A New Tool for Brands
Introducing Morning Consult’s U.S. Reputation Tracker
If there is one lesson for U.S. brands to retain from the past several years of geopolitical upheaval — marked by wars in Europe and the Middle East, perennially strained relations between the United States and China, and U.S.-led tariff wars targeting America’s trading partners — it’s that America’s reputation matters for their own.
Brands need look no further than the aforementioned geopolitical developments for evidence of this relationship at work: Views of major U.S. brands deteriorated dramatically following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 due to America’s unambiguous support for Kyiv; consumers across the Middle East boycotted U.S. brands following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks due to Washington’s staunch support for Israel, resulting in pronounced reputational hits to American brands; and Chinese consumers have routinely rolled out boycotts targeting U.S. firms amid worsening relations between Beijing and Washington. In brief, when America’s reputation dims among overseas consumers, so too does the luster of American brands.
The impact of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in November 2016 on views of the United States and of American companies — inferred from trade patterns — is similarly well documented. And our own country affinity research, drawing upon brand and political data from Morning Consult Intelligence, systematically validates these dynamics globally, finding that views of America in overseas markets where U.S. brands serve consumers and/or route their supply chains are both correlated with, and can causally affect, views of American companies.
With no end to the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars in sight, U.S.-China relations chilled if not frozen for the foreseeable future, and President Trump’s potential return to the White House in 2025, the global geopolitical environment is likely to get worse before it gets better. Amid this challenging backdrop, U.S. companies would be wise to devote additional resources to managing the risks — and in some cases, opportunities — linked to shifting global views of America.
Tracking geopolitical risks to, and opportunities arising from, America’s global brand
To assist companies in doing so, Morning Consult has launched a global U.S. Reputation Tracker. The tracker leverages our daily survey data to provide country-specific, regional, and global metrics of America’s reputation — including GDP- and population-weighted metrics — among overseas consumers and residents of supply chain host countries in 42 global markets covered by Morning Consult Intelligence, with historical coverage of nearly four years.
Across all countries and metrics featured in the tracker, we measure U.S. reputation as net favorability toward the United States, defined as the share of consumers holding favorable views of America minus the share holding unfavorable views. The tracker reports these data points on a monthly basis. For clients seeking higher frequency metrics of America’s reputation, the favorability data underlying the tracker is available across 42 markets on a daily basis via Morning Consult Intelligence. Additional methodological details can be found here.
In addition to measuring U.S. reputation globally, the tracker also provides sector-specific assessments of “country affinity,” defined as the strength of the relationship between views of America and views of U.S. companies, derived from global sentiment toward a blinded basket of major U.S. multinationals available via Morning Consult Intelligence.
The tracker’s primary use-case is to facilitate corporate risk management and scenario planning efforts by enabling brands to identify (1) markets where unfavorable views of America pose a heightened risk of worsening brand reputation; (2) markets where favorable views of America offer revenue and supply chain opportunities; and (3) the sectors most exposed to these effects, whether positive or negative. Firm-specific analysis is possible using Morning Consult Intelligence data on a case-by-case basis.
The biggest risks on the horizon
Per the past several years of our U.S. reputation tracking data, Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House in 2025 (and its implications for both global trade policy and the war in Ukraine), a worsening of the Israel-Hamas War, and increasingly strained U.S.-China relations are among the three most pressing geopolitical threats to America’s reputation overseas and, by extension, to those of U.S. brands. We address each in turn.
1. A second Trump presidency
The final months of the Trump presidency saw America’s global reputation solidly underwater on an unweighted and GDP-weighted basis — and nearly underwater on a population-weighted basis — among consumers in a core set of overseas markets where our tracking data history is the longest (markets include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia and the United Kingdom). In the year-long period following Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, America’s reputation rebounded sharply, rising by approximately 20-30 points on a net basis across the three metrics we examine (see leftmost portion of chart below). No other single event in the history of our data has had such a profound impact on America’s reputation among overseas consumers.
ncG1vNJzZmiooqR7rrvRp6Cnn5Oku7TBy61lnKedZK6vrcuyqqKrX567tb7OnaycoZ6ceqK5xKugnJldp7KxwdOaq6KnnmLBs63CpJyr