The History and Future of U.S. Foreign Aid

Panelists discuss the history of U.S. foreign aid and examine its effectiveness in promoting global stability, fostering economic development, and projecting U.S. soft power worldwide, as well as potential approaches for restructuring the system moving forward.

TALEV: Thank you, Anne (sp). And welcome to everyone to today’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting. You are in the right meeting if you were trying to join “The History and Future of U.S. Foreign Aid.” No light topic.

My name is Margaret Talev. I am director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship. And I’m a senior contributor for Axios. I will be presiding over today’s discussion. And this event is on the record.

We are presented today by CFR is RealEcon: Reimagining American Economic Leadership Initiative. I think it’s fair to say that today’s panelists bring a range of ideological perspectives and experiences to this conversation. And CFR members joining us online, you will have an opportunity to ask our panelists questions later in the program. And I very much look forward to hearing your questions as well as your answers. (Laughs.)

Now I’d like to welcome our panelists: Gayle E. Smith is former CEO of the ONE Campaign and, of course, former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID; Ted Yoho, now a senior advisor with Kyle House Group, is a former Republican congressman from Florida and former member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Samuel Worthington is senior fellow at Forus, the international network of civil society organizations, and a former CEO of InterAction and of Plan International USA.

So to set the table, we’re going to spend the next hour talking here about foreign aid, how the U.S. has used it, essentially, since the end of World War II or early in the Cold War, where things are going in this future. And to start, you know, I hear many American voters, especially people experiencing economic hardship, say things like: We need to be prioritizing our needs at home over the needs of people far away who aren’t Americans. Take a look at the polling. It shows that Americans think that foreign aid spending is something, like, maybe a quarter of the federal budget, when it’s really about a percent or so. There’s been recent polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation that suggests that the public’s views on the value and implications of foreign aid or pulling it are deeply partisan.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats right now say that ending USAID could fuel death or sickness or crisis around the world, but less than half of Republicans in the U.S. agree. About three quarters of Democrats but just one-fourth of Republicans believe that ending USAID will make the us less safe. And Republicans in the U.S. right now are much more likely to believe that ending USAID altogether could significantly reduce the federal deficit. So that sets the table, I think, for public opinion.

And, Gayle, I would like to start with you. I guess at the outset of this conversation I’m wondering, what do you hope that can be accomplished by even having conversations like the one we’re about to have? Are you thinking that you may be able to change President Trump’s mind, or Secretary of State Rubio’s mind, or to convince congressional Republicans to push back against the current posture of the administration? Or are you hoping to move public opinion? What is the goal, for you, of a conversation like this?

SMITH: Thanks. And let me say a couple things. One of the things that’s interesting about the polling that you just cited is it makes me wonder whether those questions were asked with a pretty political frame, because my experience has been that there’s been a lot of public support for foreign assistance, and Sam can point to this, if you even look at what Americans provide through their own organizations or churches or networks. And that support for foreign aid has been strongly bipartisan for at least twenty years, and very, very strongly bipartisan. So I think we need to remember that and think about how we rebuild that bipartisanship.

Look, when I think about conversations like this one I think in the short term and the long term in terms of what we can do. In the short term there’s a real need for activism. And the activism thus far has been tremendous, by the way. But I think there are a couple things we need to focus on in the very immediate. One is the lives and livelihoods of all of the people that worked for USAID that have suddenly found themselves with no jobs, and standing in solidarity with them. I think the second is Secretary Rubio has said that they have cut 83 percent of AID’s programs and intend to retain 18 percent at the State Department.

Other than the fact that that adds up to 101 percent, the question is what is that 18 percent, and what’s going to be protected? I think there’s a fairly consistent view in the community that we need to make sure that a lot of global health is protected, given all the investments there and the urgency of that, and humanitarian assistance. We don’t know, but I think having alignment and pushing on that. I think in the longer term we have both the opportunity and necessity to think about what comes next. And the one thing I would caution there, and I hope that the Council and other forums can help unpack these discussions, is that before everybody rushes to draft a new org chart and figure out the boxes, I think there are a couple really big questions we need to ask.

One is, in the current context there’s calls for World Bank reform. We’ve seen huge gains in reducing extreme poverty, but now it’s going the other direction. Humanitarian crises are consuming more of the budget than ever before. What does the world actually need? And how does that tie to our own interest? Historically, that’s been the expression of our common values, economic self-interest, and national security. I think those three pertain. The second thing to think about is what are we really trying to do, and what are successful outcomes?

And I’ll just end by saying I think it’s key that we remember that development isn’t just an aspiration. It’s a discipline. And we know a great deal about what has impact. So I think if we can, at the same time, do everything we can to make sure that that 18 percent that’s being retained goes in the directions we would like to see it go, but also start a conversation about what the future looks like with context and goals, you know, before we rebuild a new institution.

TALEV: Thank you. Ted, I want to move the conversation to you. You have been talking and writing about your own evolution in terms of thinking about foreign aid. And I wanted to share some of that with our audience, and then talk to you about it. About a month ago you wrote and you said, quote, “I first came to Congress more than a decade ago to shock the system. A mandate to find and eliminate every possible cent of government excess that failed to deliver value to the economic and national security of the U.S. And at the very top of my list was foreign aid, which I considered to be a reckless extravagance that blew precious American tax dollars on vanity projects. But I was wrong.”

You also said there—you put out a call for, I think, Americans, but also in the political system, to come together on a bipartisan basis to support assistance that, you said, meets these criteria, but oppose programs that do not. And you said that speculation about the U.S. ending foreign aid programs has been met with cheers from Beijing to Moscow and Tehran, but that the U.S. cannot afford to retreat even if there needs to be a reboot. So I want to ask you, can you react to what’s actually happened on the policy front since you wrote those words? And, as a Republican who understands maybe better than most on this panel, what makes President Trump tick, what makes his voting base tick, where do you see this conversation realistically going?

YOHO: I think we’re in a reset, obviously. I mean, we all see that. We all know that. A lot of us experience that. Where I see this going? You know, we can’t change what’s happened in the past. I mean, as recent as it is all we can do is focus on where we’re going, and make sure we bring back those programs that are going to fall in line with, I think, what we all want. And according to the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio, everything we do should be to make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. And when we do that, we can’t do that alone. We have to do that with other countries. And I’ve been a big advocate for foreign policy. I’m passionate about it. And I personally feel that the foreign policy—or, the Foreign Affairs Committee is the most important committee on the Hill because that leads to good foreign trade policies, it leads to good domestic policies that go into that trade. And if you have those two components, you have strong national security.

Now, in order to do that you can do the development things like the DFC or MCC, that do the hardcore infrastructure projects. But them by themselves can’t do that alone. You need boots on the ground, as was brought up. But the problem with a lot of these programs that I saw when I came in was you get mission creep. If you go back to the original foreign affairs—or, Foreign Assistance Act in 1961, it was focused on education, agriculture, and humanitarian. And it’s morphed over the last sixty, seventy years—or, sixty years. And it’s gotten—I think, strayed too far. And I think it needs to be reined in. So now it’s coming back—and we’ve talked about this for a long time. You know, I was on the Hill for eight years. And we were big proponents of doing a consensus for development and reform. In fact, I’m in a group on the Hill called CDR, which stands for that. And we looked at—there is going to have to be some development reform.

And, you know, you tie that into how much we owe as a nation, I was advocating let’s do these reforms now and be proactive about it, instead of waiting until you have the austerity measures that force you to do it. You know, and if anybody saw our committee hearings on the Foreign Affairs where I testified, you know, there was a lot of talking about, well, the inspector generals do this, and the inspector generals come out and do that. I was in Congress. And we got those reports, but yet we failed to act. You know, we saw all this stuff that we could have reformed, but we didn’t. And it keeps going on. And then all of a sudden you get somebody that gets a mandate from the—from the voters, like President Trump. And he comes in. And he ran on that, it was popular, and they removed, you know, pretty much all of USAID.

And so he did what we didn’t do. And there’s a lot of anger about that. But what I see is an opportunity to bring those programs back and look at them. Is this program an investment of those three items—safer, stronger, more prosperous—or are they an expense? Let’s bring those programs that we know fulfill that need, the humanitarian, education, agriculture, and fulfill those other areas that we’re trying to accomplish, and make them stronger and better. The other ones, you know, I don’t think you’ll see those come back, nor, I don’t think, a lot of those should. But I think if we focus on those it’s going to make our policy stronger, it’s going to build alliances. And by us not being there it leads to a vacuum. And that vacuum is going to be filled by people that we don’t want to fill that.

You know, as everybody knows, we’re in a geopolitical time that we haven’t seen since World War II. And the world’s dividing between liberal democracies that promote liberty and freedoms, and then you have the authoritarian communist ones that are going out there with their ideologies. That’s where we are. And so we can’t afford to unilaterally disarm that portion of our foreign policy that does this humanitarian, the global health, and food security. That’s all integral to the other things that we’re trying to do with the development, you know, building roads and bridges, and all that. And I think you’ll see this come back.

And what I would recommend, anybody that’s watching this that wants this to come back, or your program has been disrupted, you know it’s—in fact, I’m meeting with some people tomorrow—reimagining your program and determining why this one needs to come back, and justify it. And I think you’ll see those come back sooner than later. This was a ninety-day reset. And I think you’ll see this come back. And I do agree with the comments that were made where they said that, you know, the infrastructure has been removed and it’s going to be hard to replace that. And I do agree with that. And I think you’ve seen the administration realize that when they said, it’s time to take the hatchet away and let’s use a scalpel. So moving forward, I think it’ll get better. And I think you’ll see a lot of these programs come quickly. And look forward to the conversation.

TALEV: Thank you. And before I turn to Sam, just to clarify. When you say we need to bring whatever back, who’s the “we”? Is it Congress? Is it the administration? Who is going to be—because Congress so far has been pretty resistant to pushback against Trump 2.0 in terms of initiatives and directives. Do you see this initiating among Republican members or initiating inside the administration?

YOHO: The “we” is us. I mean, it’s people that are in the NGO community. It’s people that work with USAID. It’s members to Congress. I have the ability to go to Congress once a month. And we interact with members of Congress, House and Senate, along with staff. And the underlying tone is, yes, there are some good programs. We need to bring them back. So when I say “we,” I think the collectiveness. And I think the administration is aware of that. At least some of these programs need to be brought back. And you’ve seen, like PEPFAR and some of the humanitarian, the RUTF products. You know, you’re seeing those come back. It’s disorganized. I think we’re all in agreement with that. But I think this will be something that will correct itself. And let’s just hope we get it back sooner than later.

TALEV: OK. I have a million questions. I’m going to save them for a minute because, Sam, I want to talk to you. You have watched and been involved in the evolution of U.S. foreign aid at least since Bill Clinton’s administration. If we take a bit of a historic look, and then I hope we can look ahead to the future, in your experience what have been sort of the key ways where thinking and funding for foreign aid has changed over time to reflect, you know, the end of the Soviet Union, the rise of China, the AIDS crisis, maybe domestic U.S. politics? How have the changes up until now tracked movements and, you know, geopolitics on the ground?

WORTHINGTON: Well, thank you. And, as has been noted, you know, throughout this whole period foreign assistance has been bipartisan. It’s always had the sort of bipartisan basis to work on. And in many ways it’s always followed U.S. national strategic interest. There’s always—there’s been a concentration of resources, inevitably, in countries of interest to the United States—whether it’s Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Ukraine, or Israel, Egypt, and so forth. Large concentration of aid going into a limited number of countries over that period of time. And then an evolution of funding around areas both of expertise and of interest to the United States. So you mentioned Global Health, PEPFAR an example, but also our food security, and lining up with U.S. interest in the food security area, in the previous administration climate change. And then the broad sort of humanitarian investments and, at times, investments in democracy and governance.

And we’ve then moved our investments around the world depending where there was an interest. You know, during Ronald Reagan it was in Central America, and so forth. There was then this compassionate conservatism that brought in the PEPFAR movement, and so forth. And then along the way there was an elevation of foreign assistance within the U.S. government. It became, I know Gayle was part of this, moving it up into the NSC, moving it up. And so that there was a concept coming out of Bush of the three G’s, that there was a—this was part of U.S. foreign policy and how we approached and thought about the world. And along the way we’ve learned some really good lessons. That you need to go local. That you need to figure out how to bring in technical expertise, and how to scale.

And we’ve learned that we can, and do, make a difference in the world’s toughest humanitarian crises—unfortunately now, at this point in time, putting millions of lives at risk because of this change. And a recognition that the U.S. government is not alone. It’s about leveraging. And, again, I’ve watched Gayle doing this in the private sector, other governments, NGOs. When you mentioned the global health—not the global health—the Global Food Security Act came out, you know, meeting with her. And we pledged $1.8 billion of private NGO money to match what the U.S. government was doing. So there’s this 23 billion (dollars) of private resources out there that the U.S. has. So it’s a whole of society that we’ve been involved in this, with millions of Americans contributing, and a broad interest group. It’s not all of American public, but there’s a core group of people willing to give billions of dollars to this enterprise.

And our big challenge at this inflection point is we’ve broken trust. We’ve broken trust with other governments. We’ve broken trust with the contracts of someone in Uganda who’s trying to do some AIDS clinic. We’ve broken trust with someone in Sudan who shows up and is trying to feed their children, and there’s no place to feed their children. So there’s this massive, you know, sort of breach of trust. And so as we, you know, compete with China, and Russia, and so forth going forward, you know, civil society always discounted China, Russia as not an entity to work for, and always sort of looked up to the United States globally in this. And unfortunately, we’re starting to fall into that same bucket of, do we trust you? Are you just transactional as a nation?

And so one of our big challenges going forward will be what do we—how do we rebuild this system? It cannot be a system without some form of values and some form of principles. And especially the principles sort of built around the Busan norms around development cooperation and so forth. There are some norms and basically international infrastructure of aid that we need to reembrace, because if we go off on our own we won’t be perceived much different than Russia or China going forward.

TALEV: Any other thoughts, before we turn it over to questions, on this issue, particularly as it pertains to China? Does any of you see the dial back in U.S. foreign aid and commitment right now as a potential competitive advantage for China? Or do you see it primarily through a humanitarian lens, and less of a political lens? Yeah, Gayle.

SMITH: I think it is advantageous to China. And one of the reasons that, less obvious than others, is something Sam just said. The United States has been known as a reliable partner for a long time, and even in cases where some of our assistance has been criticized. And we are no longer seen as reliable, particularly given the speed and, quite frankly, the cruelty with which some of these programs have been suspended. So I think that gives an advantage to a country that may not have the reputation as the most reliable, but certainly doesn’t suffer from that kind of critique, which is China.

China has established an aid agency which is only recently up and running. Trust me, I’m not suggesting it compares to USAID, but I think it gives more space to that. The last place, Margaret, I think it’s really key is on the humanitarian side. And we’ll see whether China steps up there or not. The United States has always been seen as the first and fastest to respond to people in crisis. And we’ll see whether China picks that up, because we’re unable to do that given the cuts that have been made.

TALEV: We should probably also talk about the Middle East and humanitarian issues in Gaza, because so much of the U.S. interest and strategy vis-à-vis the region can be impacted by that. How are the current moves toward foreign assistance and humanitarian assistance going to line up against U.S. plans for engagement in that region? How are you all thinking about that question?

WORTHINGTON: I mean, one of the challenges here is there has been both a dismantling of the individuals at USAID structures, and so forth, even the Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs, and there. But there’s also been a dismantling of the international humanitarian structures that support investments in places like Gaza. I mean, the U.S. has been half of the U.S.—of the humanitarian assistance to the world. And it’s, in essence, the backbone of the world’s humanitarian assistance. And that infrastructure and its ability to interface with populations, which is largely the NGOs or local groups, is being dismantled, and no payments going out to these groups.

Which means that you’ve pulled off, you’ve pulled back your staff, you’ve cut, you know, 40, 60, 70 percent of your staff, depending on the resources. So to turn it back on. Again, is going to take some time. So we, in essence, have the tool of offering something to the Palestinian people, of, in essence, being seen as an honest broker on that side, not being available to the U.S. government at the time when we’re looking for peace in the region. So you can’t simply pull back or turn it back on. So it’s going to take a number of months, at least, for the U.S. to have the ability to bring those assets onto the ground.

TALEV: And in that period of months, assuming that this is not just sort of an end point but the beginning of a reset, who or what is stepping into the breach? Is this a place where Europe can significantly fill holes temporarily, where private donations can significantly fill holes? Why not? And what does that mean? What are the implications of that?

WORTHINGTON: Just first, on the private, there’s no—private resources tend to go to natural disasters, and things like that. People don’t like to give to complex emergencies and war zones. So that, the U.S. government becomes the backbone. Europe is a much smaller player in the mix here. And the U.S. has tended to use its large NGOs, or other NGOs, in the humanitarian setting to move forward. So they’re equipped to move rapidly in that mix. And at this point of time, we’re actually seeing Europe cut back its assistance—U.K., Europe—I mean—U.K., Germany, others, France reducing theirs. So we’re seeing a sort of dismantling of the whole system, which will ultimately hurt the United States.

I’m sure Gayle has other thoughts on this.

SMITH: Yeah, I would just say I think it’s very stark. Nobody, at the moment, is going to fill that gap. So whether it’s Gaza or Sudan right now, the humanitarian operations are basically collapsing. All over the world those operations are collapsing, which means people are literally starving to death and dying. And there are not the resources or the leaders on this that are inclined to fill that gap. Private sector isn’t going to do it. Philanthropy, I think, can help in some ways, but it’s not seen, I think, by most foundations, as their role. And as Sam says, the U.K. has just cut back significantly. And for all of Europe, more and more their humanitarian assistance is being spent domestically to manage refugee flows. So I think what we’re going to see is a great deal more human suffering.

TALEV: Before we go to questions, Ted, I just wanted to ask you. You have talked about the need to prioritize, to let some things go and focus on what’s most needed. If you were to identify, I don’t know, two or three programs, areas, focuses, priorities that you think there can be the most bipartisan consensus around, how would you describe those things?

YOHO: It’s going to vary by country. You know, what are you trying to accomplish? What’s that country need? You know, we do—we can teach people how to farm. We can teach them how to grow crops and all those things, and livestock. But if you don’t have the infrastructure in there—and our ultimate goal is to bring them out of the state they are and move them more—something that really motivated me was when I was in the DRC and I came up with the phrase, “I want to move countries from aid to trade.” And you have to meet them where they’re at and then determine where they need to go to become more sustainable and self-sufficient. And that usually revolves around basic infrastructure—water, electricity, transportation, roads—so you can create market. And if we don’t do that, we’re going to be in perpetual foreign assistance.

But the hardcore infrastructure development by itself isn’t enough. We’ve got to get in there with education, the humanitarian side. If there’s an outbreak of Ebola, or Marburg, or something like that going on, you know, we’ve got to deal with that too. And that’s where our humanitarian side and global health and food security come into play. So they’re all interconnected. One can’t do it by itself. And it’s been brought up on here, and I agree—and this is something I often say—to work with other countries you have to develop that relationship where people want to do business with people they know, they like, and they trust.

Well, we’ve broken some trust with some countries. But on the other side of that, there were some things going on in USAID—and I was getting calls still today from ambassadors, I go to other meetings where ex-presidents from other countries in Africa or South America—they say, what you’re doing through USAID is damaging your country. So those programs are the ones that don’t need to come back. And we can talk more about those.

TALEV: OK. We’re about to turn to questions. I really do have one last question before we go to questions. in all of these discussions about aid, there’s different types of aid, there’s different countries that need assistance. Where do things like lifesaving, medicine, PEPFAR, the future of these programs lie? Do you all believe that these are on the first-rung priority list to preserve or bring back? Or do you think that’s very much a question at this moment?

YOHO: I think you’re going to see those come back first. But I also think you’re going to see a new thought process. And there was, like, the president of Kenya, when aid got cut, the people of Kenya were all up in arms. And he goes, wait a minute. What are you mad at the Americans for? This is our problem. We need to fix this problem. You brought up PEPFAR. You know, we’re strong supporters of PEPFAR. It’s bipartisan on the Hill. But it’s the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS, you know, Reduction. How long is it an emergency for? We’ve talked a lot about the philanthropies. There’s got to be a transition. It’s time to start transitioning where that country picks that up. But they can’t do it if they don’t have the economic development. So we need to repurpose these things and really focus on what we’re trying to accomplish, and make that happen.

TALEV: Gayle.

SMITH: Yeah, just a quick note of caution. I would hope that those lifesaving programs come back on deck pretty quickly. But with the limited amount of budget that is protected, and with the knowledge that there’s some other things this administration is going to want to do with foreign assistance—I mean, early on in this process Egypt and Jordan were mentioned, for example, as places where there was going to be a desire to retain programs, or they were even early exemptions. And 18 percent or 17 percent of the budget isn’t a great deal. So I think there’s a risk that either it’ll be scattershot and a little bit of everything, which won’t have much impact and will be very hard to implement.

Or, when you think about how aid is commonly divided, I’ve always thought of it as there is humanitarian assistance, which is a growing share of the budget. There’s national security assistance, which is—that’s the running priority, and it’s more transactional. And then there’s development assistance. Development assistance has actually been a declining percentage of that overall budget. So I would hope that those things that are a matter of immediate life and death would remain in the room. I’m not confident at this point that we can assume anything. And I think, to the extent that people have strong views, I would really, really encourage that people advocate to their members of Congress and the State Department in terms of what they think needs to be protected.

TALEV: OK, well I think this is a good transition to the better questions—the questions that are better than mine, which are the audience’s. So I think now we’d like to open up this conversation to Q&A. We’d like to invite CFR members to join our conversation. And to remind you all, this meeting is on the record. So when you ask your question, the world will see you asking your question.

Operator, could you now remind us how to join the question queue?

OPERATOR: Yes.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

We’ll take our first question from Farah Stockman.

TALEV: Thank you. And as you ask your question, if it is directed to one specific panelist could you please direct it? So we would like to get through as many questions as we can.

Q: Hi. I’m Farah Stockman. I’m with the New York Times. Thanks for doing this.

I’m working on a piece right now about whether foreign aid should be reimagined for the future. And I’m wondering if you’re seeing signs that that this conversation, you know, that there is a debate about what it should look like. I know there’s a group called Unlock Aid that has been unrolling sort of new ideas about how the sector could be transformed. So I’m wondering if you could, you know, mention that. And just, Mr. Yoho, you’ve talked about moving countries from aid to trade. But we haven’t actually been a reliable trade partner either. We’re being quite protectionist. So I guess I’m curious if you—where you see, like, AGOA, or some of these—you know, are you—are you actually seeing signs that we’re willing to trade on favorable terms with developing countries?

TALEV: Thank you.

YOHO: No. I think we are reliable partners. I think the current situation where there’s a big trade deficit in another country’s favor, those need to be adjusted. But if you look historically, since World War II the amount of aid we put in through the Marshall Plan, you look at the top ten trading countries we have—you got Germany, Japan, Vietnam. You’ve got South Korea. You’ve got all these countries that we’ve put aid in there, and we’re strong trading partners. You look at the AGOA project in Africa. That allowed the African nations to export to our markets, duty free. And, you know, it’s had a tremendous result. And I think you’re going to see more of this.

And this is where I get really excited about using the power of the DFC and MCC to develop these infrastructures, so that we can help countries offshore from China—where, you know, they’re not serving our purpose and are working against us in an adversarial way—and bring that manufacturing to these other countries so that we can trade with them. And that’s that economic engine that we develop in those countries that’s going to benefit that country and fulfill that goal of moving them from aid to trade.

TALEV: Any other thoughts on the reimagining question? Do you see any imagination? And is there any consensus on what the reimagination looks like at this point? (Laughs.)

SMITH: Yeah. Let me speak to that, if I may. And thank you, Farah, for covering this.

There are a ton of conversations going on about what the future might look like. And, frankly, there always have been. I mean, there have been discussions about increasing private sector cooperation, collaboration between AID and DFC, about localization. The history of foreign assistance in the U.S. is the history of a focus on silver bullets, and new approaches, and modernizing assistance, and improving it. And a lot of that’s been very good. I think there have been some great improvements over the years. As the Congressman points out, it does risk us getting a mile wide and an inch deep in terms of trying to do everything.

I think what’s really important here, though, is that before we jump too quickly to what is the silver bullet, or the answer, or how do we do it next time, is that we think about a few things. First of all, foreign assistance is an instrument. It’s not the actual discipline. It’s a tool. And so we need to have a serious conversation about development, what we’ve learned, how we can best achieve it, what the best tools are, and how to use them. And second, something I said at the outset, which is context. Foreign aid levels are down everywhere. There has been for a couple years now a considerable debate about the World Bank and reforming that kind of assistance and investment.

And I think we’ve got to look in context and figure out where foreign assistance fits in the U.S. government, where it fits in the international architecture, and what we know we can do best, and what we don’t do so well, and then how we organize ourselves to do it. So lots of debate and discussion about it. My hope is that we don’t land too quickly, because we have the necessity now but we also have the opportunity to really give this some serious thought.

TALEV: Sam, I want you to jump in, and then we’ll go to the next question.

WORTHINGTON: Yeah. I think one of our big challenges is foreign assistance is vastly over-earmarked by Congress. So Congress is carved up in all sorts of little pieces of interest and so forth. So we do need a new Foreign Assistance Act, a new way of framing it overall, because it’s so broken, because you can’t do the earmarks of the past or just—we’ll recreate the problem that we have right now. So you need to start with that. And at the heart of that is a concept of realizing that the world has changed, and most of this—the power of local organizations, the power of local entities to deliver their own aid, their own humanitarian intervention, is enormous.

So we need to look at that ability of local actors, and it’s very context specific, to engage. And recognizing that we’re probably going to be much smaller in size as we do this. And what are the best practices of sort of the mid-sized development agencies in Germany, and U.K., and others, of looking at how do you leverage other actors in the mix. We’ve been able to sort of go in as our own big actor in this. We may still do that in certain areas. But in many areas—and I hope, as a humanitarian that will be the case—but in many areas we’ll remain much smaller.

And lastly, any reimagining of this, ultimately, for the American people, has to have some degree of American values in there. We don’t want children starving to death on our watch. And humanitarian interventions were already a triage with people dying. At this point in time. I’d really be concerned that over—you know, whether it’s next year or the coming years, there’s going to be some large famine in the world that will exist because of this pullback of resources. And we will have this choice of do we walk away or not walk away? But it all comes back to a new framework, working of Congress, making it bipartisan, and recognizing where we have our best strengths to move foreign aid forward.

TALEV: So maybe don’t make it part of the CR conversation. OK, operator, can we go to the next question, please?

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Craig Spencer.

Q: Hi. Thank you so much for having this conversation.

I really appreciate this right now, given how much I’ve worked internationally and around the world, alongside USAID, CDC, and others trying to fight disease outbreaks. My question is, as we advocate here for a reboot of USAID, I’m wondering your thoughts on how we best pitch this to the American public. We’ve seen Senator Andy Kim, who long worked for USAID, saying that the program isn’t charity, but that’s exactly what China has been long accusing it of being. Going forward, what is the right argument to make to make it clear to Americans that USAID, whose tagline was “from the American people,” is actually for them as well?

TALEV: Who wants to grab this one? Ted, how about you?

YOHO: I’ll go ahead. Moving forward, you know, when you look at aid it’s an umbrella. You’ve got humanitarian health, education, agriculture, nutrition, and it can go on. The American people support, you know, humanitarian work. They support nutritional work. They support the individual things. But when it falls under the umbrella they’re like, oh, aid is bad. And I was one of those. And I think it’s awareness and bringing this argument to the people. And I think if you make the strong argument—if you talk about a specific product—one I’m very passionate about is our RUTF, the ready to use therapeutic food. This brings children out of the severe malnutrition, where they’re wasting, the body’s consuming itself. It’s high protein, high energy, high caloric content, and high vitamins. And it cost less than—right under $1 a day for these children. And after they’re on it they come out of that, and it prevents them from that.

The American people are going to support that. And you’ll see those things come back. PEPFAR, the most successful humanitarian project on the world ever. It’s got great results. It’s got great scientists come out of that. They’re coming out with a once-a-year shot. And everybody would support that. But how long is it carried on the backs of the American taxpayers? Let’s start working—as we reimagine this, how do we transition? How do we help that country transition, where they pick up the tab on it? And the interesting thing is that argument that—not the argument—but that talk is already out there, where people in those countries, the leaders, say: It’s time for us to pick up the ball here. So I think we can work hand-in-hand in that. And as we reimagine that, I think you’re going to see more of that happen.

SMITH: Quick addition, Margaret. Craig, thanks for that question. Look, I think the arguments we’ve used in the past still work. But I think we need to do a much better job telling the story. Number one, what we’ve done with foreign assistance is an expression of our common values. We don’t tell that story well enough. And how much it matters—I think all of us have traveled all over the world where you hear from people what the U.S. has meant, or what USAID has done. The residual impact of PEPFAR over twenty years is huge in terms of people’s views and attitudes about the United States.

Second is economic self-interest. And whether that’s immediately and domestically—I mean, we’re seeing that now with American farmers who were discovering that USAID’s not going to spend $2 billion buying agricultural products. But also, that this is about creating stronger economies, new economic allies and partners to trade with, and so on and so forth. The last is national security. You know this very well from your work on Ebola. I think health is a better place to make that argument than some other areas. But to do any of that I think we need to do a much better job of what we did a lot more of ten years ago, which is getting out to the states, telling the stories, letting people tell their own stories, and making it real and tangible in the lives of real people. I think that kind of assertions just from Washington aren’t going to be sufficient.

TALEV: If I can add, before we go to the next question, from my perspective as a journalist I see many Americans who are—as people who think of themselves as generous, but as generous as they can afford to be. And I think, from my observation, there are many people who—it’s not that they don’t want to help other people, it’s that they say, hey, I need help myself. And some of that polling data that shows that Americans—there’s a group of Americans who truly believe that you could impact the deficit or their own—the way they personally experience the economy, that those things could be impacted and improved by just gutting foreign stuff, like, they genuinely believe that.

And that connects to their feelings. And they also are experiencing hardship or pain in their own lives. Can I pay the rent? Can I ever buy a house? Will my kid go to college? Am I going to lose my job? Like, if you are experiencing that kind of distress, it would obviously impact the way you feel about how generous your country should be in saving other people’s lives. So I’m wondering, like, how you guys think about that—messaging is a stupid word—but how you think about that messaging from an educational perspective and from a listening and empathy-based perspective, in terms of, like, is part of the key to rebuilding robust U.S. foreign aid have something to do with building better economic resiliency for many working and middle class Americans.

WORTHINGTON: Let me just jump in on this. I think, I mean, you put a point. I think one of the challenges we have is the American public has commingled the concept of foreign aid with our large investments in wars overseas. So it’s everything foreign gets mixed together. It’s what we’ve done in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and so forth. You know, payments to Ukraine. It’s seen as this enormous investment overseas. And I think mixing the fact that foreign assistance is simply a very small percentage compared to that. And then, as Ted mentioned, going to the individual topic.

Because if you go into that person that has the tight budget and so forth, and through their church or other areas start talking about what you could do and what the U.S., as a government, how is leveraging something on—whether child survival or something in terms of feeding children, or the ability to keep someone alive with AIDS—that whole movement that led to the to the creation of PEPFAR was supported by Evangelical communities across the United States. So—and there are people who are giving to these NGOs who are living on just Social Security and so forth. So we need to go where—you know, the best side of the American people is their ability to want to be generous, no matter what. But we can’t commingle it with large global, you know, foreign policy investments in wars, and so forth, like this. And I think we’re feeling the backlash of that right now.

TALEV: OK. Operator, we’d love to take another question.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Kevin Baron.

Q: Hi, everyone. How are you? I’m Kevin Baron. I’m a former journalist, current journalist. I covered the Pentagon for many years. But I started in Washington in the ’90s actually lobbying for USAID money in the 150 account. And I remember phrases like “grandma versus Ghana,” and when the ONE Foundation was created.

I wonder if you could zoom out. I mean, I think this audience knows the importance of foreign affairs, and they know what messaging needs to be done. But, you know, Sam is predicting we may see famine in the next few months. You know, a few months from now is the fortieth anniversary of Live Aid. Are we going right back to the beginning, through this period where we might need something much bigger, global moments, global messaging that really will change the public attitudes, wake up some sort of understanding? Something much more than, hey, can you call your congressman and let them know you oppose, you know, cutting AID?

I mean, and, Gayle, I’d like to hear from you. You’ve been on both sides of this—you know, on those organizations. What kind of moment do you think is needed or what kind of efforts you think are really needed to change, you know, public opinion so that like—like what Sam was saying—they do understand the value of it, they and they do value it, and they want more, and more, and more of an America that is helping the world in these ways?

TALEV: Thank you.

SMITH: That’s a really good question. And, yes, it is shocking to those of us who forgot how old we are that we’re looking at the fortieth anniversary of Live Aid. And I think—look, one of the things that’s tragic is that big moments like those rarely happen until the crisis is upon us. And I wish I could say that—and I think Sam’s right. I think we’re going to be looking at some extraordinary calamities around the world. I think when we get here—the question is, how do you mobilize a groundswell of really, really diverse support? As has been said about PEPFAR, for example, one of the reasons that that ever happened and has been sustained for so long is that those supporting it—it was right, it was left, it was very much compassionate conservatives.

And that kind of mix, I think, both gives for greater sustainability, but I think it also inspires people. Like, everybody’s on board. So hopefully we will see that kind of global mobilization at some point in the future. I don’t know how it’s going to come together. You know, a concert forty years ago was an extraordinary event. It hadn’t been done before. So what are the things that have not been done before that we might be in the future? I think we all need to think about that. I hearken back to what I think made the biggest difference here in the United States, but also in the U.K., when the U.K. really stood up as a major, major leader.

And it was something that Congressman’s referred to, and also Sam has, which is really getting out to people and taking the time to, A, dispel the notion that U.S. foreign assistance is 5 percent of the federal budget. I mean, trust me, that would have been extraordinary. So dispelling some of the myths, but bringing that human story to people so they see it, touch it, feel it, understand it, and can tap into the solidarity that, I think, is still there. And that takes a long time. That’s not going to be one big event, or a concert. That’s a lot of us going back to what we used to do much more of and need to do again. And I think that’s what it’s going to take, regardless of what the future of foreign assistance looks like.

TALEV: Thank you. Operator, could we take another question?

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Tami Hultman. Ms. Hultman, please accept the unmute now prompt. OK, looks like we’re having technical difficulties.

So we’ll take our next question from Wendy Luers. Ms. Luers, please accept the unmute now prompt. OK. Another technical difficulty. (Laughs.)

We’ll take our next question from Andrew Lala.

TALEV: Huh. It might not be them.

Q: Can you hear me, guys?

TALEV: Yes, we can hear you.

Q: OK. Wonderful. Yeah, sorry, there’s, like, a double prompt there. My name is Andrew Lala. I’m the CEO of ignatia. We apply AI to weather and climate intelligence. I’m also a term member at the Council.

We’ve benefited both from DFC loans and USAID. USAID, we really love the market system facilitation and GDA programs. And really want to hear a little bit about whether or not you see the private sector, any kind of coalition emerging to talk about how much USAID really benefited? We need traceability. We need aggregated farmers. We need service centers to be able to deliver to them. And this seems to have evaporated overnight. So is there any private sector voices that are emerging to talk about the power that USAID brought in convening stakeholders and addressing market failure?

YOHO: Yeah. I agree with you. And I think you’re going to see it come back. I think you’re going to see a lot more private sector coming on board. I was at a meeting with Walmart. We were over in London. We were talking about Africa. And I brought up that, you know, the United States has become a net importer of food for the first time about two years ago. And our food prices are going to go up here. And the person that was with Walmart said, absolutely. And we’re looking to diversify our supply chain. And we’re looking at Africa. And what we’re going to see, I think, is you’re going to see private sectors coming there, but they’re not going to come in there if you can’t de-risk a project.

DFC can come there. They can bring their financial tools. But they’re not going to do so much in the grant base that USAID did. And that’s part that I think you’re going to see come back. And you start off with the grants. You do technical assistance. You bring in the de-risking that the United States government can bring in through the DFC. That’s going to invite your private equity that comes in to make these projects happen. And so I think you’re going to see that come back. And I think you’ll see it come back sooner than later. Keep in mind, this was a ninety-day pause. It was messy in the beginning, but I think you’re going to see it more refined. And I think you’re going to see it move forward.

TALEV: It wasn’t just messy in the beginning. It’s messy now. But—

SMITH: Can I add one quick thing to that? And, look, I hope that it does come back. But I think if—part of the question was what are we hearing from the private sector. To be honest, we’re not hearing a lot from the private sector about USAID and its demise right now. And I think it would be enormously helpful if those private sector actors that have worked with USAID—as the congressman said, the connection between USAID and DFC is really critical on this, and I think DFC is certainly going to survive—would organize themselves a bit and weigh in. Because I don’t think it’s understood that USAID does that kind of facilitation and work. And it’s not huge grants, but they’re critical grants that can facilitate FDI and private sector activity. So hearing from that community, I think, would be enormously helpful, and increase the chances of the Congressman being right, that it’ll come back.

TALEV: Sam, any thoughts on this before we go to the next question? OK. So I’m conscious of the time. Operator, I’m wondering if we could take, like, maybe two or three questions and then try to answer all of them, because I think this might be our last chance before we say goodbye for now.

OPERATOR: We typically don’t do question bundling, we try to avoid it, so I’ll just call in one more person and then turn it back over to you, Ms. Talev. We’ll try Wendy Luers again.

Q: All right.

The United States has always been the great bastion of nonprofits. And the Congress has determined the funding of many of the organizations, like the National Endowment for Democracy, which they’re trying to wipe out. The International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the AFL-CIO, and the chambers of commerce, what’s going to happen to those places? And how do all of those other programs—these are—this administration seems to be determined to punish certain countries with whom they do not agree—Cuba, North Vietnam, et cetera, et cetera. The NED money was being used for democracy and governance. What happens to all of that? I run an organization that was dealing with Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe after the war—I mean, after the fall of communism. AID money was enormously important. I founded the Democracy Network. Does that all go away? And is it not part of our value system?

TALEV: Thank you.

YOHO: I don’t think it’s all going to go away at all. I mean, we saw what happened after World War I, where the world just kind of put a heavy burden on the German Republic that they couldn’t pay. And that led to the rise of Hitler. So I think we—hopefully, we’ve learned from that. And then we learned after World War II, the Marshall Plan. We’ve learned—you know, again, all that foreign assistance has created great trade opportunities for us and kept the world at peace. And so we we’re going through a stage right now. It’s uncomfortable. It is going through that. But I thoroughly believe, for American security and moving America ahead, it’s got to come back and work in tandem, side by side with our development programs, with our foreign policies. And, you know, and its people are out there. You know, they’ve been laid off, or the NGOs have been shut, or the program has been shut.

Those are going to be the ones that are going to come back, and they’re going to—as the word has been used—reimagine, how do you get this back? Because they are important programs out there. And, you know, the American people, as has been brought up many times, we’re one of the most humanitarian societies on the planet. And it’s been shown over and over again. And I thoroughly believe that the pressure will be put on Congress—not the pressure—the encouragement will be put on them to let’s get this up and running, let’s do it right, and get rid of the bad programs. And I don’t think anybody’s going to argue that the bad programs shouldn’t be there. They hurt our credibility around the world. They drive other people away from us into other countries. And we can do it better, I think, than anybody else.

TALEV: Sam, Gayle, are you as confident about the fate of basically the post-World War II architecture through AID?

SMITH: No.

TALEV: Yeah.

WORTHINGTON: I—go ahead, Gayle. Yeah.

SMITH: I mean, look, 83 percent of AID’s programs have already been killed. Now, can we build those back over time? Maybe. But let’s—just in terms of where we are now. All of those organizations that were referred to are laying off staff. Some of them will collapse altogether. And I think we’re going to see, quite frankly, a significant number of nonprofits shut their doors. And rebuilding those quickly is not an easy enterprise. And I agree with you Congressman, that they should come back. My confidence level that they will come back in the next two, three, four years is pretty low, because a lot of those programs, a lot of the DG programs, were very prominent on the chopping block in the early stages of the cuts.

And again, even if there’s a desire to reinstate, one of the things we’re already seeing is that people who were fired and then suddenly asked to come back—because somebody realized that they fired the person that had the front door key or whatever it was—some of them are not wanting to come back, because they’re not confident that they’ve got a sustainable job. So, again, Sam, you can speak to this because you’re tracking a lot of these NGOs. What I’m seeing in the nonprofit sector is that it is being severely damaged, including in the democracy and governance area. And I think we got to be mindful of the fact that rebuilding that is not flipping a switch.

TALEV: And we have one minute left. You get the last word. No pressure, but give us a way forward here.

WORTHINGTON: So an isolationist worldview around MAGA is not nicely compatible with U.S. foreign assistance. And that that worldview is there. It’s not going away. At the same time, you have tens of thousands of people who have been laid off in the sector. We can’t just assume they’re all going to be hired back in 2029. So between that the challenges is, as institutions collapse, which ones will have private resources, which ones can eke their way through, and then be reimagined three, four years from now? And for the DRG sector, unfortunately, here we’re walking away from a fundamental American value of what it means to push for a liberal international order based on democracy. And if we drop that, we are dropping something that makes us proud as a nation.

TALEV: It is 1:00, and you’ve given us a lot to think about, all of you. So I want to thank you, the members, for joining today’s virtual meeting. And thank you, our speakers, for sharing your thoughts and convening this conversation. For everyone, just to make a note, the audio and the transcript of today’s conversation, today’s meeting, will be posted on CFR’s website. Thanks to all of you. Be well.

YOHO: Thank you.

WORTHINGTON: Thank you.

SMITH: Thank you, everybody. And thank you Margaret.

WORTHINGTON: Thanks.

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.