President Trump’s return to the White House has revived a familiar media genre — columns lamenting how “ashamed” Americans supposedly feel when traveling abroad.
USA Today's recent headline blared, “‘I didn’t vote for him’: How American tourists are navigating global perceptions.” It tells the story of how a couple actually canceled their overseas vacation out of fear they'd be mistaken for Trump supporters. The BBC followed with, “’People might treat us differently’: Trump era leaves U.S. tourists in Paris feeling shame.” A Boston Globe columnist also chimed in: “Trump’s behavior makes me embarrassed to be an American.”
To quantify the hand-wringing, a recent survey found that 72 percent of “experienced” U.S. travelers worry they might feel unwelcome abroad.
The underlying assumption is clear: Foreign distaste for Trump taints every U.S. passport holder. But that anxiety reveals more about the worldview of those making the claim — usually progressive, elite, Western — than it does about how Americans are actually received overseas.
It also reveals how media narratives shape public expectations. Of course Americans fear being unwelcome — after all, the media keep telling them they will or should be.
In the time since Trump won last November, I have spent significant time in Greenland, Vietnam, England, Panama and Mexico — countries that have all been in Trump’s crosshairs in some way. Not once did I experience hostility. After traveling through dozens of countries on five continents under both Republican and Democratic presidents, I have found the fretting about being American abroad to be wildly overstated — a projection of domestic political angst, not a reflection of global reality.
Yes, most foreigners know who our president is, especially when he is as headline-grabbing as Trump. And yes, they often have opinions — don’t we all? But the idea that everyday Americans are routinely shunned, judged, or made to feel unwelcome abroad because of Trump is a fantasy born of our own political obsessions. In truth, Americans are generally welcomed abroad. And when we aren't, it has less to do with politics than with other things — for example, our cultural obliviousness, our sheer numbers traveling, or the pressure that affluent travelers inevitably place on their local housing markets.
Sure, some people abroad dislike Trump and may judge Americans accordingly. But most are preoccupied with their own politics, lives, and problems and understand that a president doesn’t define his entire population. Yes, Trump is a globally recognized figure — so are Lebron James and Taylor Swift. Recognition is not reverence, nor is it revulsion.
If you include the entire population, about 23 percent of American citizens voted for Trump. The odds are good that any American you meet abroad did not.
And more to the point, most foreigners — like most Americans and even most Trump supporters — hold nuanced views about Trump. Last month in Nuuk, Greenland, I met an EU bureaucrat who said she had been alarmed by Trump’s 2016 election, since his “rocket man” tweets about North Korea initially had her fearing nuclear war. But after watching his unexpectedly cordial summit with Kim Jong Un, she reconsidered.
“Don’t just look to where Trump is hitting the ball,” she said of Trump’s approach to foreign affairs. “It will ricochet a couple of times and then perhaps fall in the pocket.” She, like others I have met abroad, holds a view of Trump that is simultaneously skeptical and strangely admiring — a nuance absent from the editorial pages of most American newspapers.
In Greenland, I met some who despised Trump and some who genuinely admired him. Most responded to Trump’s talk of purchasing Greenland with wry amusement. Some even gave a grinning, shrugging acknowledgment that at least he’d put their country on the map. All the while, a thousand think-pieces back home were insisting that everyone in Greenland loathed him.
In Hanoi, a woman told me she initially admired Trump’s unconventional approach to adversaries. She said she has grown more skeptical as his tariffs have hurt her country. That’s not blind praise or a knee-jerk rejection — it’s nuance, the kind many reporters fail to register even among Americans.
Just as often, the response is indifference. When I asked a Peruvian friend in Lima what she thought of Trump voters, she replied flatly: “I don’t.” When I visited Peru, I didn’t know the name of its president — why should she be consumed with ours? The U.S. wields outsized global influence, but it is narcissism to assume the world is constantly thinking about us. Maybe we should get over ourselves.
Many liberals feel compelled to grovel, to disavow Trump the moment they leave U.S. soil. I never have, any more than I expected praise during earlier travels because global media darling Barack Obama was our president. I don’t buy into reflected glory any more than I do reflected shame.
Americans reluctant to travel while Trump is president should not let pundits and alarmists talk them out of seeing the world. A U.S. passport is one of the greatest privileges of being American, opening nearly every border, often visa-free.
Yes, being American might at times make you a target. Far more often, though, you will find respect, curiosity, and kindness. Most people abroad aren’t interested in judging strangers for their country’s politics. They are more likely to judge you for how you behave.
So, to my fellow Americans: Use that passport proudly. Be ambassadors for the best of American values: our openness, our generosity, our eagerness to learn. That is what people abroad will remember most — not our president, but us.
Daniel Allott, the former opinion editor at The Hill, is the author of “On the Road in Trump’s America: A Journey into the Heart of a Divided Country.”
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