What Trump's Foreign-Aid Budget Means to the Rest of the World
Proposed cuts seem to confirm allies’ anxiety about the president’s vision for American leadership abroad.
The Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2018 sent shockwaves across the country, but when it came to one slice of the funding, the international-affairs budget, those waves extended across the globe.
The proposed 31 percent cut affects the U.S. bilateral foreign-aid accounts; funding for the United Nations, World Bank, and other international institutions; and the State Department’s diplomatic duties. The United States’ friends and allies in the developing world now have tangible evidence, in place of vague speculation, of what they had most feared since Donald Trump’s election in November: the withdrawal of the United States from active international leadership in the world.
At current levels, the $30
