Donald Trump and the West – A Description of Changing Relations Based on Data on Voting by the UN General Assembly

The United States of America has distanced itself from its Western allies during Donald Trump’s first year in office, according to a study by the ifo Institute on voting behaviour in the UN General Assembly of the G7, NATO, OECD and WEOG countries. The concordance rates for UN resolutions dropped by up to 13.2 percentage points compared to the average rate in the first years in office of all other US presidents prior to Trump. The differences are nevertheless smaller than in the early years of US presidents Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. In other words, Donald Trump’s position to date is surprisingly better than his media image would suggest. In terms of content, the USA is currently distancing itself from the Israel-Palestine conflict and from questions of the economic development of its Western Allies in the UN General Assembly. To a lesser extent this also applies to resolutions on arms control, for which US concordance rates also fell. Most of the votes by the UN General Assembly take place between the autumn and winter of a year. The trade war currently being masterminded by Donald Trump will presumably alienate the USA from its Western allies even further. An important question is how the diminishing similarities between the industrialised countries and, in some cases, changing political alliances, will impact economic factors like external trade, foreign direct investment and economic growth.