US in a word? ‘Trump’, ‘arrogant’, ‘money’ and ‘racism’, for starters
- The Pew Research Centre survey, seeking one-word descriptions of US, includes some choice descriptions by Canadians and Mexicans
- Analysts say the negative views are in line with the decline in US ‘soft power’ rankings
How would you describe the United States in one word? At a time when the global reputation of the brash superpower is declining as Washington traffics in nationalist rhetoric and trade wars, the country’s closest neighbours didn’t hold back.
In a poll released Monday by the Pew Research Centre, Canadians picked “Trump” as the go-to word followed by various negative terms such as “chaos”, “confused”, “bully” and “arrogant”.
Mexicans, meanwhile, focused much more on their economic relationship with their loud northern neighbour, drawing on terms such as “money” and “migration” followed by more negative words like “discrimination” and “racism”.
And pollsters admit they often received some rather unprintable responses. “There’s definitely some words that were expletives,” said Shannon Schumacher, a Pew research associate. “Beyond mentioning Trump, some people said something more, had a sentence about it.”
Respondents were asked for their choice of a word before the coronavirus pandemic. Their responses now would likely be even more unvarnished given the many US’ missteps, poor crisis management and attempts to jump the line on respirators, vaccines and other vital supplies before allies.
On Sunday, several Canadian provincial premiers, the equivalent of governors, slammed US President Donald Trump after he banned exports of N95 protective masks to Canada.