America suffers a "trust crash" as China rises

Among the key takeaways from my interview with Edelman about his firm's study, which found the U.S. has suffered a "trust crash," internally and externally:

• “As to brand USA” — how the rest of the world sees the U.S. — “you can see deterioration … over the last four or five years. It doesn't begin with Trump, but it certainly was accelerated.”
• "So if you're an American company, you now have a trust weight around your ankles.”
• The U.S. score is "better than China or India [and other] developing countries. But among the developed countries, we're at the low end.”
• On the massive drop in trust in government within the U.S., for so-called normal times: “This not tied to a specific catastrophic event like 9/11 or Fukushima [nuclear disaster] in Japan. It's also not tied to an economic downturn like the Great Recession.”
• China, meanwhile, in the opposite direction: “The government is the highest trusted institution, … whereas in the United States, it's the lowest trusted institution.”

• “It has to do with a sense of confidence and belief in direction and a clear plan and following through, as opposed to freelancing.”

Be smart: These results show the limits of "America first" bravado, both internally and externally. With such a strong economy, the U.S. could be in a confident position in these times thanks to tectonic disruption.

• Instead, U.S. leaders have a huge repair job ahead and no obvious plans to tackle it.

Go deeper, both by Axios' Sara Fischer ... "Red alert: America suffers record drop in trust; China rises" ... "The institutions Americans and Chinese call 'broken.'"