At the start of 2026, the United States once again finds itself at the center of global disputes — but those disputes look different in São Paulo, Berlin and Riyadh. For Brazilian leftists and Arab commentators, the US is primarily the chief director of the Middle Eastern drama, whose calculating approach to the war in Gaza breeds bitterness and distrust. For German economic and political circles, America is simultaneously the life preserver of the global economy and the source of painful protectionism that hits German exports and exposes its own technological lag. In Saudi Arabia, Washington is seen as a partner with whom a delicate balance must be struck: security, oil and regional deals on one side of the scale, human rights and American public opinion on the other.
The main theme that unites these countries is the reformatting of American leadership: from Middle East diplomacy and new entry restrictions to customs wars and artificial intelligence. But despite these shared storylines, each place has its own perspective.
One of the most emotionally charged disputes concerns the role of the US in the war in Gaza and Washington’s attempts to impose its vision of a peaceful settlement. In Brazil’s left‑radical and progressive press, the tone is set by pieces like the analysis in Brasil de Fato, where Palestinian activist Badrа El Sheikh asserts that the current ceasefire plan, negotiated with US and Egyptian mediation, “serves the United States’ interests more than the people of Gaza.” In her view, the Donald Trump administration uses negotiations as a tool to improve its image and achieve electoral goals ahead of the vote, rather than as an attempt to respond to Palestinians’ basic political demands; journalists stress that, from their perspective, Washington still views the region through the prism of military and geopolitical alliances, leaving the humanitarian dimension secondary, and that is why a significant part of Brazil’s center‑left spectrum speaks of the US as a “power holding the Middle East hostage” to its global calculations. This angle resonates with a broad pro‑Saudi and pro‑Palestinian Arab audience, where the idea that every US step in the region is linked to internal American politics — from elections to elite struggles — has long taken root.
Nevertheless, in the Arab world itself, and especially in Saudi Arabia, the debate about the US is much less black‑and‑white. In a piece in Al‑Mashhad al‑Yamani about the Saudi foreign minister’s January visit to Washington, it is emphasized that discussions of the “prospects for political and defense cooperation” are taking place at an “extremely sensitive regional moment” and are presented as confirmation of the depth of strategic partnership between Riyadh and Washington. The authors note a duality: on one hand, Arab media regularly publish statements from human rights organizations and diasporas calling on the US to “prioritize human rights in contacts with the Saudi leadership,” as in the joint human rights groups’ statement published by Human Rights Watch, naming specific people stuck under travel bans; on the other hand, official Saudi rhetoric stresses that security, the fight against terrorism, economic modernization and regional deals (from the Yemeni settlement to energy initiatives) are impossible without close coordination with the US. In this view, Washington is both an indispensable provider of guarantees and technologies and a partner that increasingly, under pressure from its own Congress and NGOs, raises topics awkward for the kingdom.
Saudi political commentators point out that the American domestic scene directly affects the style of dialogue: the Biden administration tried to “balance” the legacy of a period of close personal ties between the White House and the crown prince, as recalled, for example, by Arabic retransmissions of Wall Street Journal material, noting that Washington is seeking a “new balance” between criticism and preserving a 76‑year strategic partnership. Against this background, Saudi columnists often interpret harsh statements by congressmen and human rights advocates more as elements of American domestic politics than as signals of a real readiness to radically revise the alliance; this helps explain why analyses aimed at a Saudi audience describe the US as a country of “many voices,” among which the voices of the State Department and the Pentagon often carry more weight than that of the human rights coalition.
If for the Arab world the US is primarily a forceful and diplomatic actor in the Middle East, in Germany attention is focused on another plane — the economic and technological. The German business press, commenting on a fresh IMF forecast, emphasizes a divergence: against global growth of about 3.3% in 2026, the American economy, thanks to massive investments in artificial intelligence and high tech, is accelerating to roughly 2.4%, while Germany is stuck at just above 1%. An analytical article in Die Welt bluntly states that the US, alongside Asian economies, is “capitalizing on a technological leap,” whereas the German economy “loses pace due to outdated infrastructure, labor shortages and prolonged digital backwardness.” The authors make a painful comparison: global tech giants dominate in the United States, monetizing AI and platform solutions, while Germany has few companies of comparable scale, and the regulatory and tax environment is often perceived by business as a brake.
At the same time, in German conservative and liberal outlets the US also appears as a dangerous protectionist. The tightening of American trade measures, especially under the influence of Donald Trump’s rhetoric, became a subject of sharp criticism after reports that German exports to the United States fell by almost 10% in 2025. Die Welt and other media note that the auto industry was hit particularly hard: exports of cars from Germany to the US dropped by more than 17%, and new import tariffs on a range of European goods — initially 10%, with a prospect of rising to 25% — are presented as a signal of further escalation of a trade war. Expert commentary reveals a specific German paradox: the US is described simultaneously as an “indispensable market and a key security partner” and as an actor whose domestic political logic — from promises to “bring back jobs” to demonstrative clashes with the EU over, for example, Greenland or NATO defense spending — transforms the traditional transatlantic consensus into a series of crises.
Notably, even cultural figures in Germany, like musician Wolfgang Niedecken, speak in interviews with regional media of the US as a country whose image has become “more contradictory than ever before”: on the one hand, gratitude for liberation from Nazism and admiration for musical and cinematic culture; on the other, irritation at military interventions and the new unpredictability of White House policies. That duality — respect for American cultural influence and distrust of Washington’s political decisions — is typical of many German commentaries.
The Brazilian conversation about America is also far from one‑dimensional. Against the backdrop of the Middle Eastern agenda, in Brazil the US is often viewed through the lens of its own experience of dependence on global financial flows and commodity exports. Leftist economists in columns for outlets like Brasil de Fato or opinion sections of Folha de S. Paulo compare America’s ability to “inject trillions” into high‑tech sectors with the limited maneuvering room of developing economies and point out that a new wave of American protectionism and high Federal Reserve rates is intensifying capital outflows from the Global South. In this context, criticism of American eastern foreign policy easily overlays distrust of an economic architecture centered between Washington and New York.
An interesting detail of the Brazilian debate is the tendency to see the US not only as a hegemon but also as a political mirror. Commentators compare the popularity of right‑wing and far‑right forces in Europe and the US, drawing on new comparative studies of media agendas in the EU that show how radical right rhetoric often receives disproportionate media attention; in this light, Trump and European right‑wing populists are perceived as parts of the same phenomenon, with America not an exception but an extreme example of the same trends. For a Brazilian audience that experienced the rise and fall of Bolsonaroism, this is an especially sensitive issue: the American example serves both as a warning and as a justification for local anxieties.
In the Gulf countries another line of discussion comes to the fore — American visa and migration regimes. Arab surveys of the global press, published for example by Egypt’s Youm7, often cite European and American sources discussing new US entry restrictions, tightened checks for certain categories of citizens and the link between these measures and security for the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America. For a Saudi audience this story is twofold: on the one hand, elites and the middle class are tightly connected to the United States through education, investment and medical tourism; on the other hand, the very idea that access to the “American dream” could be limited by political fluctuations in Washington increases interest in alternatives — from Europe to Asian destinations.
As a result, three different but overlapping images of America are taking shape in Brazil, Germany and Saudi Arabia. For Brazil’s progressive milieu the US is above all a great manipulator of the global stage, able to turn war and peace into electoral points, and at the same time the architect of a financial system that makes Global South countries vulnerable to decisions by the Fed and the White House. For Germany, America is both the engine of the world economy, an AI technology laboratory and an unpleasant competitor ready at any moment to overreach with protectionism, as well as a political ally whose unpredictability and isolationist impulses sometimes frighten as much as external threats.
For Saudi Arabia the United States is a security guarantor and the main military and technological partner, while also a source of constant moral pressure on human rights and democracy, and a country where many centers of influence — from Congress to human rights defenders — compete to define what this multilayered “strategic friendship” should look like. The common denominator for all three countries is one: no one any longer perceives American leadership as an indisputable given. In São Paulo, in Berlin and in Riyadh the US is seen as a powerful but increasingly contentious player whose internal debates and electoral cycles directly rewrite the rules of the game for the rest of the world.
