Nearly twenty -five years ago, William Cityly, an economist in the New York University’s free market, was a prominent academic critic of foreign aid programs. In his book 2001, “Paid growth to growth: economists adventures and adventures in tropical regionsEasterly wrote that contracts of development assistance from the West have failed to stimulate growth and reduce poverty in many poor countries. Moreover, he argued that American aid programs have prompted authoritarian rulers, such as Meles Zenawi, Ethiopian Prime Minister from 1995 to year 2012, once It is called a name “The man who tried to make the dictatorship acceptable” by Economic. In 2014 bookAl -Sharqi wrote, “The rights of divine kings of our time had to be the right to development for dictators.”
Several aid programs that criticized Easterly have been supported by the United States Agency for International Development. The American Agency for International Development, which was established in the nineteen by John F. Kennedy is the largest bilateral agency in the world. In 2023, Congress allocated more than forty billion dollars to its projects. However, on Donald TrumpOn the first day in the office, he signed an executive order I stopped most aid programs He claimed that “the industry of external and bureaucratic aid” was “in many cases suitable for American values.” since then, Elon Musk His colleagues were in the alleged government efficiency Dismantling the American Agency for International DevelopmentIts headquarters are closed, its website is taken in a non -connection mode, and most of its employees are placed on vacation. Last Monday, musk books On its X platform, “We spent the weekend in the US Agency for International Development in wood wood.”
When I called Easterly last week to ask him about these developments, his dialect was far from the celebration. He said, about the pieces of the pieces that Musk and Trump adopted: “It is illegal and that it is non -democratic.” “Even if you like the idea of getting away from aid, I cannot overlook this terrible way to do this.” The administration said it plans to reduce the number of US Agency for International Development from more than ten thousand to about six hundred. Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said that the Foreign Ministry will take over some of the agency, but the details of how this will happen is small. Sharqia compared Trump’s approach to the economyShock“It was presented in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” This was a catastrophe because you needed a gradual transition; You can not do everything at once. ”I think the same applies to the world of aid. There should be a gradual transition, not a closure overnight. “
Although many aid programs have failed to achieve their goals, some of them continued, some of them have worked well, especially in the field of public health. In recent days, there have been reports of people in Africa away from the medical clinics where they receive medicines to treat HIV that the president’s emergency plan is paid. AIDS Arta (PepfarThe initiative funded and managed by the United States Agency for International Development has been funded. Pepfar In 2003, it is widely considered the biggest success for the policy of aid in the past generation. Now it is suspended, as well as many other health initiatives in poor countries. New York Times It was identified More than thirty medical programs were stopped, including malaria treatment for young children in Mozambique, cholera treatment in Bangladesh, and cervical cancer examination in Malawi.
On all, USAID funds programs in more than a hundred countries. After selecting the list, the Republicans highlighted some of them claiming that the agency was following the “Wake up” agenda, including a grant of millions of dollars and three million dollars to enhance job opportunities for LGBTQ members in Serbia, and a $ 20 million grant for a non -profit Sesame to support an Iraqi TV program similar to ” Sesame Street. Last week, Trump said the US Agency for International Development “is run by a group of radical crazy”; It was found that his administration’s claim that the United States spends fifty million dollars to provide a condom in Gaza as fake news.
Esther DofloEconomic expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who study development and who participated in the 2019 Nobel Prize in the economy for its work in promoting a pilot approach to relieving poverty, told me that Trump’s decision to stop all foreign aid programs surprised the aid community: he had no mention during the election campaign. In 2003, Duflo and two of his colleagues founded the ABDUL Latif Jameel Poverty (Poverty (J-PalA global network of researchers, which is now working in dozens of countries and has several hundred employees. J-Pal He was a pioneer in using random control experiences to assess aid interventions – such as whether pushing parents to keep their children registered in the school is effective – technology is now widely used in the development community. Two days after Trump’s direction, the US Agency for International Development issued orders to stop for many of the projects that were funded, including J-Pal. Doflo said that she and her colleagues are now trying to find alternative financing, but that is J-PalAs a firm organization with a variety of donors, it will continue its work. “But for many smaller organizations, it is more catastrophic,” she said. “They were dependent on the US government.” In many cases, Duflo added, relief organizations were informed of their field offices of stopping their projects. “Even if the organizations can find alternative financing, it will take some time,” said Duflo. “Meanwhile, everyone is sent home.”
There is now a state of great uncertainty about how the United States, led by Trump, responds to human disasters in the developing world, such as earthquakes, famines and civil wars. Clemens Landers, Vice President and senior politician at the International Development Research Center, worked in Liberia, where she worked as a consultant to the country’s Minister of Finance after Elele Johnson Cerelev, the first woman in the state elected in Africa. When Johnson Cerelev reached power, in 2006, Liberia was destroyed by more than a decade of civil war, military dictatorship, and chronic poverty. Its capital, Monrovia, did not have an effective work electrical system or service. “The US International Development Agency was one of the first donors who jumped,” Landers recalls. “This helped restore the spotlight, to prepare a basic educational system and a basic health system.” Landers remembers that the head of the American Agency for International Development in Liberia met repeatedly with Johnson Cerelev and behaved as a strategic advisor, while helping the rest of the mission employees enhance external assistance.
She said: “The American Agency for International Development has a great imprint within the country, and this is essential to this.” “This is what makes the United States unique.” If Washington is permanently withdrawn from its leadership role in providing aid and appointing disasters, there is no other Western country with the ability and the desire to solve it, “Many of our allies have continued similar restrictions – the lack of support for external participation – and you do not have great help budgets and will not be Creating the void. ” The European Union cuts its external assistance. In France, which is facing a financial crisis, a budget announced this week cut off aid budget by nearly forty percent. In Germany, where Future electionsThere was also talk about discounts. Landers told me: “Not, at this moment, Europeans who have resources to fill the gap,” Landers told me. “They are countries like China.”
While Landers emphasized the importance of foreign assistance programs and the American leadership of these efforts, she also admitted that there are legitimate discussions on how to target and deliver help. Some countries, especially Britain, have argued that donors should focus their resources more on the poorest countries, which means reducing financing to medium -income countries that are seen as strategic allies, such as Jordan and Egypt. (Israel, a rich country, is one of the largest beneficiaries of American assistance, although most of this is military aid) by critics – not enough for local organizations. “The leader of an ambitious aspiration may really have a large agenda to update the American relief system,” Landers said. “There is a great deal of agreement that it is maturity for reform.”
