The Lancet: Trump’s foreign aid proposal rattles global health advocates
“The announcement by the Trump administration that it wants to massively reduce foreign assistance has sent a shock wave through the global health community, which is concerned that such steep cuts could have devastating consequences, affecting millions of people around the world. The Trump administration wants to cut foreign assistance by more than a third to help pay for its goal of a US$54 billion increase in the military budget. … Although Congress is expected to soften Trump’s far-reaching cuts, nobody knows by how much. Even small cuts to foreign aid as a percentage of total spending could have major effects because the USA is such a large contributor in raw dollars. … Although foreign aid makes up less than one percent of the total U.S. budget, the steep cuts that have been proposed would be likely to have impacts across every aspect of global health programming, said Jen Kates, vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. ‘Whatever cuts happen, the result would be to diminish the role of the U.S. in development and global health in the world’…” (Loewenberg, 3/11).