Why did Trump turn to foreign aid?
Why did Trump turn to foreign aid?
The administration of Donald Trump is considering merging the United States Agency for International Development into the structure of the State Department, an entity that manages a significant portion of America’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, namely 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 and reducing its costs in the new American administration.
Mr. Trump recently stated that until now, a group of extreme lunatics were running the United States Agency for International Development, and we are getting rid of them. Elon Musk also, without providing any evidence, called this agency a criminal organization and added that its time of demise 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, the organization was one of the key arms of U.S. foreign policy in countering the influence of the Soviet Union. Currently, the United States Agency for International Development manages about 60% of total U.S. foreign aid and provided about $438 billion in financial aid to other countries in the fiscal year 2023.
According to a report from the Congressional Research Service recently published, the agency has about 10,000 employees, with approximately two-thirds working to implement and oversee the agency’s activities in about 130 foreign countries. The budget of the United States Agency for International Development is reviewed and approved in the U.S. Congress based on the current administration’s requests.
In its new report, the Congressional Research Service explained the agency’s work as follows: The United States Agency for International Development assists countries considered strategically important for U.S. foreign policy and crisis and war-torn countries, leading U.S. efforts to reduce poverty and disease and meet humanitarian needs globally, and supports U.S. commercial interests by aiding the economic growth of poor and developing countries and enhancing their ability to participate in global trade.
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.
How much is U.S. foreign aid, and how does it compare to other countries?
In the fiscal year 2023, the United States allocated a total of $72 billion to foreign aid and, in 2024, funded approximately 42% of all United Nations humanitarian activities and aid. This budget covers various topics, from women’s and children’s health in crisis and war-torn areas to access to clean water, medicine, and treatment for HIV and AIDS, energy security, and combating administrative and financial corruption.
According to a report from the Brookings Institution in Washington, published in early September, U.S. foreign aid has recently amounted to approximately 0.33% of the country’s gross national product. During the 1950s, due to the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Western Europe after World War II, U.S. foreign aid reached its peak, increasing to about 3% of the gross national product. During the Cold War, its annual average fluctuated between 1% and 0.5% of the gross national product.
The Marshall Plan was an economic aid program implemented by the United States after World War II in 1948 to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism. The amount of government budget the United States allocates to foreign aid is more than any other country, but according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, if considered as a percentage of national income, the U.S. ranks among the lowest in foreign aid among wealthy countries.
According to the same statistics, for example, in 2023, Norway was at the top, allocating 1.09% of its gross national product, while the U.S., Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Spain, with about 0.24% of their gross national product, were at the bottom of this ranking.
Is support for foreign aid bipartisan?
According to findings from the Brookings Institution report, historically, presidents and Democratic members of Congress have generally been more supportive of foreign aid than Republicans. However, all U.S. presidents after World War II, whether Democrat or Republican, except for Donald Trump, have been staunch defenders of foreign aid. The Brookings Institution report recalls that the proposal by Donald Trump’s first administration to cut one-third of the foreign aid budget, as well as Republican efforts to delay the review of the 2024 foreign aid budget amendment in the U.S. Congress, were rejected.
Last June, in a bipartisan vote, 80% of Republican members of the House of Representatives, which is controlled by the party, opposed the amendment to eliminate foreign aid from the 2025 budget.
Who has managed the United States Agency for International Development?
In Joe Biden’s administration, the agency was led by Samantha Power, an Irish-American diplomat who considers herself an idealist and was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during Barack Obama’s presidency. In the agency’s policy framework published in March 2023, its priorities were climate crisis, countering the widespread wave of authoritarianism globally, and promoting inclusive economic growth and equal opportunities.
Ms. Power recently emphasized in an interview the role of the United States Agency for International Development in reflecting and strengthening Washington’s soft power. She said the best evidence of the effective role of U.S. foreign aid is the intensified propaganda by Russia and China aimed at discrediting the agency’s activities worldwide.
What does Donald Trump say, and what has he done so far?
By signing an executive order on his first day in office on January 20 this year, Donald Trump suspended a large 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 American interests and, in many cases, contradict American values. The executive order states that this foreign aid, by promoting and spreading ideas in foreign countries that conflict with harmonious and stable domestic relationships and conventional international relations, destabilizes global 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 allocation of foreign aid with the ‘America First’ policy and threatened that disregard and non-compliance with the new directives would lead to disciplinary actions.
The executive order and organizational directives from Donald Trump’s administration sounded alarms from refugee camps in Thailand to war-torn areas in Ukraine. United Nations agencies say that if U.S. aid is reduced or cut off, 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 revision of the agency’s mission. In the past, the agency has been able to assist even countries with which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations, such as Iran and North Korea. The informed source added that this aspect of the agency’s activities has sometimes facilitated a level of contact with these countries, and if the agency’s operations become entirely linked to political and geopolitical goals, it will no longer achieve such positive outcomes.