Thursday Briefing: How the U.S. Election is Viewed Abroad

People around the world are closely following the U.S. campaign as it heads into its final stretch. The outcome of the election on Nov. 5 will have repercussions around the globe: The two candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, often have starkly different views on global crises and challenges.

For some insight on how the U.S. election is being viewed abroad, we reached out to Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe.

How are election watchers around the world feeling?

Steven: There’s this kind of fascination and almost fury, a feeling that so much of life or policy in Europe depends on voters in North Carolina and Georgia and Arizona — because the American president, in a way, is everybody’s president. It’s just too big and important and rich a country.

Kamala Harris has taken great steps to differentiate herself from President Biden. How might her administration differ?

Her whole experience and personal life is different — coming from California, being half Indian, half Jamaican. The cliché is that Biden is America’s last true trans-Atlanticist. That’s not really true, but it’s not in her experience. World War II was a long time ago, so her view is just going to be different.

One has the sense on Gaza, for instance, that Harris has more empathy with Palestinian suffering than Biden seems to have. Does she share the same commitment to Israel? Probably, but differently. Would she behave differently with Netanyahu? Probably. When it comes to her foreign policy, we really don’t know.