PM Modi’s maiden visit to New Zealand next week; first meet after trade deal

For allies and adversaries alike, America at 250 is a solid global citizen gone rogue

America has long stood for freedom and prosperity, but under Trump insults, threats and unpredictability have become the new norm. As the US marks its 250th anniversary, Guardian correspondents around the world report on how it is perceived elsewhere On the shores of Beijing’s central lakes, elderly Beijingers relax under the shade of willow trees. Some swim, some play mahjong, and one old man plays darts: US and Chinese-flagged arrows competing for the bullseye. The adversarial view of US-China relations is typical among people like these who lived through the cold war. Wen Feng, a 60-year-old retiree, described the US as a “troublemaker” – a viewpoint fanned by years of state propaganda casting Uncle Same as a villainous, hypocritical force on the world stage. Nevertheless, the US’s wealth and abundance has long attracted even the most ardent Chinese nationalists. For years, the political and business elites – including China’s president, Xi Jinping – have sent their children to study there. A quote attributed to the late Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz encapsulates the complex and often fraught relationship between the nations: “Poor Mexico , so far from God, so close to the US.” Mexico’s proximity to the US has meant constant entanglements over trade, immigration and territory, and in 1846, US forces invaded and occupied the country, eventually forcing it to cede more than half its territory. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, promising: “Mexico is not going to like it.” Months later he began pressuring President Claudia Sheinbaum to allow US troops into Mexico to tackle the cartels, touching a political nerve in a country that has never forgotten the 1846 invasion. Meanwhile, Trump’s domestic policy has also tainted the idea of the US as a “land of the free” thanks to a brutal immigration crackdown in which tens of thousands of migrants have been detained.