How Samantha Power performed a delicate balancing act as USAID chief

<a class="spreaker-player" href="https://www.spreaker.com/episode/how-samantha-power-performed-a-delicate-balancing-act-as-usaid-chief--63684623" data-resource="episode_id=63684623" data-width="100%" data-height="200px" data-theme="dark" data-playlist="false" data-playlist-continuous="false" data-chapters-image="true" data-episode-image-position="right" data-hide-logo="true" data-hide-likes="false" data-hide-comments="false" data-hide-sharing="false" data-hide-download="false">Listen to "How Samantha Power performed a delicate balancing act as USAID chief" on Spreaker.<script async src="https://widget.spreaker.com/widgets.js"></script></a> Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, YouTube, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app. Two years ago, Samantha Power — USAID’s outgoing administrator — stood at a press conference in Nepal. She had just visited a school in the capital, one that the U.S. Agency for International Development had rebuilt after a 2015 earthquake rocked the nation. But as she took questions from those around her, she began to hear the same sentiment — over and over again. “Every question that I was asked, if I remember rightly, was, ‘Aren’t you just doing this because you want to compete with the [People’s Republic of China]?’” Power told Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar. “‘This isn’t really about the people of Nepal, is it?’” “I had to say, no,” she continued. “We’ve been here since the 1960s, and the roads to the schools I was at today were actually built by USAID decades ago. And that is our superpower.” The interaction stuck with Power — and not just because she felt it was the result of a recent Chinese disinformation campaign. The questions also spoke of a push-and-pull, one of many Power has tried to balance throughout her time as USAID administrator. Whether it be shaping USAID’s narrative about its foreign policy objectives, easing USAID’s bureaucracies, or pushing USAID’s localization efforts, her attempts to strike a balance have been a hallmark of Power’s nearly four-year tenure. In one of her last interviews before leaving office, Power spoke with Devex for a special edition of its This Week in Global Development podcast about navigating that push-and-pull, and how she expects the Trump administration’s USAID to face similar challenges. “You have to have the balance in life between the patience to know that systems change … but the impatience to never be like, ‘Oh but it takes time,’” she added. “I try to strike that balance.” Balancing the USAID narrative Foreign assistance is often seen as soft power. It’s an argument used by aid advocates not just in the United States, but across the world — and one that has grown increasingly louder as populist leaders voice opposition to aid. Throughout her time as administrator, Power has frequently spoken of USAID as America’s “foreign policy ground game,” noting that foreign assistance can be a stabilizer across countries and thus, serve America’s interests, whether it be preventing conflict or gaining economic partners. But still, she said, there is a limit to that narrative. “Development and humanitarian work that gets entirely instrumentalized really does risk becoming so transactional and just bounded, in a way, by shorter-term considerations,” said Power, responding to a question about whether USAID and the State Department could be merged under the Trump administration — an idea circulated during Trump’s first stint in the White House. “And if you think about the kind of lasting impacts that USAID and development generally have achieved, it’s always a long game.” Power spoke about her experience in Nepal, and the suspicion that can arise when foreign assistance is perceived as too transactional. That’s something the next USAID administrator will have to grapple with, she said, especially given the Trump administration’s expected focus on strategic competition with China. “It's not just I who see the U.S. Agency for International Development as America's ground game in many aspects of our foreign policy,” said Power. “The [People’s Republic of China] and the Russian Federation see it that way.” Ultimately, Power expressed the need for a balance. While USAID does play a role in America’s diplomatic work abroad, she said, “that’s not the sum total of what USAID does.” And getting that message right is imperative — especially as foreign assistance is expected to be one of the first on the Trump administration’s chopping block. Balancing USAID’s priorities Over the last four years, USAID — and Power — also faced increasing pressure from Republican lawmakers. Some have stated foreign assistance is a waste of taxpayer money and better spent at home; others have singled out programs that they claim are pushing a progressive agenda, such as those around climate change, LGBTQ+ communities, and reproductive health care. It’s something that Brian Mast, the new chairman of the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, has already blasted the Biden administration for, stating that “bleeding heart liberals at the State Department have played politics with foreign assistance.” But in her conversation with Devex, that’s something Power pushed back on. “There might be individual members of Congress who pluck out a single program and try to reduce all that USAID is doing in the world to some particular beneficiary or constituency in a manner that makes it look — as they put it to me — ideological. They’re not going to find a lot of that at USAID,” Power said. “And often, the kinds of things that they play back to me, I’m not even sure that those things are happening.” Instead, she said USAID has responded to the challenges other countries face — and it is those challenges that have driven the agency’s response. In particular, Power spoke of climate change, stating that “the effects of extreme weather events are now so catastrophic, it will be very hard for the new administration to engage with other countries” and not respond, regardless of whether the topic is seen as progressive. “Even those things that some may seek to caricature are the daily bread of governance, and the daily challenge of public service for so many of our partners around the world,” Power said. “The realities of today are going to drive other countries’ priorities for our bilateral engagements.” Balancing USAID’s bureaucracies Within months of becoming USAID administrator, Power had already laid out an ambitious plan for reform. She wanted to increase USAID’s workforce, strip bureaucratic red tape, and bring more partners into the fold — announcing that by 2025, USAID would aim to steer 25% of its funding toward local partners. “We see the ways in which our workforce is less able to be out in the field and out in the world because they’re too busy filling out forms and chained to their desk with bureaucratic requirements,” Power said. “So our effort to slash administrative and reporting requirements and burdens internally — that was a whole line of effort.” Nearly four years later, Power recognized that USAID still has a long way to go. But even so, she highlighted where the agency had gotten it right: USAID had lowered the barriers to entry for the private sector, slashed 4 million hours of “burdensome red tape” processes for USAID’s staff, and advanced (however slightly) on its localization goals. In the agency’s latest localization progress report, funding to local organizations in fiscal year 2024 had ticked to 12% — up from 9.6% one year prior. “Twelve percent is a lagging indicator a little bit, because the way money moves through the U.S. government system is not fast,” said Power. “Lowering the barriers to entry for local partners should pay dividends again for generations.” All of those efforts, Power said, were a result of getting the balance right — especially when it came to the level of risk Congress was willing for USAID to take on. “The question of risk appetite is always something that’s going to be difficult,” she said. “If I were outside of government, I might say, just go for it. Why not? And I understand that, but the answer to why not is the fact that we have to be able to represent, faithfully, that our resources have been accounted for. … Especially in a charged political environment, the question of what the right balance on risk appetite is one we’ve pushed the envelope very far.” That’s especially true when it comes to localization, something that’s been a tenant of Power’s USAID tenure. The agency has had to balance calls from aid advocates to increase USAID’s risk appetite — and as a result, take on more local partners — with those from aid critics who want to pull foreign assistance altogether. “It’s fundamentally about … helping those who invest in USAID and support USAID and defend the resources allocated to USAID [understand that] it is better to absorb more risk here, on the front end, in the interests of making a more lasting difference over time,” Power said. “And we’ve chipped away at that, and made headway on that, but we don’t operate in a vacuum in the way that sometimes I think some of the critiques might suggest.” “But I absolutely embrace the critique that we would like to be going faster, and I hope you’ll see that trajectory steepen over time,” she added. Listen to the entire conversation here.