The U .S. disburses tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid each year.
That money's been a key source of American diplomatic power for decades.
But with the stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump has frozen the vast majority of it for 90 days.
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in U .S.
politics. I'm Sonia Hudson, and this week we're asking, what's the state of American soft power in the age of Donald Trump?
Here with me to discuss is David Pilling.
He's the FT's Africa editor.
Hi, David. Hi, Sonia.
And we've also got Felicia Schwartz, the FT's U .S.
Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent.
Hi, Felicia. Hi. So, David, can we just start by defining foreign aid?
What sort of programs or activities does American money support around the globe?
And which countries will this funding freeze impact the most?
Well, I think aid is extremely broadly defined.
Normally, we'd be talking about grant money rather than investment on which you would, you know, be seeking a monetary return.
We'd be talking about money spent on a variety of programs and in a variety of countries.
I mean, one of the things that struck me when this executive order came through and there was a deal of confusion about what it covered was, I don't know if you remember those advertisements that showed, I think it was for Dunlop, and they showed what the world would be without Dunlop.
And suddenly people were falling off escalators in airports and all sorts of things that you didn't realize this company was involved in suddenly stopped working.
And in a sense, when aid stopped or appeared to stop overnight, that's what we had.
So we had, for example, helicopters involved in the anti -narcotic business in Colombia were grounded because they relied on fuel that was paid for apparently by the American embassy.
We had doctors in rural South Africa unsure whether they were allowed to dispense HIV medicines.
So you can see, I think, that the reach of aid and when it stopped or when it was threatened with stopping overnight, suddenly you saw the ripple effects all around the world as people really panicked and tried to come to terms with what this meant.
And Felicia, was this an across the board freeze or were any countries or programs exempted from it?
Yeah. So in the order itself, it exempted Israel and Egypt.
These are the two largest recipients of foreign military financing, which comes through the State Department, but funds weapons sales.
I think Ukraine has said that they are receiving weapons, but it's possible that some of that could be tied up in this.
And then just more broadly, yes, Marco Rubio issued a waiver exempting emergency food assistance, which was also written into the first version of this, but also life -saving medicine, shelter.
But what I had heard from some U .S.
officials and members of the aid organizations is that even though Marco Rubio issued that waiver, there actually hasn't been much clarification and people are trying to figure out what this means.
You mentioned Marco Rubio there.
That's the new secretary of state.
How did he and the Trump administration explain this move?
What's the rationale here?
I mean, Trump has made clear that he wants to slash government spending significantly.
He said that he doesn't want any diversity, equity, inclusion or LGBT programs.
He campaigned a lot about that.
And when Marco Rubio came to State Department on his first day, he said, we're going to see every dollar we spend, every program we fund and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions.
Does it make America safer?
Does it make America stronger?
Does it make America more prosperous?
Basically, they decided that the best way to figure this out was to do a complete halt to all funding and they would assess project by project.
And some of their early findings, they've said they've found, you know, millions of dollars for condoms and LGBT program and surgeries that they don't want to fund.
So they're saying, you know, this is justified.
It's almost the reversal of the normal way that you would do this.
Instead of kind of keeping everything going and then working out which ones you no longer need, it's almost the reverse.
You switch off everything and then you begin to switch them back on as you realize that these are ones you need.
I mean, from my perspective, there are really two things here going on simultaneously.
There's the kind of immediate confusion and the ceasing of activities all around the world as this 90 -day suspension kicks in with the waivers and the carve -outs beginning to turn on a few of the programmes, as we've discussed.
But there's a much bigger and broader thing going on, which is really the US re -evaluating, redefining what it is it wants to do with aid.
What is the purpose of aid?
What's in it for America?
Is there an altruistic element to this?
Is there a self -preservation, a security element?
What is aid all about?
And I think kind of quite big questions are going to be asked in the longer run.
So if we just take a step back for a minute, why does the U .S.
spend all this money abroad?
What's the rationale for supporting programs like the ones that we've been talking about?
Well, basically, a stable, secure, more prosperous world is in the U .S.
best interest. And in addition to hard power, soft power is a very important part of this.
You know, I guess maybe a more cynical take is stable countries have stable markets that the U .S.
can sell to. Good governments and democracy and clean water and ample food.
If people have access to these things, they're less likely to, you know, be security vacuums or for people to dabble in extremism.
So the U .S. wants to kind of create and shape a world that adheres to its values as it tries to kind of write the rules of the road in this multipolar world where it's in competition with China and, of course, other countries like Russia as well.
Does it also have anything to do with just kind of improving America's image abroad?
Like, if you're a small country that gets aid from the U .S., you're probably going to think more favorably of the U .S.
Well, I think there absolutely is a soft power element to this.
First of all, just to put the numbers in context, I mean, the US is a huge contributor to global aid, you know, which is basically flows of money from rich countries to poorer ones.
But relatively speaking, it's, you know, it's halfway or even down the pecking order.
Some countries spend a higher percentage of GDP on what you call aid assistance.
So for about 0 .3 % to 0 .4%, I think, of US GDP, about 1 % of federal spending, you could argue that the US has got a big bang for its buck in fostering some of the stability that Felicia was talking about.
I'm not saying that all the aid it spends is justified, but I'm just saying if you're looking overall at the rationale, let's just take one program, which was a program called PEPFAR, which came in under President George Bush the Younger.
It was an emergency scheme when the HIV epidemic was raging.
And the US committed to spending billions of dollars a year on providing antiretroviral drugs for people around the world who could otherwise not afford them.
And I think it's undisputed that millions of lives have been saved through this.
Now, that is for, I don't know what the exact figures are, but several billion dollars a year.
Depending on your perspective, you could say that is money extremely well spent in all those categories, goodwill, public health, American security, or you could say, why are we spending this money abroad?
And I think that's what's being debated right now in Washington.
I also wanted to ask, because we are in an era now where American foreign policy swings massively between presidential administrations.
Lots of policies swing massively between presidential administrations.
You know, in the first weeks of his presidency, Joe Biden declared that, quote, America was back to play its traditional role on the world stage.
Trump has now, of course, upended that.
Is there a risk to all this foreign policy whiplash?
I think there is a risk, as I mentioned, this multipolar world where the U .S.
is trying to compete with China, that it's identified as a pacing challenge.
I think the whiplash, the uncertainty, I think two things.
I think one, thousands of people who are locally employed by the U .S.
all over the world have lost their jobs or about to if they haven't already, which I think is going to create a ton of anger and resentment toward the U .S.
in ways that could be very unpredictable.
But then more broadly, I think countries that feel like they can't count on the U .S., they are going to hedge.
I mean, they're hedging already.
We see that in the Middle East.
We see that in Africa.
We see that in Latin America.
And I think this is the last thing the U .S.
wants. David, what do you think?
Well, I can think of two areas of, let's say, interest.
One is that I think it is a fact that many countries now view the U .S.
as more transactional.
The U .S., of course, has always been criticized because it's the most powerful country on earth, and that's what happens when you're the most powerful country on earth.
But I think there was this understanding, even if there was talk of hypocrisy and the rest of it, but there was this understanding among many people that there was a sort of a moral light there, that there was an attempt to be a nation founded on principles.
There was an ideal.
Whereas now, I think that many people that I'm talking to are saying, you know, The pretense of all that is gone.
America has come forward and has said, you know, we're in it for ourselves.
If we give you a dollar, it's because we expect a dollar and a half back.
The second aspect, of course, is what will other powers do?
And I think the most interesting one is China.
China really hasn't traditionally gone in for what we might call aid.
It's not particularly soft power.
It's almost kind of hard power.
Now, the question I think now is if the U .S.
really is going to retreat from soft power, and of course, we don't really know that yet, but if it is, to what extent will China be willing and able to step into the breach?
It certainly has the money because we're not talking about huge amounts of money, actually.
These are billions of dollars, but they're on the margins.
The question is, does it have the will?
Does it have the expertise?
And I don't think there's any indication yet that it's standing ready immediately to jump in and fill the gap.
So there's a lot of factors at play here for the U .S., for other countries, and there is also certainly no shortage of global challenges to address right now.
What are each of you most closely watching?
The one thing that I'm very interested in is there is this, it's not quite a prison camp.
It's a camp in northern Syria where it's kind of ISIS refugees.
It's, you know, brides of ISIS fighters who are widows, their children.
There's about 40 ,000 people in this camp.
It's a huge security concern for the U .S., and it's actually the State Department that funds it.
And there have been some temporary waivers to keep it going, but there's a lot of uncertainty there.
And it could be a major security challenge for the US.
A couple of things that leap to mind, one would be pandemic preparedness, early warning systems.
As we saw with the COVID, something that pops out of one part of the world can quickly spread all over the world.
And these early warning systems, sometimes in the poorest countries, for example, DRC Congo are both good for the countries that are recipients of that aid, but could well be beneficial for wealthier countries.
A second is climate change and security -related crises.
We have this huge humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
You have 10 million people on the move, 20 million facing food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, in countries like Somalia, parts of Ethiopia, even parts of northern Kenya, which is a kind of a richer African country.
But even there, you have droughts that seem to be just continuing year after year after year.
And if you go there, you'll see people really dependent on, basically, food aid.
And if that stops, that's going to be something that I'm going to be watching very carefully because it's not quite clear what happens in the absence of outside help.
I want to thank our guest.
David Pilling is the FT's Africa editor.
Thanks, David. Thanks so much, Sonia.
And Felicia Schwartz is our U .S.
foreign affairs and defense correspondent.
Thanks, Felicia. Thanks for having me.
this was swamp notes the u .s politics show from the ft news briefing if you want to sign up for the swamp notes newsletter we've got a link to that in the show notes our show is mixed by sam giovinko and produced by ethan plotkin and katia komkova special thanks to pierre nicholson i'm your host, Sonia Hudson.
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Original music by Hannes Brown.
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