AEI: Trump’s ‘friends only’ approach to foreign aid is easier said than done
Jessica Trisko Darden, Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discusses President Trump’s State of the Union address, during which he “asked Congress ‘to pass legislation to help ensure American foreign assistance dollar always serve American interests, and only go to America’s friends.'” Darden highlights the “mixed results” of the “effectiveness of linking U.N. votes to foreign aid” and “problems with the ‘friends only’ policy” (1/31).

U.N. Dispatch: In the State of the Union Address, Trump Sought to Peg U.S. Foreign Assistance to How a Country Votes in the U.N.
Mark Leon Goldberg, editor of U.N. Dispatch, discusses the potential implications of President Trump’s “threat to cut American foreign assistance to countries that somehow oppose American interests.” Goldberg notes, “If this threat is indeed carried out, and if the United States does peg its foreign assistance dollars to individual votes at the United Nations, it would mark a radical transformation of U.S. foreign assistance policy” (1/31).