Why did Trump turn to foreign aid?
Why did Trump turn to foreign aid?
The Donald Trump administration is considering merging the United States Agency for International Development into the State Department, an entity that manages a significant portion of U.S. foreign aid, which amounted to about $44 billion in 2023.
This plan is considered a major change in federal government institutions because, on one hand, it reduces the number of employees, and on the other hand, it aligns the agency’s budget priorities and expenditures with Donald Trump’s overall policy, which is the ‘America First’ slogan.
Donald Trump has entrusted the leadership of this plan to Elon Musk, his senior advisor, who is responsible for downsizing the federal government structure and reducing its costs in the new U.S. administration.
Mr. Trump recently stated that a bunch of crazy extremists have been managing the United States Agency for International Development, and we are getting rid of them. Elon Musk, without providing evidence, also called this agency a criminal organization and added that its time of death has come.
How was the United States Agency for International Development formed, and how is its budget funded?
This agency was established in 1961 during the height of the Cold War by Democratic President John F. Kennedy with the aim of better organizing and coordinating foreign aid. At that time, it was one of the important arms of U.S. foreign policy in countering the influence of the Soviet Union. The United States Agency for International Development currently manages about 60% of the total U.S. foreign aid and provided approximately $438 billion in financial aid to other countries in the fiscal year 2023.
According to a report by the Congressional Research Service published recently, the agency has about 10,000 employees, and nearly two-thirds of them work in approximately 130 foreign countries to implement and oversee the agency’s activities. The agency’s budget is reviewed and approved by the U.S. Congress based on the requests of the sitting government.
In its new report, the Congressional Research Service explained the agency’s work as follows: The United States Agency for International Development assists countries deemed strategically important for U.S. foreign policy and crisis and war-torn countries. It leads U.S. efforts to reduce poverty and disease and meet humanitarian needs worldwide, and by helping the economic growth of poor and developing countries and supporting their ability to participate in global trade, it aids U.S. commercial interests.
The largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid in 2023 were Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Syria, in that order.
What is the amount and scale of U.S. foreign aid compared to other countries?
The United States allocated a total of $72 billion to foreign aid in the fiscal year 2023 and funded approximately 42% of all United Nations humanitarian activities and aid in 2024. This budget covers various topics, from women’s and children’s health in crisis and war-torn areas to access to sanitary water, HIV and AIDS medicine and treatment, energy security, and combating administrative and financial corruption.
According to a report by the Brookings Institution in Washington, published in September, early October, the U.S. foreign aid budget in recent years has been approximately 0.33% of the country’s gross national product. The U.S. foreign aid budget peaked in the 1950s due to the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II, reaching about three percent of the gross national product. During the Cold War, its annual average fluctuated between one and half a percent of the gross national product.
The Marshall Plan was an economic aid program implemented by the United States in 1948 after World War II to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism. The government budget that the United States allocates to foreign aid is larger than any other country’s, but according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development statistics, if considered as a percentage of national income, the U.S. ranks among the last in foreign aid among wealthy countries.
According to the same statistics, for example, in 2023, Norway, allocating 1.09% of its gross national product, was at the top, while the U.S., Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Spain, allocating about 0.24% of their gross national product, were at the lowest rank in this table.
Is support for foreign aid bipartisan?
According to findings from the Brookings Institution report, historically, Democratic presidents and members of Congress have generally supported foreign aid more than Republicans. Still, all U.S. presidents after World War II, whether Democrat or Republican, except Donald Trump, have been staunch defenders of foreign aid. The Brookings Institution report recalls that the first Donald Trump administration’s proposal to cut one-third of the foreign aid budget and Republican efforts to postpone the review of the foreign aid budget amendment for 2024 in the U.S. Congress were rejected.
In a bipartisan vote last June, 80% of Republican members of the House of Representatives, which is under the control of this party, opposed the amendment to eliminate foreign aid from the 2025 budget.
Who has been in charge of managing the United States Agency for International Development?
In Joe Biden’s administration, the agency was headed by Samantha Power, an Irish-American diplomat who considers herself an idealist and was the U.S. representative to the United Nations during Barack Obama’s presidency. Within the framework of the agency’s policy, published in March 2023, its priorities were the climate crisis, countering the widespread wave of authoritarianism worldwide, and encouraging inclusive economic growth and equal opportunities.
In a recent interview, Ms. Power emphasized the role of the United States Agency for International Development in reflecting and strengthening Washington’s soft power. She said the best testimony to the effective role of U.S. foreign aid is the intensification of Russian and Chinese propaganda aimed at discrediting the agency’s activities worldwide.
What does Donald Trump say, and what has he done so far?
Donald Trump, by signing an executive order on the first day of his presidency on January 20 this year, suspended a significant portion of U.S. foreign aid for 90 days. Mr. Trump said upon signing this order that the foreign aid mechanism and its bureaucracy do not align with U.S. interests and, in many cases, contradict American values. Donald Trump’s executive order states that this foreign aid, by encouraging and spreading ideas in foreign countries that conflict with coordinated and stable internal relations and conventional relations between countries, destabilizes world peace.
The new administration, in an internal memo, asked the staff of the United States Agency for International Development to join the government’s efforts to align the method of allocating foreign aid with the ‘America First’ policy and threatened that neglect and non-implementation of new orders would lead to disciplinary actions.
The executive order and organizational directives of Donald Trump’s government sounded the alarm from refugee camps in Thailand to war-torn areas of Ukraine, and United Nations agencies say that if U.S. aid is reduced or cut, their humanitarian activities in providing food, shelter, and medical services will be severely limited.
A source familiar with the operations of the United States Agency for International Development told Reuters that merging this agency into the State Department would be a significant reconsideration of the institution’s mission. This agency has previously been able to assist even countries with which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations, including Iran and North Korea. This knowledgeable source added that this aspect of the agency’s activities sometimes helped create a level of contact with these countries, and if the institution’s operations are entirely tied to political and geopolitical goals, such positive outcomes will no longer occur.
