In Sydney, Australia, Lucy Sunman crawled out of bed at 3 a.m. so she could watch the inauguration of President Joe Biden live.
“The chilling effect of the Trump presidency has impacted us around the world,” said Sunman, a 36-year-old lawyer. “I cannot wait for some stability to be restored.”
In Seoul, 70-year-old Park Sang-ki sat in his cramped printing shop across the street from the U.S. Embassy reading online news reports about Donald Trump’s departure from the White House.
“America was supposed to be an advanced nation, gentlemanlike,” said Park. “Trump, he was like a gang boss.”
As Biden took office Wednesday, vowing to unify a nation riven by caustic political divisions and a deadly pandemic, the rest of the world watched closely, too. Many were happy to bid farewell to Trump, a larger-than-life character who relished disrupting the status quo at home and abroad and who will be remembered as one of the most controversial presidents not only in American history, but globally.
“Good riddance,” said Nydia Ngiow, the former trade negotiator for the Singaporean government who spent several years working in Washington in her government’s embassy.
Images of Trump supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol this month had shown the world just how damaging his presidency had been, she said.
“It’s almost as if we witnessed the downfall of America, a country so often viewed from World War II onward as the leader of the free world,” she said. “There’s no credibility to it anymore, no more accountability, and it will definitely be an uphill battle for Biden to repair the damage Trump has done.”
A Pew Research Center survey of people in 32 countries last year before the election found that 64% of respondents did not have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs.
A proud nationalist who frequently spoke of putting “America first,” he pulled out of global agreements, limited legal immigration and sparked a trade war with China.
Biden, a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vice president under President Obama, is widely viewed as a known quantity and is expected to be more predictable than his predecessor on foreign policy.
He has vowed to be more engaged with the world, promising to rejoin the Paris climate accord and reverse Trump’s withdraw from the World Health Organization. Biden has said he will convene a global summit of democracies to counter a rise of authoritarian leaders around the world.
“There is a need for a re-engaged United States,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week, adding that a Biden administration would be a change from the “slightly more unpredictable and sometimes challenging” one that proceeded it.
Others cheered the entrance to the White House of Vice President Kamala Harris. No woman has risen higher in American politics.
Harris, who is Black and Indian American, has become a symbol of hope in India, where some of her family members live.
“I cannot help but feel proud,” said Watsal Yadav, a 23-year-old who sells tomatoes, eggplant and fragrant bunches of cilantro on a busy street in Mumbai.
“America is a powerful country in the world, and now one of us is leading it.”
Ireland, too, expressed its joy at seeing Biden, a proud Irish American, take office. “Ireland takes great pride in inauguration of Joe Biden,” tweeted the nation’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. “We hope to welcome him to his ancestral home early in his Presidency.”
Not everyone was happy to see Trump go.
“We had a good relationship,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters Wednesday morning. He thanked Trump for respecting Mexico’s sovereignty.
It was an unlikely about-face for López Obrador, a nationalist who as a candidate for president criticized Trump for his derisive comments about Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and who wrote a book demanding respect for Mexico called “Listen, Trump.”
But the world leaders became close allies. López Obrador took six weeks to congratulate Biden on his victory and defended Trump when he was booted from Twitter following the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Many analysts see conflict ahead for the U.S. and Mexico, in part because López Obrador and Biden have have very different opinions on climate change, renewable energy and security cooperation.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a right wing nationalist who modeled himself closely after Trump, is also mourning his loss. But analysts say the rise of leaders such as Bolsonaro means Trump’s legacy isn’t going anywhere.
“Trump’s gone, but the (populist) wave isn’t,” tweeted Brian Winter, vice president for policy at the Council of the Americas think tank.
Some people watched Biden’s inauguration with skepticism, unsure whether the change in the White House would translate to a shift in policy.
In China, Talia Ya, a 21-year-old college student, said professors had explained that it didn’t matter whether Biden or Trump was president.
“Honestly, none of them will be especially supportive of China,” one professor said.
“No matter what, they are going to try to push China down,” said Ya, snacking on steamed buns at Yaoji Fried Liver, an old Beijing breakfast shop that Biden visited in 2011 as vice president. “We need to keep our defenses, not drop them just because Biden is here.”
(Linthicum reported from Mexico City, Kim reported from Seoul and Pierson reported from Singapore. Times staff writers Shashank Bengali in Singapore and Alice Su in Beijing and special correspondent Tish Sanghera in Mumbai, India, also contributed to this report.)
