As the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland wraps up, there has been a lot of attention on the World Order and how the dynamics of the United States’ relationship with the rest of the world are changing. Thanks to President Trump’s focus on “acquiring” Greenland, the 1949 agreement founding NATO is being tested for the first time from within the member countries. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a compelling argument for a change in thinking for non-US countries, and other EU leaders seem to be changing their tune on how to deal with Trump. 

While the world order is potentially shifting, so far, the views of the American people on who will be the future world leaders have changed very little over the past eight years. When asked to distribute their views on who will be world leaders two decades from now, Americans have typically allocated about 40 points to the United States and China in the low 20s. Other countries, such as Russia, England, and Germany, have been hovering in the six to eight-point range.

Key takeaways:

• 🗽🗽The US has dropped slightly: Since early 2024, the average views that Americans hold on their country’s potential leadership position have dropped slightly. In January of 2024, the average allocation for the US was at an average of 43.5. A year later, the average was 42.3 and held relatively steady until mid-June, when it dropped to 40.5, and it has held relatively steady since. 
• 🍺🍺 Views on Germany have been the most volatile: While movement has been relatively small across the board, views on Germany have seen some of the bigger changes over time. In early 2024, the average allocation score for Germany was 7.6. That number decreased throughout 2024 and bottomed out at 6.2 towards the end of the year. The numbers stayed there until mid-June, when they bumped up to 7.0 (about a month after Friedrich Merz became Chancellor).
• 🐻🐻 Views on Russia have been on the decline: In the early months of 2024, Americans gave Russia an average score of about 10.2. The double-digit average held steady until the end of the summer of 2024, when the views about Russia’s future leadership took a bit of a tumble and dropped to 8.8. Since then, the number has been slowly declining and currently stands at 8.5.