The Republican plan to ‘rightsize’ US foreign aid in a Trump presidency

After Donald Trump’s shock victory in the 2016 presidential election, the U.S. development community was rife with speculation about what an administration vowing to put “America first” would mean for U.S. foreign aid programs. Some predicted Trump would seek to eliminate USAID altogether. Others expected he would commandeer U.S. foreign aid programs for military goals like fighting terrorism. All of the commentary had one thing in common: A lack of concrete information. Trump was an insurgent candidate, and on granular policy issues such as foreign assistance, there was no way of knowing what he might do. But unlike in 2016, Trump’s campaign this year has been orbited by detailed policy proposals related to U.S. foreign aid agencies — including ideas backed by former officials who served in his first administration. Speaking to Devex, some of those involved in these early planning efforts described an approach that would test the limits of executive authority to cut overall foreign aid spending, shift USAID programs to other U.S. development agencies, strip away the Biden administration’s “divisive and polarizing” social equity priorities, and oppose what some call the “aid industrial complex.” “What the right wants is good governance and effective use of money to counter our enemies abroad, and anything else that goes on, we’re going to oppose,” according to Max Primorac, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who served as a senior adviser at USAID during the Trump administration. Some of these ideas have surfaced in policy documents such as the “Transition Playbook” published by Heritage’s Project 2025. For global development advocates, the playbook’s attacks on President Joe Biden’s foreign aid agenda — coupled with its proposals to eliminate his policies related to gender equity, climate change, and other progressive priorities — have raised the stakes of November’s presidential election. Other potential moves represent the continuation or expansion of efforts begun during Trump’s first administration, such as reforming foreign aid procurement, working more with the private sector, and circumventing Congress to move or cut foreign aid funding. The playbook The nearly 900-page Heritage playbook is by far the most detailed proposal for how a potential second Trump administration might govern. In a chapter dedicated to reforming USAID — of which Primorac was the lead author — the playbook calls for slashing humanitarian assistance, changing how USAID spends its money, and doing away with progressive policies. Primorac is adamant that the Biden administration has been uniquely aggressive in using aid programs and policies to satisfy a domestic progressive political constituency, alleging an international campaign of “social reengineering.” That approach has damaged the existing “bipartisan consensus” on foreign aid, he added. “They are using it as a global platform to push this radical ideology, and they say so themselves. It’s in black and white. They don’t hide it. It’s no secret,” he told Devex. Primorac’s key message on issues such as abortion, gender equality, and climate change is that the U.S. government’s development partner countries don’t want those priorities forced on them — and that insisting on that agenda pushes them closer to adversaries such as China. When it comes to abortion rights or “transgenderism and all of that stuff,” partner countries “don’t want that stuff,” he said. To critics, that argument is both illogical and dangerous. “Either you support democracy and human rights abroad or you don’t, but you can’t sort of pick and choose the rights that you defend,” said Laura Thornton, a senior vice president of democracy at the German Marshall Fund who has been critical of Heritage’s foreign aid proposals. “Part of having a democracy means that you have protections and constitutionalism. It means equal rights for all. It means checks and balances. It means a robust civil society. It means a robust media. It means independent courts. And all of these things are linked together,” she told Devex. It is when countries waver from liberal democracy that they become susceptible to malign influence from antidemocratic players, she added. The Heritage Foundation represents one camp of former and potential future Trump officials. The America First Policy Institute is another — though its participants have said comparatively less about foreign aid and development issues. ‘Too much money’ Republicans in Congress have already sought significant foreign aid cuts during the Biden administration, and many expect that a Trump administration would join them in that fight. Many conservatives believe that major increases to U.S. foreign aid in recent years — driven by emergency assistance for COVID-19, Ukraine, and the crisis in Gaza — have brought funding to unsustainable levels and given rise to wasteful spending. USAID spent roughly $20 billion in the 2018 fiscal year. Last year that surged to over $44 billion — with the increase largely driven by multibillion-dollar contributions to Ukraine. “Right now, it’s just too much money,” Primorac said. The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a budget bill that would cut U.S. foreign affairs spending by 11% — though it is unlikely to also pass in the Democratic-led Senate. InterAction, an alliance of NGOs focused on global poverty, described that budget level as “stunningly low and damaging to not only people in need worldwide but America’s strategic global interests.” Rep. Barbara Lee of California, a Democrat, summarized the bill as “more weapons and less cooperation.” Congress’ goal should be “rightsizing the foreign assistance budget in the wake of reckless spending of the last number of years,” Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, the Republican chair of the subcommittee that oversees that budget, said in an April hearing. The Heritage Foundation’s playbook makes the same case, calling for reductions that — “at a minimum” — would return USAID’s budget to 2019 pre-COVID-19 levels. Those pushing for cuts say the current volume of funding is overwhelming U.S. foreign aid agencies, forcing them to dump money into international NGOs and United Nations agencies that can handle huge grants and contracts, but which critics say are expensive, inefficient, and ineffective. The Heritage Foundation report alleges that the “massive growth in ‘emergency’ aid” in recent years does more harm than good, pointing to cases in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and other countries where conditions remain desperate and governments are part of the problem, despite significant U.S. support. “In effect, humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes,” the document reads, calling for “deep cuts” to USAID’s International Disaster Assistance budget. The aid lobby But apart from the overall amount of U.S. foreign aid funding, conservatives aligned with Trump have grown increasingly hostile toward the system that currently manages it — which, interestingly, echoes concerns of the other side as well. They agree with many Democrats who have supported efforts to shift more U.S. aid funding to local organizations instead of the same set of major global aid contractors, arguing that doing so would lead to more efficient use of U.S. taxpayer dollars. “Before advancing a new program, the agency should be required to assess existing local activities to avoid undercutting or duplicating them. At every opportunity, USAID should build on existing local initiatives,” Heritage’s proposal reads. But while Trump’s supporters make an argument for “localization” that sounds bipartisan, they take a much more aggressive aim at the existing U.S. aid establishment. That animosity is tied to their claim that U.S. foreign aid has become a one-party industry dominated by Democrats. “U.S. foreign aid has been transformed into a massive and open-ended global entitlement program captured by — and enriching — the progressive Left,” the Heritage document reads. According to Primorac, the aid industry and its lobby have frustrated multiple successive efforts by Republican and Democratic administrations to shift more U.S. foreign aid to local organizations. Asked what he sees as the largest impediment to localization, Primorac told Devex: “It’s an easy question. It’s the aid industrial complex lobbying Congress.” “It’s the only part of the industry that will hire Republicans — in order to lobby Republican members” for more spending and less oversight, he said. “So what will we do? We’re going to stop listening to them.” Is USAID fixable? Some Republican aid experts have come to another conclusion. They believe that USAID has been too slow to reform and is too overwhelmed by institutional challenges — like staffing shortages and overly burdensome regulations — to manage unprecedented levels of funding. So in addition to Republicans reducing the overall aid budget, they hope a Trump administration would rethink how that funding gets divided up among U.S. development agencies. “A lot of people are coming around to the conclusion that maybe for a lot of cultural and institutional reasons … USAID actually isn’t fixable,” said one Republican aid expert involved in policy planning, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They described “a coalition of people who are actually thinking through whether the distribution of resources and responsibilities between USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Development Finance Corporation is, in fact, in the right balance today.” The upshot, according to the source, is that within the context of a broader conversation about cutting the budget, some Trump allies would like to see USAID get smaller so that the other two agencies could grow. MCC funds development projects through time-bound grants known as “compacts” with countries that meet its criteria, while DFC uses government resources to spur private investment with development benefits. Both were created under Republican administrations. “Perhaps the other two institutions are much better positioned to be nimble, responsive, to actually do big things again in ways that could counter China … and to be more oriented towards the private sector and towards new and innovative players and ways of doing business and investment,” said the Republican aid expert. MCC and DFC appeal to many Republicans for their focus on eligibility, accountability for results, and as alternatives to USAID programs that they criticize as “an open-ended commitment,” said the source. Not all Republicans agree with that vision. Andrew Natsios, who served as USAID administrator under George W. Bush, told Devex that breaking off pieces of the agency would lead to further fragmentation and ineffectiveness. “If you’re trying to weaken the development function, then break it up into smaller groups because it will become a constant battle over relative autonomy in the federal system,” he said. James Richardson, the former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State Department, told Devex that regardless of whether a Republican administration tries to reshuffle its aid programs between different agencies, it ought to appoint someone with the authority to coordinate across all of them. “When you do have an elevated coordinator to be able to look across the whole federal government, you can start having those more strategic conversations about putting resources against problems rather than just resources into a bucket,” he said. Pushing the envelope When it comes to questions about both the appropriate size of the U.S. aid budget and major structural changes to U.S. government agencies, Congress typically plays a decisive role. But a Trump administration would likely test the limits of its ability to take action with or without congressional approval and “push the envelope on executive action,” the Republican aid expert who spoke anonymously told Devex. “You will see no doubt, no matter who is in any of these jobs, that the Republicans are going to want to stand up to Congress and increase the power of the president to do things without congressional say-so,” they said. For U.S. development funding and policy, that could mean ignoring some of the language that accompanies budget bills, pushing reforms without waiting for congressional approval, and finding ways to not spend the money that lawmakers appropriate. “There is, I think, a big pent-up demand on the Republican side to — across the board — push on executive action,” they said. Shortly before the 2020 presidential election, Trump made waves with an executive order that would have allowed his administration to convert a large number of career federal employees into political appointees, who would lose many career protections and operate under closer control from the White House. Heritage’s playbook endorses that idea. Within USAID, the plan would see political appointees take over key leadership positions in procurement and human capital, among others. “The more politicals that you have, the more that they can take ownership of making the difficult decisions to remove all of these unnecessary internal restrictions in order to move much more quickly and much more effectively in deploying our assistance,” Primorac told Devex. Critics say that such a move would risk turning the federal government into a vastly more politicized operation — while flying directly in the face of good governance principles that the United States has advocated for other countries. The U.S. has encouraged other countries to “build up their civil service and the professionalism of the bureaucracy and limit the number of political appointments,” said Thornton of the German Marshall Fund. “That is what we’ve pushed abroad for years, and it seems we’re moving ourselves in the opposite direction,” she said. History lessons None of these proposals are guaranteed to take hold. The foreign aid policies that a potential second Trump administration would pursue would depend heavily on who occupies key positions in the administration, experts told Devex. Five months out from November’s election, it is too early to predict how the jockeying, lobbying, and campaigning might unfold, let alone whether Trump — who was convicted last month on 34 felony counts and now faces criminal sentencing — will win. But people in Trump’s orbit say they have learned at least one important lesson since 2016: Be prepared. While in 2016 officials inside USAID prepared detailed transition binders to assist Trump’s team, only for no one from Trump’s transition team to show up at the agency before Inauguration Day to read them, this time Trump’s supporters say they will be ready.