Trump has dismantled most of USAID. But what was it? How did it work?
The wealth gap between rich and poor nations is vast, but the fact that rich nations often need natural resources found only in poor nations creates a tension. USAID has always been contingent on poor countries not using that leverage too much.
1/
If US companies want to extract these resources they need to trust that their cobalt mine won't get nationalized or taxed too much or saddled with "unreasonable" safety regulations.
But why should the government or people in a poor nation play along? Is it not moral to nationalize the mine if millions of your people are sick or suffering from simple basic things that aren't even that expensive to fix?
USAID means that having good relations with America has benefits.
2/
The doctors, some NGO workers and volunteers who show up to give training and shots are often disgusted with this reality. There are OTHER good reasons why one might want to keep tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS at bay in this world. It's moral, it gradually makes the whole world more wealthy and stable, and it's safer. That is: USAID would benefit the US even if the cobalt mine were nationalized.
US business people do not want to hear this.
Anyway this has all been cut. 3/
The aid is set to run out shortly since Trump has destroyed the program. Instead he's made offers that are even less favorable to these nations. Offers that ensure their economies will never develop beyond being sites of extraction.
Most of the countries are saying "no" and China and others may step in.
4/4
It's interesting to me how it is a piece of the same solution as tariffs are - they are a similar incentive to the developed countries after all; 'Be Nice To America, or else we will make your goods unsellable in the US'. But now, at least in Europe, we just started looking for local trade partners, because now the tarifs feel random and depend solely on the moods of your president, and the other branches of the government don't do shit about it, so it just doesn't make sense to treat USA as a sane and predictable trade partner.
I'm unironically excited about it, because it quite suddenly turned out that we are getting way more economically independent from the US really fast because we had to.
That, at least, seems like a good thing. (the very thin silver-plated lining on the Tr#mp turd-cloud)
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