On May 22, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a draft of President Donald Trump’s new budget. Among the 1,038-page text is a proposal to place a 3.5% tax on financial transfers sent by non-U.S. citizens.
These transfers, known as remittances, equaled $85.8 billion in 2023 just from the U.S., out of more than $800 billion globally, while official development assistance, or ODA, was $223.3 billion in the same year.
“On a global scale, remittance flows have exceeded development aid and foreign direct investment,” said Marcela Escobari, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
