Not like US

AUSTIN FIDO

My favourite moment of the recently concluded (and seemingly interminable) US presidential campaign was the pro-Trump election-night watch party in Port of Spain that made national news.

As became almost immediately clear when the Facebook flyer advertising the Cipriani Boulevard shindig for MAGA sympathisers started circulating far beyond anything like its intended audience, the notion that there are enough Donald Trump fans in Trinidad and Tobago to fill even a small commercial property is noteworthy.

Not so far away, in Miami for example, 70-odd Trump supporters watching TV at a bar is little more than a typical Tuesday night. But in Port of Spain, that’s a news story.

Trump is a popular guy in the country of his birth – and he has more than 70 million recently-cast votes to prove it. But if it feels like the rest of the world is shaking its head with sadness and confusion at the news that America has once again decided it wants Trump to be its president, it is because that is mostly true.

A pre-election YouGov poll of a basket of European nations found only seven per cent of Danes surveyed favoured Trump over Kamala Harris; in Germany, it was 14 per cent; in Britain, 16 per cent. In Italy, where the current Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is a veteran of neo-fascist and fascist-adjacent politics, the survey only found 24 per cent of respondents willing to voice support for Trump. (Meloni’s own approval rating was around 41 per cent as recently as September, per online data-gatherers Statista.)

In mid-2024, an ABC Australia poll logged Trump support among Australians at 27 per cent (compared to 48 per cent for Harris). Polling for the Economist found a similar lack of Trump-thusiasm in Kenya, Japan and South Korea.

It is certainly wrong to say the entire world is struggling to understand how Trump might be quite so unremittingly popular in the US. That previously mentioned Economist poll found respondents favouring Trump over Harris (or the “Democratic Party candidate,” as styled in the questions) in about one-third of the countries it surveyed, including more than 50 per cent plumping for Trump in Nigeria, Turkey and Vietnam (where Trump preference was staggeringly high: around 70 per cent). It may be hard to believe there is a corner of Cipriani Boulevard that is forever Hanoi, but here we are: we live in interesting times.

For the rest of the world and the 60-million-plus Americans who voted for Harris, “interesting” might read as “baffling.” In 2016, a Pew Research Center survey of global attitudes to America and its president found 64 per cent expressing a favourable view of the US and 74 per cent declaring confidence in President Obama. By 2019, the same study was reporting 53 per cent of respondents around the world had a favourable view of the US, and 31 per cent had confidence in President Trump.

It would appear that is more or less where global confidence in Trump remains: he’s the guy who tanked his country’s popularity around the world by 20 per cent in less than four years. That’s quite the trick for a man who was – as his supporters never tire of pointing out – that rare American president who never started a war. What is the world seeing in Trump that the US does not? The books yet to be written on that subject will fuel the publishing industry for the rest of this century.

For what it’s worth, I find the most persuasive explanation at the moment among the simplest: in this election, Americans repeatedly told whoever would listen that they weren’t happy. An ABC News analysis of exit polling found 45 per cent of respondents said they were worse off under the Biden administration than they had been previously.

In 2008, when the world was reeling from the global financial crisis and Americans voted for a more positive change candidate – Barack Obama – the response to the “worse off” question was 42 per cent. US voters are unhappier with their lot now than when their economy was collapsing around them 16 years ago.

Wherever exit polling looked, it found misery in abundance: 72 per cent of US voters were dissatisfied or angry with the direction their country is going in; 73 per cent thought democracy was under threat; 67 per cent were unhappy with the state of the economy; 58 per cent disapproved of Joe Biden’s presidency.

That’s a whole lot of unhappiness with current circumstances and government: conditions that have seen incumbents swept aside in elections around the world. It’s not entirely surprising that America is no different.

There is more to it than that, of course. And it is still remarkable – even outrageous – that a majority of Americans decided to give a twice-impeached, 34-times-convicted, serially-bankrupt, insurrection-inducing, foul-tempered, foul-mouthed, nepo-baby, celebri-pol a second chance.

With exceptions in Russia, Vietnam, Nigeria and a bar on Cipriani Boulevard, a sceptical world watches with trepidation.

Austin Fido is a writer, journalist and consultant editor. Born and raised in Barbados, he has a keen interest in the international political events that influence our region.

He once attended a New Year's Eve party in Trump Tower. A fight broke out and it ended early.