Debatable: Should the US scale back non-military foreign aid?

Ian Vásquez, vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute, argues that US foreign aid should be “reduced dramatically” because it has failed to promote economic development in poorer countries, even when officials have tried to attach conditions:

“If you look at the record of foreign aid over the course of some seven or more decades, you can’t say that it’s been a success. It, in fact, has been a failure at promoting economic development. At best, there isn’t any relationship between foreign aid and economic growth, and at worst, aid has actually made things worse in the countries that it has intended to help.

“One of aid’s main functions — and one of the big ideas that gave rise to aid to begin with — was that it would help pull countries out of poverty. And, in fact, in the early days of foreign aid, there was a big idea that if you provide enough money to certain developing countries that were supposedly stuck in a poverty trap, you could have this big push and then there would be an economic takeoff.

“And that turned out to be spectacularly wrong. And in practice, so much aid over many decades helped to strengthen governments that had policies that were inimical to growth and institutions that undermined growth, not to mention political institutions that were not democratic.

“I think that aid needs to be reduced dramatically. I think that it’s about time for somebody to challenge the very concept that aid is a good way to promote development and that we should be doing it at all. So to the extent that that argument has not only come up, but has actually been the view that is recognized by the US government, I think that that’s good. We can argue about the details. Has the way that they have been approaching it been fully legal? Probably not, but we will find out what the court says about that. I think that there is a role for the United States to play in disease control and emergency aid, but that’s not to say that all of those things shouldn’t be reviewed also.”

Frances Z. Brown, vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has served on the National Security Council staff of the past three presidential administrations, says that foreign aid serves US interests and that Trump should focus on improving its administration rather than taking a “wrecking-ball” approach:

“The US should not scale back on the already-modest amount it spends on nonmilitary foreign aid, which directly serves US interests. Foreign aid keeps disease from reaching our shores: consider recent programs that helped Rwanda combat the hemorrhagic fever Marburg Viral Disease, and other programs that successfully contained Ebola in West Africa. Beyond the health realm, consider other programs that advanced the long-term resettlement of Colombians in Venezuela, helping to stave off immigration to the United States. Still other programs combatted corruption in mineral supply chains, supported journalists investigating government accountability in their own countries, or combatted conditions that led to violent extremism, advancing US counterterrorism goals.

“Though Americans tend to vastly overestimate how much the government spends on foreign aid, in truth, foreign assistance is only roughly one percent of the federal budget, while the main nonmilitary aid provider, USAID, manages roughly 60 percent of that one percent. Like all large bureaucratic systems, the foreign assistance process could undoubtedly be improved — an option fully available to the Trump administration, which enjoys Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress. Instead, the administration has taken a wrecking-ball approach, generating huge waste and causing harm to Americans well beyond the Beltway.

“Witness the hundreds of tons of US soybeans, rice, and wheat languishing in American ports, and the American farmers whose crop-sale contracts have been halted. Consider the more than $489 million worth of food aid, languishing in transit or warehouses, now at risk of spoilage or diversion, while Secretary of State Rubio’s claim of waivers in place to ensure lifesaving humanitarian assistance have been disproven. USAID has long had sophisticated controls to oversee to ensure its assistance was spent accountably, but by razing USAID to the ground, the administration has also decimated these safeguards.”