it views the U.S. is a measurable shift worth tracking. The cause isn't mysterious: the tariff fight and the annexation rhetoric hit Canada directly and personally in a way they don't hit Beijing.

What's Actually Driving the Gap

The countries where U.S. favorability is climbing or staying high tend to have one thing in common: they see American engagement as a net benefit to their security or economic position. Vietnam views the U.S. as a counterbalance to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea. India is navigating its own border disputes with China. Nigeria and other African economies increasingly see American investment and partnership as an alternative to Chinese-financed infrastructure deals with debt strings attached.

The countries going cold are largely those that feel they're bearing costs without a clear offsetting benefit. Tariffs, reduced diplomatic predictability, and rhetorical pressure weigh differently depending on who's absorbing them. That's a structural problem, not a polling artifact.

What the ZeroHedge Framing Leaves Out

ZeroHedge republished Visual Capitalist's summary without adding any independent reporting, context on Morning Consult's methodology, or engagement with why the results might differ from prior years' baselines. The piece treats the snapshot as self-explanatory. A single January 2026 survey doesn't tell you whether these trends are accelerating, stabilizing, or reversing, and the piece makes no attempt to answer that. For a story this consequential to U.S. foreign policy positioning, the absence of trend-line context is a real gap.

The Open Question

Morning Consult runs its America Reputation Tracker continuously. The January 2026 data is now roughly five months old as of June 20, 2026. What the survey has NOT yet answered, and what subsequent waves will, is whether the tariff negotiations and any diplomatic repair work since January have moved the numbers in Canada, Germany, or France. If allied favorability is still declining in mid-2026 data, that's a durable structural problem. If it has stabilized or recovered, the January reading was a temporary trough. Until Morning Consult publishes updated country-level figures, that question stays open.