signs of the times: bombs, billionaires & aid

Elon Musk’s precipitate freezing of some $58 billion in US Foreign Aid allocated for 2025 was wrong in a number of ways:  morally, or as an effective economic policy or as in the ‘soft power’ interests of the USA.  It is a telling sign of the times.

We are accustomed  to Trump’s lack of any concept of truth but the picture painted of development aid by him and Elon Musk still comes  as a shock for anyone familiar with how aid works on the ground.  But this is clearly how many in the USA imagine it.
 
Maybe the prevalence of such opinions in the UK influenced Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to transfer 0.2% from our decreased Development Aid budget to Defense, though  with a two-year run-down time unlike Trump.  The need for a UK defense increase itself is another knock-on consequence of the Trump Presidency.  The British Government’s mantra “this is a difficult decision” avoids the choice of alternative difficult decisions, such as wealth taxes which come with greater political costs.
 
The world’s poor will now be paying for Putin’s and Trump’s policies.  What control have we taken back after 2016 if we accept military power, money markets, the autocrats and the feudal lords in California’s and Shanghai’s silicon valleys as our rulers? There is a touching faith in the free market.  Right-wing politicians advance an ideological defense of unfettered capitalism in a world in which the market is increasingly unfree, controlled by the tech giants such as Elon Musk and the global corporations.

But back to massive US aid cuts to reduce national debt.  Trump’s acolytes point to allegedly ‘woke’ projects funded by USAID as justification.  Even giving ‘woke’ the widest possible interpretation, projects that might be eligible for this description amount to an infinitesimal percentage of overall expenditure.  Would funding a feminist theatre company who, amongst their performances, role play preventative health care, be ‘woke’?  Woman play an important role in health.    If a tiny fraction of  a State institution’s activities are ill-judged, most people living in the real world would say such institutions were doing well.
 
Then there is the right-wing claim that development aid doesn’t work; it hasn’t jump-started the economies of poor countries.  But that is principally because war, systemic corruption and bad governance blight economic development.  If, for example, you need to bribe your way through several roadblocks to get to and into a port, export growth is stunted.  Dealing with such problems, development aid, which  encompasses a wide range of interventions, makes a major contribution.

No-one denies that despite foreign governmental and NGO funding for development in much of Africa and parts of Asia countries remain mired in poverty.   But this  does not justify suddenly shutting down a major, mitigating agency, as if it were a criminal enterprise, what President Trump called “the left-wing scam known as USAID”.

Development aid makes a difference to economies. If half your workforce is fighting off malaria, or dying from it, this harms productivity.   I’ve stood admiring trained senior women in West African villages, some of them illiterate, chatting to mothers as the sun went down, cleverly passing on health messages that reduce infections.  The bonny babies in bathtubs were a living testimony to the effectiveness of supporting health systems, providing finance and upskilling in Africa.   And HIV, Ebola (funding for prevention frozen then re-instated), Marburg, West Nile, and Dengue viruses, one way or another, can cross borders and seas.  Education and good health are essential for a skilled workforce. Alongside Governments’ foreign aid, the Church  as an aid-giving body has made a massive contribution in this regard and still does.   A left wing scam ?

The US Government’s only compliment to virtue are certain waivers, exemptions to the spending freeze.  A few bits of infrastructure will be left standing amongst the wreckage of Federal foreign aid.  The priorities are interesting.   Most of the temporary exemptions relate to the spending of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.   Since 13 February the latter has received exemption for $5.3 billion spending of which $4.1 billion is going to Israel and Egypt, plus more moderate sums to Taiwan and Philippines’ military. Compare this to USAID exemptions of $78 million for - non-food - aid to Gaza and $156 million to the Red Cross for its work during the current ceasefire there.

Before this Trump Presidency, according to available figures USAID was spending a little over $10 billion on humanitarian aid and $10 billion annually on health, out of a foreign aid budget of approximately $58 billion.  To date, the Department of State’s Bureau of Global Health, Security & Diplomacy has received a temporary exemption of $500 million for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS.  Launched by President G.W. Bush in 2003, it is estimated to have saved 26 million lives around the world.   PEPFAR is now operating on 8% of its 2024 budget of $6.5 billion with consequences that hardly need spelling out.  The waiver covers - in theory -  all aspects of provision: antiretrovirals, testing, treatment and supply-chains. But the disruption already caused by a  90 day freeze, let alone the long term consequences, will cost lives.

Musk, wielding a chain-saw, now a populist power symbol, is also determined to reduce USAID manpower to a skeleton staff.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting-administrator of USAID in place of  Samantha Power who handled COVID and Ukraine crises under Jo Biden.  At midnight last Sunday, out of a total payroll of 10,000, Rubio fired 1,200 USAID staff and put 4,200 on ‘administrative leave’.  Trump has repeatedly declared that the final staffing will be much less than 1,000 .  Meanwhile the substantial buildings occupied by USAID have been handed over to Customs and Border Patrol, not to be confused with the humanitarian focus of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migrants which is likely to retain some funding for Latin American countries to spend on enforced returnees.

Former USAID chief, Gayle Smith , described the freeze as the “US signaling that we don’t frankly care whether people live or die and that we are not a reliable partner”.   Washington DC District Judge Amir Ali spoke of “irreparable harm”, requiring – to no great effect - a lifting of the freeze.  CARITAS Internationalis, fearing millions of deaths, called Trump’s proposed cuts of 90% USAID  “reckless and “ruthless”.  The Jesuit Refugee Service  founded in November 1980 responding to the needs of Vietnamese refugees, and now working in 57 countries, described, including displaced people, how “those waiting for our support were left stranded”.  They cite particularly  Chad, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, South Africa, South Sudan and Thailand.  Money to pay local NGO staff suddenly cut globally means an immediate halt to work amongst the world’s poorest people.

If and when our children and grandchildren consult the Oxford English Dictionary, do we want them to find ‘archaic’ in brackets next to the word  ‘compassion’?  Will they be living in a world in which the powerful States deny our common humanity - uniquely in the case of the USA as a consequence of MAGA mania?   We may not have long to find out.