Brookings Institution’s “Up Front”: Trump’s SOTU: Why pegging U.S. foreign assistance to countries’ U.N. votes is a bad deal
Tony Pipa, senior fellow in the global economy and development program at Brookings, discusses the implications of President Trump’s State of the Union address call for Congress “to help ensure American foreign-assistance dollars always serve American interests, and only go to friends of America, not enemies of America.” Pipa notes, “The American public overwhelmingly favors an altruistic dimension to U.S. aid,” and he cites Power Africa and the U.S. response to the Ebola epidemic as examples of successful initiatives. Pipa concludes, “[T]he trade-offs [of a friends-only policy] are huge, and appear almost uniquely designed to undercut the larger strategic priorities [President Trump] and his administration are promoting. He should be able to see that it would be a very bad deal” (2/2).