Donald Trump’s return to the White House has accelerated a profound shift in the global order, according to new analysis.
A report from Focal Data, which analyses UN voting records, reveals how Washington’s “America First” agenda has started to redraw the geopolitical map in favour of China.
In 2026, the world is now diplomatically closer to Beijing than it has been in recent memory, with significant shifts in alignments taking place during the start of Trump’s second presidential term.
Focal Data’s analysis used UN general assembly votes act as a proxy for geopolitical alignment: countries that consistently vote the same way on contested resolutions tend to have common interests.
By measuring how closely each country’s voting record correlates with those of the US or China, researchers have been able to map how the geopolitical centre of gravity is further away from Washington and closer to Beijing than at any other point this century.
The total number of countries strongly aligned with the US has crashed under Trump, in contrast to China, which has maintained its allies.
When comparing all of Trump’s years in the White House, including his first term, with those of his immediate predecessors – Barack Obama and Joe Biden – the number of countries strongly aligned with the US has collapsed, from 46 to just seven.
The number of countries closely in China’s orbit has remained broadly constant.
Though most of the countries that have been solidly in the US camp still vote with Washington, they have recently done so with far less regularity.
Some of the biggest movements have been among traditional US allies in Europe, North America and Asia, who now find themselves voting with Washington less frequently.
Canada, South Korea, Japan, Germany and the UK dramatically deviated from the US in terms of UN voting patterns in 2025.
The research gives each country’s voting record a score, from +1, meaning always voting with China in the UN, to -1, meaning always voting with the US.
A key flashpoint has been Ukraine. In February 2025, the US sided with Russia, Belarus and North Korea to vote against a resolution condemning Russia for the Ukraine war.
Another strain has been Israel’s war in Gaza. In June 2025, the US voted against a resolution that called for the protection of civilians and upholding of legal and humanitarian obligations in Gaza.
The US sided with Israel against the resolution, while the vast majority of western countries supported the passing of the resolution. China also voted in favour.
The US vetoed a securty council resolution for an unconditional ceasefire, disagreeing with Russia, China, France and the UK.
There have also been resolutions on issues such as the environment, health and migration, which China and most western countries supported, but the US opposed.
As a result, Nato and European states, once the backbone of American global influence, are now voting less reliably with the US. The shift is largely because of the US taking increasingly controversial stances on the world stage that isolates it from its longstanding allies.
Meanwhile, China has continued to preserve close relationships with its allies, and has begun cultivating new alliances. This year has brought foreign visits by the Canadian and British prime ministers for the first time in eight years.
On a regional level, Asia, Africa and South America tend to be more aligned with China – though the latter began to move more towards the US during Trump’s first term.
This shift has happened less because of increasing pro-China sentiment in Europe, and more due to the US and Europe voting together less frequently.
The report says that the UK’s alignment with the US in UN votes is at its lowest level since records began, with a steep drop in the past year. This has coincided with hopes that the UK can thaw icy relations between London and Beijing.
The report highlighted that only Argentina and Israel were aligned with the Trump White House in 2025.
At the same time, China’s voting bloc of 73 countries has broadly stayed intact. The combined economic power of Chinese-aligned countries is higher than that of US-aligned countries under Trump – in contrast to the Obama and Biden years, when the combined economic power of the US’s western allies was superior.
Patrick Flynn, a data journalist and author of the report, said: “Our report uncovered not only how quickly the global order is shifting, but also the structure of influence between the two major poles of the US and China.
“We liken China’s network to a beehive, diffuse and unlikely to collapse from individual rifts. In contrast, US influence is more like a Jenga tower, heavily reliant on a solid bloc of European countries that are quickly moving away from their transatlantic allies.”
This shift is likely to continue.
When countries are plotted by projected economic growth, the fastest-growing economies cluster closer to Beijing than Washington. These are often located in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Flynn said: “Weighting our axis by historic GDP levels, we see that the centre of gravity has been slowly moving towards China over the last 30 years.
“With China’s outsized influence among the fastest-growing economies, the global centre of gravity could well move into Chinese territory for the first time in the late 2030s.”
