Providing foreign aid is in US interests: Condoms for Gaza?

PUBLIC opinion polls suggest that many Americans think that foreign aid consumes a huge amount of the US federal budget. In fact, foreign aid amounts to around 1 per cent of the budget, or 0.25 per cent of gross domestic product.

So it has been easy for the isolationist America-First President Donald Trump, to disparage foreign aid, to argue that it is a waste of money and that it is being “stolen”, and to order, like he did on Jan 24, that almost all foreign aid be cut.

Indeed, it is now patently clear that President Trump is seeking to destroy his country’s major foreign aid agency, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which has played a critical role over decades in shaping global development through humanitarian assistance and socioeconomic growth initiatives.