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How do you think, Donald Trump feels about being outperformed by Barack Obama?
Transparency International (a global coalition against corruption) has released its yearly corruption index, ranking 182 countries in the world by the so-called CPI score.
CPI is short for Corruption Perceptions Index, and the scoring goes from 0 to 100, with 100 being “very clean” and 0 being “highly corrupt”.
It is the most widely used global corruption ranking in the world. It measures how corrupt each country’s public sector is perceived to be, according to experts and businesspeople.
So, what does the index say about the state of the United States in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as president?
14-year low
The U.S. gets a CPI rating of 64, down one point from 2024.
For comparison, the United Kingdom scores 70, Canada scores 75, and Denmark is the top scorer for the eighth year in a row with 89.
But looking back a decade, the nation has experienced a noticeable decline in the index.
In 2015, when Barack Obama was in office, the U.S. scored 76 on the CPI rating, up from 74 in 2014.
In fact, the current rating of 64 is the lowest the U.S. has scored in the past 14 years.
Decline under Trump and Biden
The CPI rating for 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s first term as president, was 75. During the last year of his first term, in 2020, the rating had dropped to 67.
Since 2012, the U.S. has seen a year-to-year drop of four points twice: from 2014 (75) to 2015 (71), and then again from 2023 (69) to 2024 (65).
‘You can find the entire report on Transparency International’s website (opens in a new tab).
Sources: Transparency International
