OTTAWA — Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated claim that Canada has been ripping off the United States, new polling suggests the percentage of Americans identifying Canada as their country's most important ally has doubled.
But as with most things in U.S. politics, Americans' opinions about Canada vary sharply based on party affiliation.
Twelve per cent of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center in March named Canada as their country's most important ally, up from six per cent in 2023.
The survey of more than 3,600 Americans found that 18 per cent cited the United Kingdom as their most important ally, down from 22 per cent in 2023.
Support for Canada splits along party lines, said Pew senior researcher Janell Fetterolf.
"It is one of the larger divides that we see this year" among countries mentioned in the survey, she said.
Among Democrats surveyed in 2023, nine per cent named Canada as the country's top ally, compared with 19 per cent this year.
Among Republicans, that number hardly budged — from five per cent in 2023 to just six per cent this year.
While the survey did not ask respondents to explain their thinking, Trump continues to claim the U.S. is spending billions of dollars to subsidize Canada — a claim that Ottawa says is based on a misinterpretation of trade data.
Trump has imposed various tariffs on Canada that threaten entire industries, including Ontario's automotive sector, while Canadian airlines are cutting back flights to the U.S. due to falling demand.
Meanwhile, 74 per cent of a subset of 1,804 American poll respondents told Pew they have a favourable view of Canada — though the poll again found a deep split along party lines.
Just 61 per cent of Republican respondents had a favourable view of Canada, compared to 87 per cent of Democrats.
At 77 per cent, Japan topped the American poll respondents' ranking of other nations, followed by Canada and Italy at 74 per cent each and the U.K. at 70 per cent.
Fetterolf said Pew asked a smaller number of respondents the question about favourability in order to contain the size of the survey.
Earlier this month, Pew also found in the same survey that 44 per cent of Americans feel that the U.S. and Canada benefit equally from bilateral trade, with 26 per cent claiming that Canada benefits disproportionately.
Among Republican respondents, some 46 per cent said in 2025 that Canadians benefit more from trade with the U.S. than Americans do. Just 20 per cent of Republican respondents said the same thing two years prior.
"It may not sound overwhelmingly positive, but it's more positive than what we see" regarding Americans' attitudes toward trade with other countries, Fetterolf said.
Americans expressed more skepticism about trade with Mexico, with 34 per cent saying it's a mutual benefit and 29 per cent saying Mexico gains more. The poll found that 46 per cent of respondents feel China benefits more from American trade than the U.S. does.
Fetterolf said Pew is processing the results from surveys taken in 24 countries, including Canada, to learn how non-Americans are feeling about the United States these days. She said those findings should be published early this summer.
She noted that the most positive favourable rating that Canadians gave the U.S. was back in 2002, when 71 per cent of Canadians polled said they had a positive view.
Last year, just 54 per cent of Canadians surveyed gave the U.S. a positive rating.
Pew surveyed 3,605 adults in the U.S. from March 24 to 30 through a survey conducted online and by phone, weighted for demographics.
Another poll taken around the same time came to different conclusions.
A University of Chicago research group formally called the National Opinion Research Center interviewed 1,229 American adults from March 20 to 24 for The Associated Press, and found just under half considered the U.S. to be "close allies" with Canada.
While about seven in 10 Democrats saw Canada and the U.S. as close allies in September 2023, the number dropped to about half this March.
For Republicans, the number dropped from 55 to 44 per cent.
About three in 10 Americans polled by the National Opinion Research Center said they saw Canada as "friendly but not a close ally," while about two in 10 said the two countries are "not friendly but not enemies." Very few saw them as outright "enemies."
This week, Trump said Prime Minister Mark Carney was going to visit Washington within days, but Carney's office has yet to confirm that is happening.
— With files from The Associated Press.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2025.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
