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April 25, 2025 12:49-13:59 - CSPAN
01:09:57
Discussion on U.S. Foreign Aid
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A discussion now on U.S. foreign aid priorities under the second Trump administration.
It's 90 Minutes, hosted by the Center for Global Development.
Welcome, everyone.
If you could sit down, that would be great, and we can get started.
Welcome to CGD.
I'm Rachel Glennister, the president here.
We've had lots of discussion over this week, and one common theme has been the big changes to the aid environment, both in the U.S. and in Europe, with big cuts, as they say, in many countries.
This morning's discussion, though, is going to be about the United States.
We've had other discussions about the European cuts.
Now, we have at CGD issued a lot of analysis of the implications of those cuts.
But today, we will talk more looking forward about what we should think about in the future of what aid should look like.
And we have experts here, both from the U.S. government and the Liberian government, to help us think through those issues.
Before we turn to that panel, however, I want to give a few thoughts myself.
One of the things I've been struck by is how little resistance there has been to the announcements of the cuts.
And this is not normal.
In the past, we have seen quite a lot of popular support for aid.
If you think about it, in the last Trump administration, when there was an attempt to cut aid, there was pushback from Congress.
During the Bush administration, there was a big push for the government to take a response to the aid crisis, particularly influentially from the evangelical community.
And, you know, I think back to the UK when it used to be a vote-winning strategy to say that you were pro-aid in general elections.
So now obviously this change has partly been a response to changes in external circumstances, but I think those of us who care about aid need to take some responsibility too for the fact that we have not made a good enough case, not successfully made the case.
So this is what we're going to, you know, one of the things we're going to talk about today is how to make that case.
But I think rebuilding support is is partly about admitting that we didn't get everything right before, admitting that there were things that we could do better.
It means better explaining what aid does.
And if you look at polling, it will say that the population is actually pro-supporting other people around the world who are less fortunate if they think that aid is effective.
So I think one of the key things that we have to do is make the case that we are changing aid to be more effective.
So what should we do differently in the future?
And here I'm going to pull on my own experience working in the British Aid Agency FCDO, where I came in as an academic but sort of got to see what aid was like, you know, up close and personal.
And my group would review all projects over $40 million, or £40 million.
So we got to see really what the details of programs look like.
What do I think we should do differently?
I think we should work in fewer countries, pick fewer proven, highly effective interventions and do them at much larger scale, and dramatically simplify individual programs.
I'm calling this radical simplification, and I think it's important for a number of reasons.
But first, let me explain why I think the current programs are quite problematic.
Take an education program.
It might do the thing that we know evidence has shown is important for improving education, but it might also provide textbooks, work on how to improve the data collection, build new schools, change regulation for private schools.
So a huge number of different, very dispersed types of activities, all in one program.
But if we had fewer, simpler programs, we would ensure that far more of the money that we give reaches those who need it.
We would benefit from the enormous economies of scale that we find in development.
We would focus resources on what we know works.
And we would make it, I think this is crucial, make it much easier for politicians and the public to understand what we are actually doing with aid.
Because I have sat as we tried to do cutting, you know, going through a large cutting exercise in the UK, going through these large lists of programs with titles that were completely incomprehensible and had nothing to do with what the program did, and try and explain to ministers what all these hundreds of different programs were doing.
And if we can't even make the explain to our ministers, you know, heads of agencies, what it is that all these programs do, how are we going to make the case for aid.
So imagine, so in the US, this kind of radical simplification is particularly important because now there are very, very few staff.
So if we're going to do aid, we are going to need to do it in a much simpler way.
Imagine, for example, that the US decided to spend its aid on a few interventions, such as treating severely malnourished children.
There's a standardized protocol for how you do that.
You know, buying malaria vaccines.
The ultra-poor program, which is a program which has been proved to be effective and lift people out of poverty in many countries.
Or even simpler and would require even less staff, just providing money to the World Bank subsidized lending arm.
So in a blog post on CGD website, I go into a lot more details in this on what radical simplification would look like.
So that's my first suggestion for improving aid.
But second, I want to say it's really important in this time that we protect and even increase our investment in knowledge, generation, and innovation.
We need to invest in finding the next spectacularly effective aid program, the next malaria vaccine, the next ultra-poor program that is even more effective.
And there are some places where we see cuts around the world where middle-income countries may be able to come in and take over the running of some of the programs like HIV programs in middle-income countries.
There may be cases where the multilateral development banks can come in, but neither of these cases are they going to be able to come and do knowledge generation in the same way, because these are global public goods.
And it's very hard to persuade an individual country to borrow to develop a seed which will help many countries around the world or develop a medical improvement that will help many countries.
MDBs are just not well placed to do these kinds of investments in innovation.
They are better at doing knowledge generation when they evaluate their own programs, but this kind of innovation, I think, is a problem.
So this is a really important area where bilaterals have to invest.
So as I wrap up, I want to just note that we have many more exciting programs at CGD for the rest of the week.
There's a conversation with Mikhailo Gavas, who's here, and the managing director, sorry, who's managing director of CGD Europe and the European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Joseph Sikila.
And if you've missed any of our public events this week, you can find them by going to our website.
So now let me introduce or ask Erin Collinson, who's going to moderate the panel, to come up and the rest of the panel members.
Thank you.
Good morning.
I'm Erin Collinson.
I'm Director of Policy Outreach here at CGD, and I want to echo Rachel's thanks.
We're really pleased you could join us this morning.
I apologize for my voice.
I'm battling a little bit of lingering laryngitis.
But the good news is you came here to hear from our illustrious panelists.
So I'll try to keep my remarks relatively short.
Yeah, as Rachel noted, as we approach 100 days of the second Trump administration, we've witnessed just a fundamental transformation of US foreign assistance, starting with the broad foreign aid freeze.
The administration then moved to dismantle USAID and began terminating numerous outstanding awards.
I think the abruptness of these changes has created hardships for communities that receive life-saving assistance and benefit from other aid-supported interventions while undermining potential partnerships around the world.
The situation also continues to evolve very rapidly.
Just this week, the State Department unveiled a new reorganization plan.
You know, we heard yesterday from Treasury Secretary Scott Bassent, who offered sort of qualified assurance that the administration intended to remain engaged in key international financial institutions, albeit with meaningful reforms.
But then almost simultaneously, reports emerged that Doge was preparing to close the Millennium Talent Corporation, a small growth-oriented agency that has enjoyed strong bipartisan support.
So these developments really raise some critical questions about the future of U.S. foreign assistance, its volume, focus areas, geographic priorities, and implementation methods, particularly in the near term.
But today, we're in the privileged position of being able to take a step back a bit and hear from three distinguished panelists with exceptional public service backgrounds, each bringing unique perspectives to the role of U.S. foreign assistance and on U.S. foreign assistance experience.
We look forward to their insights on the strategic value of U.S. foreign aid and the recommendations for shaping future investments.
So I'm going to go a little out of order here, but first we have Jim Richardson.
During the first Trump administration, Jim led an effort at USAID known as Transformation while helming what was the agency's policy planning and learning bureau.
He then moved to the State Department and served as director of the Office of Foreign Assistance.
And earlier in his career, Jim held quite a few positions on Capitol Hill.
Today, he continues his work with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, including as chairman of the Pompeo Foundation.
So I have with us Jude Moore.
Jude previously served in the Liberian government as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before becoming the country's Minister of Public Works.
Jude previously led an Africa initiative here at CGD, so it's nice to have him back today.
And finally, we're joined by Cindy Wong.
Cindy recently led the policy office at USAID, but also previously served in critical roles at HHS, MCC, and the State Department across two different administrations.
So I'm going to delve into questions.
We will leave some time for the audience as well, but I'm going to kick off and we'll start with Jim again.
So as I mentioned, Jim, in the first Trump administration, you helped shepherd an agency-wide reform effort at USAID known as transformation, included components that were dedicated to workforce programs, structure, process, all underpinned by then Administrator Mark Green's vision, which really affirmed this idea that USAID's principal goal was to be ending the need for foreign assistance.
And I think it seemed like that was a helpful rhetorical tool, but also in really driving reforms at the agency that were meant to sort of think about how the agency could be more responsive and also how it could, how as the United States might think about evolving relationship with countries, particularly as they sort of grew their capacity and commitment.
So I wonder if you can tell us, share some lessons from that experience and also anything wisdom from that that you would impart on decision makers in the aid space, whether that's today or at some point in the future.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
No, I think that there is a lot of lessons to be learned from the first transformation and sort of what that means for today.
When we walked into USAID like eight years ago, There was a great desire to better understand use of data, evaluation, make sure that our programs are impactful, that we're using the right modality of approach, that our policies or that our programs were allowing to a strategy.
We wanted to make sure that we actually truly understood where a country lived in the development cycle and how our assistance programs could actually move them along to the point that they didn't need any assistance.
So it was a great effort, and I credit Mark Green fully for creating the vision behind that and really pushing the agency forward.
I think if we had four more years of that, I think we really could have made the next leap.
We were going through the process of trying to better understand where we are trying to be in each country.
What really are we trying to accomplish?
And really whether our programs were living up to expectations.
And I think that too often we were doing the same programs in the same countries and getting the same results, which was not to what we wanted, not what the country wanted.
And we were starting to see that.
And we're starting to try to change our approach, change our modality, change our programming, change our funding levels.
We kept pushing Congress to give us greater flexibility.
And it just didn't happen.
We ran out of time.
And then we're here today, where the approach now is let's step all the way back and sort of it's unclear as to what this really means, right?
It means the first hundred days.
The courts still are going to get involved.
Congress is still yet to get involved both on the appropriation side and the authorization side.
So we'll see what ultimately, you know, nine months from now, what that ultimately looks like.
But there does seem to be a real effort in the Trump II administration, especially from Rubio's comments and the org plan that he had, was we really want to make sure that some of the things we were trying to do in Trump 1 does karaoke to Trump 2, which is what are we really trying to do in a country and how do we create programs in order to be able to do that?
Now, the objective seems very different, right?
There doesn't seem to be a desire of like moving countries along the development spectrum.
But that theory of change, we really don't know yet, right?
We really, they haven't articulated yet what do you really want to get out of foreign assistance.
And I think that will take time.
I think the Congress will rightfully ask that question as we start looking at the appropriations and authorization.
And I think that will be really the next step.
The org chart that Secretary Rubio put together, I don't love every part of that, but I don't object fervently to this.
We looked at potential merger of state and USAID last time around.
And we ultimately decided that the price, there was no cost savings, that the core competencies of both staff are different.
And that challenge is really going to be the same challenge that this administration has today as they're looking for this merger.
Obviously, cost savings, that seems to be taking care of itself.
That's very different conversation.
But that core technical capacity of USAID or development staff versus diplomacy staff is still very different and still a real challenge.
And we sort of acknowledge in Trump 1 that merging them is going to create some muddling.
It's going to not allow for The sharpness of diplomacy and the sharpness of development to continue, that ultimately lessons learned from prior mergers inside the State Department, along with sort of global trend lines that we're seeing around the world, are really saying the same things.
That you lose really that technical capacity of the development folks.
And that's really going to be one of their major challenges moving forward, especially how quickly they're looking to do this.
So, anyways, I'll stop there.
That's helpful.
And, Jude, we'll go to you next, since that sort of was a help.
There was some good segue in there in terms of, you know, serving in the government of Liber, you know, a partner and ally of the United States.
You saw, you know, the U.S.-foreign aid relationship from a really different vantage point.
Can you share a bit about how you saw the role of USAID and foreign aid more broadly?
And I'm thinking, you know, particularly there was the West African Ebola crisis, and you were serving a government during that period.
And then later, you know, in your role as a minister and focused on infrastructure in particular.
Sure, thank you.
It's good to be back here.
I think first, I wanted to provide some perspective so that this isn't just some exercise in reminiscing about the good old days and things that how great it used to be.
I think the purpose, or at least the function, of think tank, a place like this.
I was thinking, I was just talking to Erin, that Todd Moss and Ben Leo wrote a proposal about how to form what was then OPIC.
And what they had in mind was something like what is now in the DFC.
But they first wrote that proposal in 2011 and they made adjustments in 2015 and basically had to wait almost a decade for the right time, the right administration, the right leadership, and DFC became a thing.
So the things we do here today may not have a receptive audience in the current administration, but it prepares us for the right time, the right leadership.
And so this is very, very important.
The second thing I want to say to that is that I'm from Liberia.
And between 1989 and 2003, we went through this massive internet same bloodletting of civil war that seemed like it would never end.
But today, you know, there's a whole generation of people in Liberia who have no idea that there was a war.
And it happened in my lifetime.
So, as difficult as the circumstances might seem, we have the advantage of being able to apply this perspective that the things we do here, the lessons learned, the projections we make going forward, are still very relevant.
And we should continue to do the things we do.
So, you know, at the end of the war, you come to a broken country with everything, you've been fighting a war for about two decades.
I was saying to someone yesterday that we were idiots compared to, say, the Avorians, because the Avorians fought their war and they didn't destroy their infrastructure, but we just went to town.
But anyway, and you come back, every single thing is a priority.
How do you make a priority of priorities?
USAID was very important.
One of the biggest things USAID did was a program called RBHS, which was rebuilding basic health services so that you restore basic health services to the people.
Because when the war ends, people need to see a peace dividend.
And allowing the government of Liberia with very limited resources.
I remember Senator Lindsey Graham coming to Liberia and being shocked that the entire budget of the country was 80 million.
Use that way.
Is that for the city?
Like, no, no.
Like everything.
So that isn't going to be there now.
And I think, you know, for countries that depended on that, that's going to be very difficult.
So I think from the perspectives of receiving countries, going forward, I think one of the things is that we have to be significantly more assertive, which is some of the programs reject them out of hand.
We don't want it.
Look, you've ended all of the programs anyway.
Whatever leverage you had to threaten that, oh, I'll end the program, that's gone.
And so voice agency changes for receiving countries in terms of how they deal with USAID, if it comes back or dealing with partners when they come back.
I think that's important.
And I'll give just an example of that.
We had an energy strategy that the minister was trying to do.
And the World Bank had a different plan.
The World Bank wanted to do multiple small energy programs here.
And he was like, no, I'm not interested.
And the World Bank country manager had a conversation with the president.
The president was pretty upset that he was rejecting what the World Bank wanted.
And I like that guy.
His name was Patrick Sandolo.
And he told the president that I'm the Minister of Energy.
I'm supposed to be your highest advisor when it comes to energy.
We have a plan.
The World Bank actually fits into the plan or it doesn't.
And so the President was like, okay, but you take responsibility if things don't go right.
And the World Bank ended up financing one of the corridors.
I think that is how we have to do.
And the reason why I can tell that story is because it happened so few times.
So it stands out.
So I think in terms of voice, and the final thing I'll add to that is that at least from our experience, when we did our MCC compact, MCC did something in Liberia they hadn't done before.
They combined it with KFW and other Europeans.
So it wasn't simply an MCC compact.
And the first problem we had was whose procurement rules to use.
The Americans are like, oh, ours are the best, blah, blah, blah.
It turns out, you know, KFW have more stringent rules.
So we ended up going with KFW rules.
Why is this important going forward?
For the recipient government, for any program, especially at scale, by having multiple partners, you ensure resilience in the program if one of them turns crazy.
If one of them decides that they do not want to go forward with the program, what ends up happening is that the others can chip in and be able to close that gap.
And we saw that.
We did a program with the Arab lenders.
There are five Arab development banks.
Badia, Kuwait Fund, Abu Dhabi Fund, Saudi Fund, and OFID.
And we had a problem with the Abu Dhabi Fund, and the project was stalled because Abu Dhabi Fund wasn't coming through.
The other four simply closed the Abu Dhabi gap and the project moved forward.
I think designing projects in those ways so that they're sort of foolproof to the kinds of disruptions that we've seen is going to be important.
But that drive will have to come from people sitting in our position, the recipient countries.
Thanks.
Cindy, you joined USAID to lead a new policy office that was really stood up to grapple with some of the issues at the intersection of development and national security.
Can you share something about the geopolitical and foreign policy trends that you focused on during that time and how that work shaped your view of U.S. foreign assistance?
Yeah, well, thank you.
It's really nice to also be back at CGD.
And I see a lot of my former colleagues from USAID here and also MCC, where I also previously worked.
So I just want to acknowledge that it's a really hard time to talk about these longer trends.
And at the same time, Jude has given me light and hope to say, you know, it is worthwhile to think about the 10 to 20 year timeline.
And in fact, what I would say is these longer term trends really demand that we do so.
So building on the great work that Jim did at USAID, the prior administration did create, I would say it's like a policy planning office at USAID to engage in these major trends that we're all grappling with, whether it's the transformation of digital and AI, a new multipolar world that's defined by strategic competition.
So how are we engaging in digital, in critical supply chains, not just limited to minerals, but agricultural products and inputs and also medical countermeasures.
So those are huge challenges.
And then a big theme of this week, of course, is continued rising unsustainable debt levels.
And so four in 10 people in the world live in a country that spend more on debt service, not paying down the principal, on debt service than on education or health.
So these are just major, of course, climate change and the ravages that come from that.
So I have to mention one more because I work on migration too, which is demographic trends.
And so the median age in a country like Japan is 50.
So I know it's hard to talk about migration these days and it's become a very polarized topics, but there will be labor gaps.
And so how does USAID think about all of this?
So we put together what was really a crack team and to think about how can USAID become more fit for purpose and support U.S. foreign policy and U.S. national interest in this really turbulent time.
So three lessons that I took away from that is first, we do, and it's so sad this news about MCC today, because we do need to more deeply invest in areas that we honestly as the U.S., USG, and also globally have struggled with, which is outside of the health and humanitarian space where we do have great degree of excellence.
You can see the outcomes.
I mean, sometimes in 24 hours, you can see the outcomes, but there are these areas, longer-term growth, the job creation, that are really challenging and that we did need to double down and figure out what we can do.
Yes, be catalytic and smart about it, but we did need to reinvest in that.
Secondly, and this is a little bit embarrassing because it's a classic of development effectiveness that has been talked about for decades, but is being responsive to partner countries.
You know, so with the heavily earmarked, and maybe there will be a silver lining to what's happening now if we're able to rebuild, is that, you know, it was very challenging to be responsive.
And so we would go and work with the HILD.
And Jim, you mentioned this, how can we get a little more flexibility?
But it was very hard because of the entire ecosystem and people really had their area of focus.
And so just, you know, and how can we do that better?
And just as a quick data point related to that, in 2024, USAID was appropriated $35 billion.
55% of that was for global health and humanitarian, so really that life-saving aid.
And the remaining 45% was highly fragmented across many, many different, you know, whether it's food security, education, civil society, supporting elections.
I mean, the list really goes on.
And Rachel mentioned this too.
The list just would go on and on.
And so it is a big number.
And we are responsible to the taxpayers, but it was highly fragmented.
So to be responsive to partner governments, we did need that greater flexibility.
And so what's the plan and the long-term vision for that is really important.
And then the last thing is how do we take this rhetoric?
You know, you can attend any number of think tank events on here are the big mega trends and say, you know, well, what are we going to do?
So we really did work hard to say, how do we connect these trends to very practical policy and program interventions that can make a difference?
And so I'll just briefly talk about something that we worked with Congress to get $60 million.
So you heard my $35 billion, $60 million to support economic resilience in a different way.
And two quick examples from that.
We worked with countries like Ecuador to, in a targeted way, help them meet IMF benchmarks so they could access and qualify for their packages.
So again, USAAD is a tiny agency, but what can we do to be catalytic?
And then we also worked with on public financial management, which I know is a really big part of the journey to self-reliance on saying, okay, we know that the global economy is changing.
The supply chains are changing.
So how can we work with countries who do have some of these resources like Angola and help them set up procurement systems that are competitive and fair, not to give a leg up to U.S. companies, but so that there's a fair competition?
And it's sad that we made this progress, but hopefully some of the lessons we've learned can inform a rebuilding that hopefully does happen.
So we've sort of touched on this and Rachel mentioned it at the top, obviously.
U.S. foreign aid has long enjoyed bipartisan support, relied on that constituency to keep it alive.
And we haven't seen the kind of pushback, particularly from Capitol Hill that we maybe had in the past.
I think that suggests, as we've sort of indicated, that even if we eventually move beyond the current substantial political headwinds, that there are things that will need to change, that we'll need to rebuild and strengthen that support.
And that will probably require both some changes to the assistance, but also to sort of the messages and how we talk about it and the ways we think about it.
It sounds like there's a couple areas of agreement already in terms of maybe more focus, hopefully listening to partner governments and maybe seeing additional leadership there.
But I wonder if anyone wants to jump in here.
What are the ways you think the U.S. should change or how should the U.S. change the way that it allocates foreign aid?
And what are the kind of messages that you think will be effective in sort of this future remotely?
I think there's a lot of opportunities here.
And I think this is why it's so important to have these dialogues.
I mean, as we sort of grapple with the first 100 days or the first year or the first two years, it's really important for us to start thinking about where the next 10 years really goes.
I think what we saw was this idea of a bipartisan consensus around foreign assistance was very fragile and very shallow, right?
We relied on three Hill staffers and two members of Congress on the Republic, you know, that that really was the consensus.
Well, I think we need to go further than that.
And I think a couple things really stand out.
One is effectiveness.
You know, I think it was mentioned at the top, but are we actually making progress?
Two is alignment to strategy.
How does this really drive, especially from an American perspective, how does it drive American security, prosperity, or health?
Like, this is not charity.
We don't do it for charity reasons.
This is U.S. government money.
It should benefit.
Like, these are programs we run overseas to the betterment of the American people in addition to those that we partner with.
And so, like, what is that really, what does that really look like?
And then third is a sort of a modality.
And I think from the world has radically changed.
And yet our assistance programs are sort of often stuck in the 1970s or 1980s.
Technology is very different.
AI is very different.
But also the private sector.
We started the first private sector engagement strategy at USAID under the first Trump administration.
I know the Biden administration continued that.
But I think really sort of shifting the modality of approach to say what are the demand signals in a country.
And it goes back to listening to countries, having a country-centric development approach that spans all the spectrums of the U.S. government.
I think that's another sort of potential win here from a reorganization, is how do we actually have that conversation and what do we really want to accomplish it?
What are the demand signals being sent by the private sector where progress, we think progress could truly be made?
How do we truly be partners with countries that we are working in?
And how do we actually deliver real results?
So I think there is a lot of sort of opportunities here.
I should add that I think in the development sector, and I say this about Africa policy too, there was sort of a complacency about the American political process.
The American political process is about interest group politics.
And the idea that when it came to development assistance, it could simply be the preserve of implementing agencies around DC, a few think tanks, and no depth.
I think we have to engage the political process as it is.
And I mean, lobbying, there has to be a part of this.
I mean, every cause in the United States that has some significant allocation has a constituency that lobbies for it and not leveraging misery.
Look how poor they are.
It is about, you know, when this thing happened, I did a blog post on an interest-based case for USAID.
I think we need to move in that direction.
We need to be able to make an argument how USAID advances American interests.
And so I think expanding the constituency of people who care about this, but beginning to make direct connections between aid and how it benefits the average American, I think that's something we haven't done as effectively and something that we ought to do.
I think I would also say that, at least from the, because even as U.S. development aid changes, I'll go back to Rachel's point about narrowing the focus and doing really big things.
So I did a piece in Semaphore that if I were running the African Development Bank, I would reduce what the bank does.
It is the smallest of the regional multilateral development banks and it just tries to be everything to everyone.
And so you stretch your resources to think and you're not having the impact that you should.
I think we should think the same way about U.S. foreign assistance.
And one final thing that I would add is something we actually need to think about really hard about, and it's not clear that the U.S. alone is a partner on this, is about the role of demographics.
So in the fall, I teach at Shoresman College at Shinghua University in Beijing.
And one of the things the students there do is called deep dive, where they go out, whether it's the private sector or the government, and one of the places they went is in the second poorest province in China called Guizhou.
But they went to see a factory.
But the factory they saw in what is the second poorest province or what in China they call them silent factories.
We call them dog factories.
There's nobody working there.
A few guys watching monitors and machines.
So to be energy efficient, you can turn the lights off because it's all robots and machines doing all of the constructed work.
So we have a very young population in Africa who keep thinking like that is some sort of advantage.
If the cutting edge of manufacturing at dog factories, then it's not clear that having a youthful and large population is actually the advantage that it used to be.
I think development ought to tackle these big questions about what that means.
So as we narrow the things that U.S. Foreign Assistance does going forward, it might be a focus on those big things.
The final thing I would say to this is that the story we tell about the Marshall Plan is Europe was starving, things were really bad, and American generosity was extended.
That's good.
It's good myth-making for the country.
But there was a report out of the State Department and Treasury Department that said that at current levels, that the world could only absorb U.S. exports for another 12 to 18 months.
Something needed to be done in Europe for Europe to be able to pay for American exports.
So the Marshall Plan, yes, all of the nice things about it was also about securing the American economy.
I think we need to think about aid in that way.
That where the market's going to come from in the future to absorb American exports.
So some of the stuff that's happening now, it's really short term and short term.
Yeah, we might be able to save 10 billion here, 40 billion here.
But we got to think again to my perspective about the 20-year way.
And it's kind of difficult to imagine where that's going to come from if the median age in Europe is 42.
It's got to come from somewhere.
That's going to be maybe India where the median age is 28.
Maybe Africa where the median age is 19.
So I think thinking about as we narrow the focus of what American foreign assistance does, it has to be on the big things and things that can move, but I have direct ties to the American economy.
Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said.
So just to add a couple of things, I do think, so I'm going to start with what not to do in making the case because I have seen some people fall into this.
And both Jim and Jude have mentioned we have to make the tie to U.S. interest.
But I think what I would ask is not for people to take whatever program they're currently doing or used to do, unfortunately before the cuts, and just say, okay, yes, I'm working on health in this rural area in Africa, and maybe, maybe a pandemic will come out of here, so we need to really invest.
And so I just feel like sometimes what we've done, and I did hear this, you know, when first the task came out from the White House and Secretary Rubio to say it has to fit into safer, stronger, or more prosperous, people taking their log frame and saying, okay, here's the connection ultimately to U.S. interest.
So I think we will be pushed to be more rigorous about what those connections are, to be very data-driven and to be more selective.
And I just, I do want to underscore, so it's, you know, maybe it's a hot shot to make that point because it is very hard to do that in a time when foreign policy, geopolitics, and just the very definition of national interest are up for discussion.
So I recognize that challenge.
So then I would push us to say, I think for some time, and I started my career as a humanitarian delivering ARVs in rural Kenya.
So there was a time where I felt like, okay, well, we need to protect the space.
It is a form of charity.
And I think we have been jolted out of that.
But so then how do we proactively participate in these foreign policy conversations and shape them so that there is a credible case around enlightened self-interest, long-term self-interest that we are a part of and we are investing in.
And maybe the other thing, just to pull the thread on what Jude was saying in terms of non-how we're collaborating with the non-ODOAD forces, right?
And that's one of the founding principles of CGD to say going beyond the dollars from donor countries, Do we leverage trade and migration?
Again, acknowledging these are really hard conversations, but Jude, to your point on whether or not having a large young population is really an advantage given the way manufacturing and the economies work now, that's where I do come back.
And you also cited this: the very high median ages and countries, and some of the work will be taken by robots in the Japans and the USs and the Europe's of the world, but some will not.
And so, therefore, trying to project forward to say where are those relationships.
And CGD also has a proposal around global skills partnerships of where we can make targeted investments in lower-income countries to really have that mutual benefit.
So, I think we should lean into those kinds of ideas and then be simple and make it.
You know, I always say that when you think about, you know, will be there be someone to help care for your ailing parents or grandparents or yourself, like there is a community, there's a story there, and I agree we need to figure out how to tell it.
Thank you.
I want to poke on this a little bit because I think I've been a part of a number of conversations at this point where there's this sort of conversation about messaging or what needs to come next and how do we talk about it and how do we make sure that people understand the value proposition of foreign aid.
And even as administration officials in the current Trump 2 administration have called for foreign aid to be, as Jim noted, more clearly aligned with American interests, they also have voiced support for retaining some humanitarian and life-saving assistance.
Not to say they're mutually exclusive, and I think there are still some questions about how that would work with given the resources and infrastructure that would seem to be available again in the near term.
But how do you view the United States' sort of large and historic role in the humanitarian and global health life-saving aid providing space?
Look, the good thing coming out of everything that we've seen is that there does seem to be a recognition that humanitarian assistance does need to be streamlined.
And this goes back to 10 years.
I was talking to somebody yesterday.
They're like, oh, I was on the humanitarian assistance steering committee that I created.
And I was like, oh, I forgot about that.
But we created a joint state-USAID steering committee to be able to better align, sort of like, you know, one step removed from merger of PRM and BHA.
I think that's going to happen.
And it should happen.
And that's a good thing for us to start providing assistance to a human rather than based on an artificial political line.
And so I think that's a step forward.
And I'm really, really glad that the president and Secretary Rubio have both sort of acknowledged that humanitarian assistance does need to go forward.
It's a testament to American generosity, but it's also a strategic asset that the United States has, and we need to continue to use that.
And the same thing is on the global health side, especially PEPFAR.
I really appreciate President and Secretary's sort of commitment to both of those things.
I think the real challenge is in a reform, and it took four years to do the first Trump administration's transformation, which is not nearly to the extent of this.
And so it is very hard.
We need to make sure that we get it right.
These are the places where people can die.
So we do need to be careful about how we go about it.
And we do, but I think if the vision is cast correctly and you have smart, hardworking people in these spaces to help move these things along, I think that is really important.
The interesting challenge, the other interesting challenge about the reorganization that Sector Rubio put forward is he put essentially the democracy and humanitarian together and then had agriculture and global health somewhere else and then all the other assistance in yet another place.
There's lots of, you know, the fragmentation of foreign assistance is a long health belief.
But understanding sort of how that actually works from a process standpoint, from a leadership standpoint, from pulling things together, none of these things happen in a vacuum and none of these things really happen independently.
And so I think that's the other sort of interesting thing that we'll need to watch.
I think, you know, generally, some of the things we can learn about a society in terms of its morality is how it treats the most vulnerable.
And we live in a world together.
It's not just the United States.
There are other countries in the world.
And if the United States is, you know, I keep saying that the president is very, very focused on the deficit in goods.
But the U.S. has a surplus in services.
We're not talking about that.
Those services are consumed outside of the U.S.
I was looking at numbers that I report that in 2000, the U.S. absorbed about 19% of all exports globally.
Today, that's 13%.
So 87% of that occurs outside the U.S. and the U.S. number of that has been going down.
The point I'm trying to make is it's absolutely impossible for the United States to go it alone.
If you're going to go along with others, then there has to be rules of how we exist in a common society.
And the idea that we can be a wealthy society, a prosperous society, and look upon people living in poverty when we can help them without hurting ourselves and not do that.
Why not?
And so I think we should make the interest-based case for that, but we should also make the moral case for why it doesn't make sense for us to see.
And to Cindy's point, I mean, one of the things, you know, during the Ebola outbreak, I came from Liberia, but I flew through London.
I was in London for a day.
So when I entered the U.S., I came in from Europe.
Now, if you came in from Liberia directly, you got given a phone and a thermometer, and there was a number.
So initially, when it first happened, you had to call that number every whatever to give your temperature.
And then eventually it got better, it became more seamless.
You could go online and put it and do it.
In fact, I was doing an event here and I forgot my phone, my Ebola phone, to call the U.S. health services.
But when I came in from Europe, when I came in from London, no phone, no nothing.
But I come from Liberia.
I simply spent a day in London.
And the point I was making is that the average incubation period for some passengers is significantly longer than the average international flight.
71 million entries into the United States last year.
Unless you're building some sort of wall around the United States, how do you protect the United States?
And so if we're going to live in a world where people are moving around like that, then something about the American prosperity makes the case for assisting people elsewhere in the world.
And the way these changes have gone about almost repudiates that, right?
That if there is no direct personal benefit to the United States, it should not do that.
And I don't know if that is a reflection of American morality.
I thought Americans for a while took pride in being a generous people.
Maybe I was deceived and naive.
But I think there is also a case to be made for that, that it's not just based on interests, it's that we live in a global society.
And sector descent now is saying, well, maybe we can work with our allies against China.
What allies?
So it sort of creates this.
And the final thing I would say on this is that there is a shift that is happening.
It's almost inexorable.
UNIDIO has a report that says that in five years, 45% of global manufacturing will be in China alone.
The last time we saw one country that dominant in manufacturing was the United States after World War II.
For a country to accrue that position in peacetime is insane.
Now, if you add Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, the global economy has already shifted toward Asia.
And so the idea that the United States can somehow go it alone, you might do that for another 10 years.
But then the world changes.
And so I think as we're thinking, since we're talking 20 years now, for those of us who are planning for that and thinking about that, I think it's important for us to not just make the interest-based case for U.S. assistance, but to make the moral one and our ability to live in a world where that is a society that is kinder to the most vulnerable.
To comfort myself sometimes, I like to read history.
And so recently, and I commend to everyone any history of USAID or reading the congressional debate when USAID was created, or John Norris has a good history of USAID.
And I guess what looking at the histories make me think is that there's not a sharp divide between interests and morality.
So when you look at the language around the creation of USAID, it was there were very practical things.
You know, let's invest in those economies and bring them on side.
And that also that part of our values was also part of Cold War competition.
So I had earlier said a lot of that is being scrambled.
You know, who are the allies?
Who's on what side?
What do we stand for is in question.
But I do think, even as I call for on the foreign policy side, that we need rigor in making those connections so we can make legitimate cases and have effective programs.
I do think it's really a call to everyone to say, well, how does that generosity fit in with how we think about U.S. interests and longer-term prosperity now?
And so that is always hopeful to me because we see that under what was started in USAID, you know, way back when, seven decades, eight decades ago, you know, it could contain multiple objectives, but it was connected to a broader discussion that was about foreign policy and geostrategic competition.
So what does that look like now?
I don't know the answer, but I think we should consider it.
And then the only other thing that I would add is that I do think when it comes to the moral case, I know maybe it's not so publicly evident, but I'm aware, I'm sure many of you are aware of there has been a lot of outreach to the administration on the life-saving programs.
And maybe it hasn't translated into those programs being now fully funded, but I do think that is an area where direct connection, whether it's with evangelicals, as Rachel was saying, or I know I work on refugee resettlement too, some of those communities, where I do think that direct engagement could help us rebuild and build an important constituency.
Can I just make one comment that is sort of a scene setter, but it often goes unnoticed.
There is a I see it as a very public divide inside the Republican Party around isolationism versus global engagement.
And that really sets the stage, right?
And this is where some of the mixed messaging comes from, because there's people in the administration who hold both of these views.
And so it's, as we start thinking about where it comes next over the next 10 years, I think one of the baseline is a globally engaged America is good for American economics, right?
I mean, us being out there, us understanding that we do need allies, that we do need friends, that we do need people who are willing to sacrifice for our own benefit, as we saw in Afghanistan after 9-11, right?
There are these places where, but also there is a huge economic benefit from America being globally engaged, creating the next trade opportunities.
Like that is a good thing.
But it's not a universally accepted premise as of right now.
And it'll be interesting to see how the president, obviously he took a fairly globally engaged, although skeptic view in Trump 1.
Now it's a little unclear, and the players are starting to be clear.
But it'll be interesting to see what the president ultimately decides.
But that'll be an important sort of scene setter sort of globally for us.
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.
And you didn't specifically invoke China, but Jude did.
And I know that was sort of a looming issue, both in your service and government and yours, certainly.
And Jude mentioned he spent a good amount of time there, so has some interesting insights.
I'm curious if you, what approaches you think the United States would help the United States sort of better compete for resources and influence vis-a-vis China, because that does seem to be at least a stated goal of a lot of lawmakers and I think parts of the administration, perhaps.
And I think that goes back to this basic question.
I think there would be some people in the administration who say China is just as Canada is just as bad as China.
They both take advantage of us.
They both are bad to us.
Neither of them really care about us, right?
So it's that type of sort of approach.
And then there's the more, I would, I sort of categorize it as a Reagan through Trump one sort of perspective on the Republican side of, no, we understand who our enemies are, who are sort of challenging Western approach and Western institutions that have largely benefited the American people over the past 50 years.
And so what does that really sort of look like?
But, you know, look, I do think I'm on the global engaged side.
I am the, I created the first countering China initiative in Trump 1.
It came out of USAID because we believed in the power that development can play in countering China globally.
And that's a really important initiative.
And I do think as we start thinking about how are our programs that we run overseas, how are those benefit American security?
I think it's really important for us to understand the power that development can bring in countering China.
But we have to, I think the demand signal from the administration really needs to be clear that yes, we in fact do want to do that.
And then once the clear vision is set, then you can create a clear strategy to implement it.
And I think foreign assistance can play an important role in that.
I think it's a little bit unclear as to what the total objective is at this point.
And we'll see.
Yeah, well, and I can jump in to say thanks to the work that you and your team did, Jim, the new Office of Policy in the Biden administration.
We did have then a PRC team as well.
And I think things we can do in the longer term are I'd mentioned the Economic Resilience Initiative, which was really looking to respond again on public financial management, jobs, how we can play a part in responding to the debt crises.
So and then there was also an important countering PRC influence fund that Congress did support very strongly in the past, and that invested in things.
And sometimes it was hard, I have to say, kind of an uphill battle within USAID.
I think for those who kind of grew up when the portfolio did not include as much of this strategic competition work, but things like, and I referenced it early, like how do we have competitive bids for ports and undersea cables?
When we're thinking about responding to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, which has a huge impact on a lot of economies in the Indo-Pacific and in Latin America, again, we're not saying, you know, everything should be to the U.S., because I think the point is, and Juda, you cited a lot of really important statistics on this, like we need allies and partners.
And another really important area which we need great development minds on is around the race for critical minerals.
So many of you may be familiar that 90% of critical minerals are either sourced or processed in the PRC.
And so, and I do always admit, you know, extractive industries have not been a pathway to inclusive, broad-based growth that we would want.
But the case that I would make to my team, including and the broader agency where people were skeptical, is like, that is happening.
Whether or not our experts on governments, civil society engagement, on fair procurement are engaged or not.
That is happening.
And so do we want to be on the sidelines saying, well, we didn't participate in something that went wrong, or do we want to engage and say, this is a big, I mean, your iPhone, I mean, just everyday products rely on these minerals.
Do we want to try to create a different possible trajectory around these key pillars of the global economy?
And to me, the answer has to be yes.
And so, and I was really heartened to see that Secretary Rubio was an original co-sponsor around critical minerals legislation that does include some of these aspects.
So I think we need to continue to lean in there.
I would just add that as an aid to an African president, I've been in meetings where the U.S. ambassador came to see the president because there was a big vote coming up at the UN just to say this is the American position.
I've been in the same meetings where the Chinese ambassador comes and says this is the Chinese position.
If Liberia isn't going to vote along with the Chinese position, best we will accept is an abstention.
So of course these things happen on background.
The reason why the U.S. ambassador can come in and make any demand at all is because Liberia receives aid from the U.S. If the U.S. is completely out of Liberia, the U.S. ambassador is not showing face or anything like that.
So simply by China by simply remaining gains simply because the U.S. isn't there.
You're just not there.
I think that's one thing.
The second thing is that a lot of the, we keep talking about the expansion in data centers, especially because of the amount of electricity that AI uses.
But all of that electricity has to be conveyed using copper wires.
The copper mines in Chile are losing quality.
And in Peru, there's significant agitation from indigenous peoples.
So in Mozambique, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Zambia, we have significant amounts of copper, very high quality.
We see why the Trump administration is trying to negotiate some deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
My advice to African governments has been that it makes no sense to come seeking individual deals.
Agoa is supposed to expire in September.
If you want critical minerals, we will negotiate around AGOA and extending AGOA.
We're not going to do individual deals because, you know, the same administration that negotiated USMCA is the one that decided on the first day to focus on Canada and Mexico.
What gives you any confidence that a deal you negotiate with them, you the DRC with significantly less leverage somehow is going to hold?
I would think negotiating something as an African bloc means there's so many people at stake that there's a lot of people ready to defend if something happens in the future than trying to do it one-on-one.
Secondly, I looked at the numbers.
U.S. trade in services and goods with the rest of the world is around 7 trillion.
U.S. trade with Africa is 71 billion.
Who's going to dedicate time to negotiate if you disaggregate that with each individual African country?
So I think because critical minerals are that important, because at least on the continent we have significant stores of that in high quality, maybe this is an opportunity to engage the administration as a unit collectively and let the chip form what they may, at least in that, in access to critical minerals, there's still competition.
Because the Chinese now have started pivoting out of South America into Africa for access to more copper.
So I think on that, with this great power competition, again, to Jim's point, there are parts of the administration that acknowledges there is a great power competition.
And then there are parts of the administration that may not say it, but behaves as if one, has already won the great power competition, or two, is conceded the great power competition.
And so one hopes that if the administration itself is not going to move in that direction, then instead of Lesotho coming here, South Africa, especially South Africa, please don't come by yourself.
I think it's better to have the Africans sort of negotiate as a unit.
Great.
Well, we're going to turn to the audience in a minute.
I'm going to toss out one more question since we've been referencing sort of the need or the demand for things like critical minerals and other things because and part of the pace of technological change.
I'm curious if any of you want to weigh in on the sort of question of like what kinds of technological innovations do you think, how will that maybe change the delivery of U.S. foreign assistance in the future?
Everyone else get your questions ready.
Yeah, I mean, I don't have the answer.
I'm not a futurist.
I barely understand technology.
But this is where I go back to the private sector.
And I mean, we've tried to leverage the private sector.
We've tried to blackmail the private sector.
We've tried to work with them on delivery systems.
But I do think that there is something important about the demand signal that the private sector can bring.
They understand opportunities.
They understand challenges.
They understand sort of what they are trying to accomplish.
And this is both U.S. private sector, it's domestic private sector, it's sort of across the board.
And then from there, the U.S. government can say, okay, how can I, what role should I play?
Can I play?
And in order to be able to really engage and have the biggest impact as possible.
And so instead of me saying, okay, well, that vaccine is really going to be the game changer, I think it's really important for us to understand sort of that the private sector is always going to be ahead of the public sector in these types of spaces, and we need to understand how to listen.
I did open my chat GPT account three months ago.
I'm not an expert, but I have been, I do think in terms of what we've been saying on effectiveness and impact, I think there's a lot of exciting news out there still to be further studied.
But for those of you who have not seen, there's a new World Bank randomized control trial on using AI as a tutor in Nigeria.
And the results are pretty incredible.
Again, to see if they last through time, but basically almost two years of learning completed in six weeks, which didn't just translate to those topics that they study, but to their end of term exams.
And so again, how long that persists is only for certain topics.
But I think it's just a huge area that's so exciting.
And so I feel I've been plugging CGD, but CGD does have an excellent program of research that's just starting up on AI and effectiveness.
And I think I hope everyone will follow that.
And then I just wanted to add, and Jide probably has more thoughts on this because he mentioned data centers.
But I also think that when we think about, you know, you mentioned the energy aspect, and there's, I think, a lot of private sector interest in, of course, building data centers around the world.
So as development experts, what advice do, and capacity and tools do we have to say what are the kinds of negotiations that would make sense so that data is now a commodity and there are ways that it could be farmed from different countries and individuals that are more exploitative.
So what, and it's kind of similar to the trade negotiations, right, with information being so critical.
What are the kinds of negotiations and consortiums that could come together so that there are those dual benefits, both for those companies who are bringing private capital and then also to the countries who are hosting them?
I would just say maybe gene editing.
One of the projects I worked on here was gene drive as a form of malaria control.
And the idea was creating sterile males or altering the females so that then, you know, because it's the females that transmit malaria.
And so I had to go to Ghana, Burkina Faso.
Didn't go to Mali.
It was too exciting there for me.
But São Tomé Príncipe and Uganda where they were doing significant research on using gene drive as a way of being able to control malaria.
I think that's an exciting place to look.
But I think things like payment systems.
I was reading a picture.
We're going to leave this to take you live to the State Department where Secretary of State Marco Rubio is holding a ceremony for representatives from Congo and Rwanda to sign a ceasefire in a conflict between the two countries.
You're watching live coverage on C-SPAN.
Thank you.
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