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US President Donald Trump. (EPA/Yonhap News)

Since Donald Trump became president of the US, favorable views of the US have continued to fall overseas, recently reaching the lowest point on record, according to a new poll. Respondents in the poll also had less confidence in Trump than in any other major world leader.

On Sept. 15, the Pew Research Center, an American polling organization, published an online article containing the results of a telephone survey of 13,273 adults in 13 countries (South Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, and nine countries in Western Europe) conducted between June 10 and Aug. 13.

Only 17% of the South Koreans who were surveyed said they have confidence in Trump. That level rose from 17% in 2017 to 44% in 2018 and 46% in 2019, before falling sharply this year. That seems to represent the collapse of hopes that had been buoyed by US dialogue with North Korea. Confidence in former President Barack Obama stood at 75-88% during his time in office.

Confidence in Trump was below 20% in all nine countries in the survey other than Japan (25%), Australia (23%), and Canada (20%), with only 9% of Belgians saying they had confidence in Trump.

The only country surveyed in which more than half of respondents viewed the US favorably was South Korea, at 59%. Even so, South Korea saw the second biggest drop in favorability over the past year, at 18 percentage points, next to Japan (41%, down 27 points over the past year). This was the first year in which the US favorability rating fell by more than 10 points in all 11 countries (aside from Denmark and Belgium); in seven of those countries, including the Netherlands and France, US favorability ratings set a record low in surveys by the Pew Research Center.

When asked which country is the world’s leading economic power, the majority of South Koreans (77%) and Japanese (53%) chose the US, while respondents from other countries chose China. Averaged across the 13 countries, China was first at 48%, followed by the US at 34%, the EU at 7%, and Japan at 5%.

The survey found that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is viewed with the greatest confidence (76%) across the 13 countries. Other highly trusted leaders were French President Emmanuel Macron (64%) and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (48%). The poll found that respondents had greater confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin (23%) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (19%) than in Trump (16%).

By Shin Gi-sub, senior staff writer

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