Governments should have to verify that they are worth trusting

Just 17% of Americans told the Pew Research Center they trust the federal government to do what is either always right, or correct most of the time. When the question was first asked in 1958, the figure was 73%, and it has not exceeded 30% since 2007.

A claim is only worth exactly what can be confirmed, whether a person’s CV, a company’s balance sheet, or a counterparty’s representations. Each is merely a promise. The verifier’s job is to measure the gap between what was promised, what was delivered, and what is actually true.

When applying this discipline to governments, the results are uncomfortable, though not in the way the headline numbers suggest. Let’s start with the numbers. In September 2025, just 17% of Americans told the Pew Research Center they trust the federal government to do what is either always right, or correct most of the time.

When the question was first asked in 1958, the figure was 73%, and it has not exceeded 30% since 2007. France is no better. In Sciences Po’s CEVIPOF barometer, fielded in January 2026, trust in the government fell to 17%, down six points in a year, with 87% of respondents saying their political leaders did not take their views into account.

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China, by contrast, topped the 2026 Edelman Trust Index with a score of 80, with Chinese respondents routinely reporting trust in their government in the mid-80s (what is not known is how much of that number is based on fear of being identified as not trusting the government). Read at face value, those figures say Beijing has earned its citizens’ confidence while Washington and Paris have squandered theirs.

A verifier would not read them at face value, however. Consider first what American trust actually measures. Between May 2024 and September 2025, trust among Democrats fell from 35% to 9%, while trust among Republicans rose from 11% to 26%. Government performance did not change that dramatically in sixteen months; the party in the White House did. Much of what passes for trust in America is tribal allegiance, and it says little about whether promises are kept.