U.S. Brands Beware: Anti-American Sentiment Is Rising Sharply Among Global Consumers

Anti-American sentiment is rising sharply among global consumers amid Trump’s tariff threats

At the tail end of the Biden administration, global views of the United States were generally positive. In the 42 overseas markets where Morning Consult fields syndicated surveys daily, net favorability toward America — measured as the share of adults holding favorable views of it minus the share holding unfavorable views — was positive in most of them. Russia and China, not surprisingly, were the main exceptions, alongside middling views in parts of Western Europe and Canada.

Fast forward several months, and the outlook has darkened dramatically. The Trump administration’s tariff agenda — marked by initial salvos targeting Canada, China, and Mexico and, more recently, global steel and aluminum — is at least partly to blame. In the window surrounding the administration’s Feb. 1 executive orders announcing tariffs on the aforementioned countries, and threats of reciprocal tariffs targeting the European Union and other markets on Feb. 13, global consumers’ views of the United States turned south in a profound way, with notably worse perceptions in the Americas and Europe.

Country-by-country trends are especially stark, with Russia seeing a notable boost in favorability toward the United States amid President Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine and related sparring with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Israel has also seen a small boost amid Trump’s recent proposal to end the Israel-Hamas conflict and resettle Gazans elsewhere, to Israel’s potential advantage. By contrast, many of America’s traditional geopolitical allies and partners have posted sharp declines in views of the United States, including Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, to name just a few.

China — which was recently subject to tariffs alongside Canada and Mexico — is an outlier, showing a slight improvement in views of the United States. On the one hand, we view this as a potential nod to the relatively restrained Chinese tariff response to date, in line with efforts by Beijing to play somewhat nice ahead of rumored bilateral discussions. Trump’s decision to impose 20% tariffs on China instead of the 60% he supported while on the campaign trail may also have softened the blow. But brands should remain cautious about the recent shift: Chinese views of the United States remain highly negative overall, such that even the recent swing in sentiment has done little to nudge things in a substantially better direction.

The rise in Anti-American sentiment is systematic and largely unprecedented

Globally, the magnitude of the shift in views of the United States coinciding with Trump’s tariff announcements is exceedingly rare and hard to understate since we began tracking such views daily across all 43 Morning Consult Intelligence markets in 2022. The only two events that have driven systematic declines in views of the United States on par with those observed now are wars: specifically, the onset of the war in Ukraine, which saw Russian consumers sour on the United States and on American brands, and the onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which saw consumers in countries with large Muslim populations do the same.

As a result of these shifts, global average favorability of the United States has fallen roughly 20 points on a net basis in the span of barely two months after several years of stability. And in virtually no region has America’s reputation remained unscathed, with consumer markets in North America and Europe seeing large declines that have swung sentiment into negative territory for the first time in years and show no signs of an imminent rebound.

U.S. brands should plan for reputational exposure to Anti-American sentiment on an ongoing basis

The potential risks to U.S. brands serving overseas consumers arising from growing anti-American sentiment are similarly hard to understate as ongoing tariff announcements roll out almost daily. As a growing body of “country affinity” research conducted by our team has shown, geopolitical shocks — in this case, the rapidly evolving U.S.-led trade war — can drive global consumers to reevaluate their views of the offending country and, by extension, their opinions of U.S. companies. In a nutshell: When global consumers sour on America, homegrown companies serving overseas consumers are sometimes poised to suffer the fallout.

U.S. brands serving Canadian consumers are a clear example of these dynamics at play, where our initial assessment found that many U.S. brands saw declines in purchasing consideration among Canadian consumers immediately after the initial U.S. tariff announcement, with the most exposed brands seeing declines above 10 percentage points. Canadians’ views of the United States itself have meanwhile fallen by a staggering 44 points from January into March.

A broader, updated look at purchasing consideration among consumers in Canada, Mexico, and China — all of which are now subject to new tariffs — tells a similar story. Specifically, to assess the potential impact of tariff-related fallout on U.S. brands doing business in each of the above markets, we use Morning Consult’s Intelligence data to examine purchasing consideration for U.S. brands among overseas consumers in the January-March window surrounding the tariff announcements (spanning Jan. 1 through March 17, specifically), and compare changes in key metrics to those observed for domestic brands in each market. Doing so reveals three key findings.

First, in each market we examine, U.S. brands experienced average declines in net purchasing consideration among surveyed adults on the order of a few points when comparing values across January and March 2025, speaking to a broad-based decline in consumer consideration of U.S. brands (green squares in chart above).

Second, while the average decline in net purchasing consideration for U.S. brands has been relatively modest to date, the magnitude of the largest declines for individual U.S. brands is non-trivial, ranging from roughly 10-25 points across tariffed markets. In all three markets, the decline is also larger for U.S. brands than for domestic ones. These findings suggest that U.S. brands are uniquely being singled out by overseas consumers amid the Trump tariffs’ rollout, as opposed to a scenario where other market dynamics (like shifting consumer confidence) were affecting all brands similarly regardless of their country of origin. 

Third and finally, among all three markets we examine, variability in purchasing consideration for U.S. brands is higher than for domestic ones, as measured by the standard deviation of the two-month change in net consideration from January-March 2025 (reflecting the average distance of each brand-specific change from the mean). While not all brands are created equal when it comes to their exposure to the tariffs, heightened variability in purchasing consideration for U.S. brands relative to local ones suggests the risk can be pronounced for those that are ultimately affected, while the variability itself induces an element of added uncertainty that can pose challenges for scenario planning.

As always, correlation is not causation, and these findings should be interpreted cautiously. A variety of other brand and product attributes affect purchasing consideration for U.S. and local brands, and the industry composition of the brands we examine (as well as the number of U.S. and local brands assessed) varies by country. But the timing of the decline in purchasing consideration for U.S. brands — which closely overlaps with the latest Trump tariff salvos — is highly suggestive. Going forward, brands would be wise to identify the markets where they face the greatest exposure to declining favorability toward the United States and set contingency plans in motion given the magnitude of the potential impact for the most exposed U.S. brands.

Wealthier consumer markets pose the greatest risks for brands going forward

When it comes to particular markets worth watching in the months ahead, brands should closely monitor those where views of the United States are worsening the most as an early warning signal of potential risks.

Adding fuel to the fire, our data suggests the world’s higher-income consumer markets currently pose the greatest risks on this front. As seen in the chart below, countries with higher GDP per capita — measured in current USD using data from the World Bank Databank (2023 release) — tend to shower larger declines in net favorability toward the United States from January through March, 2025. Should the trend hold, it implies that consumers in the world’s higher-income markets will be most inclined to turn away from U.S. brands in the coming months, assuming consumers consistently tie together views of the United States and its brands (see further discussion below). With European consumer markets expected to be hit with tariffs as early as April, U.S. brands should begin preparing for potential fallout now.

Brands are not without options, and should act now to understand the risks and get ahead of them

As the preceding analysis makes clear, not all U.S. brands are equally exposed to risks arising from growing anti-American sentiment. Companies doing business in regions where net favorability toward the United States has softened the least (like the Middle East), or who serve particular customer demographics among whom sentiment has fallen less, may see more limited fallout. 

Similarly, not all brands are created equal when it comes to their “Americanness”: Overseas consumers vary both in their awareness of whether a brand is American or not and the extent to which they are willing to punish companies on those grounds, as variability in Canadian, Chinese, and Mexican consumers’ responses to the recent tariffs make clear. And it remains the case that a wide variety of factors beyond a brand’s country of origin — like product quality and pricing, or the availability of immediate alternatives or lack thereof — drive consumers’ purchasing considerations in parallel, as does prevailing economic sentiment.

But the staggering upswell in anti-American sentiment — as well as more acute risks at the margins for highly exposed brands, and in higher-income consumer markets — means now is not the time to gamble with brand health. For brands seeking to stay ahead of the curve, we advise leveraging Morning Consult’s Intelligence data to assess shifts in anti-American sentiment and brand health in core consumer markets, establish the strength of the relationship between the two metrics and the direction in which they’re trending, and take action accordingly.

Contact us for a confidential briefing on brand- and market-specific dynamics, and to discuss opportunities to leverage our daily Intelligence data to safeguard your brand.