Why 'America First' Has Prevailed—Despite Public Opinion

For 50 years, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has played a tremendously valuable role in tracking and analyzing American public opinion on foreign policy. Amid an onslaught of quick takes, daily/hourly news cycles, and social media buzz, we in the scholarly and policy communities have been able to rely on Council surveys and reports to provide data and analysis of the moment, as well as a long-view perspective on the mix of change and continuity in Americans’ foreign policy views. The Council’s annual survey report is rich in both.

The American public’s desire for the United States to either take an active part or stay out of world affairs has long been used as a key measure of internationalism and isolationism. Council data on this topic spans the last years of the Vietnam War, the early 1980s Cold War tensions and late 1980s Cold War end, the 1990s “unipolar moment,” 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Obama-to-Trump-to-Biden-to-Trump yo-yo years. The data shows that for all the talk about isolationism, pro-internationalism sentiment has consistently remained above 50 percent among Americans.

In contrast, Americans’ feelings about Russia—measured using a temperature scale—shows significant shifts over time, from a chilly 24 degrees in the early 1980s, to a warmer 59 degrees at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s to early 1990s, to a frigid dip down to 18 degrees in the Vladimir Putin era.

Americans held a relatively warm sentiment toward Israel between 1978 and 2000, with the temperature scale showing a pattern of high 50s to low 60s and little difference between Democrats and Republicans. While overall support remained above 50 percent around 2002, a partisan divide began to appear. By 2025, public sentiment had fallen to 47 percent, with the gap between Democrats and Republicans widening by 23 percentage points.

The recent report also provides longitudinal patterns for many other issues. Some show a significant change in public perception and opinion on foreign affairs issues, while others show continuity. Both are useful in understanding the underlying shifts behind the current moment.

Those who are less than happy with US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy approach may receive the recent data as good news. For all of Trump’s criticisms of allies and going-it-alone actions, the American public strongly supports alliances. In fact, an even greater percentage of Americans (55%) say alliances are “very” effective compared to American military power (48%) when it comes to achieving US foreign policy goals. And for all of Trump’s claims that the United States has been taken advantage of in its trade and other international economic relationships, 79 percent of Americans see international trade as being good for the US economy. Further, 62 percent of Americans support additional military aid to Ukraine, only 36 percent see large numbers of immigrants and refugees coming to the United States as a critical threat, and 52 percent believe diversity—including different races, nationalities, and ethnic groups—makes the country a better place to live.

Similar discrepancies appeared in Council surveys and reports in the first Trump presidency. In 2016, 71 percent of Americans supported the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump pulled out of it. And while Trump was calling NATO “obsolete,” 63 percent supported the alliance—including 51 percent of core Trump supporters.

Why then has Trump’s “America First” agenda resonated with many Americans despite many issue-specific opinions appearing at right angles? Bill Clinton’s “enlargement and engagement,” George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda,” Barack Obama’s “renewing American leadership,” and Joe Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class” all came and went. But Trump’s “America First” approach has prevailed as the paradigm at the center of the foreign policy debate for more than 10 years. Why?

At a roundtable held at the Council in December, we discussed that a main reason is how the overarching “America First” narrative strikes chords within what I call the “Apart-Atop-Amidst” dynamic of America’s changing relationship with the rest of the world.

For much of its history, the United States kept itself largely apart from the world. While not as isolationist as often portrayed, insulated by two oceans and blessed by bountiful land, Americans were able to selectively engage with the outside world, largely when and where they chose. At the end of World War II and through the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, the United States sat atop the world—militarily, economically, technologically, diplomatically, politically, ideologically, and culturally. Americans felt dominant by most every measure of power, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Today, though, with its insulation stripped away by globalization in all its facets and its dominance disrupted as China and other countries assert themselves, the United States finds itself neither apart nor atop but rather amidst the world, both shaping and being shaped by global events and forces.

As formidable as the policy challenges posed are, the shock Americans feel to their sense of themselves and their identity as a nation is even more fundamental. Many have found “America First” to be a combination of pulling back toward a position of apart (we’ve gone it largely alone and can do so again) and pushing out to being atop (we’ve been #1 before and can be so again). It is, as such, affirming and reassuring amidst troubled and confusing times.

Yet as we see in the recent Council survey and in other recent polling data, people are increasingly seeing the flaws and feeling the costs and consequences for American interests of Trump’s “America First” agenda.

Whatever may unfold in the year ahead, it is good to know that Council polling will help us get a beat on it.