WASHINGTON—Today, The Heritage Foundation released a statement celebrating strides made by the Trump administration to end the misuse of foreign aid.

Max Primorac, senior research fellow of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, and a former chief operating officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), lauded the strategy:

“Kudos to the State Department for finally ending the self-serving foreign aid industry’s gravy train coalition of international NGOs, U.N. agencies, for-profit contractors, and greedy charities that inflated the program’s costs.

 

“This new strategy augurs in a new era of mutually beneficial U.S.-Africa relations and lays the groundwork for stronger economic and political ties that will displace Communist China dominance within the continent.”

 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio released his new America First Global Health Strategy to combat HIV/AIDS and other epidemics. The strategy protects Americans and ends the program’s abuse by self-serving global health elites. It requires recipient countries to co-finance program costs, benefits American companies, and ends the misuse of foreign aid as a global platform to promote radical ideologies.

Key features of the new strategy:

• Confirms congressional reports that 60% of foreign aid costs go to various forms of overhead, serving as a massive Washington, D.C. money pot for progressive politics.

• Requires recipient countries to co-finance the costs of these foreign aid programs for long-term sustainability

• Increases partnerships with pro-life, pro-family, and cost-effective local churches while it generates jobs in the U.S. and Africa

The United States is the world’s leader in global health support, providing $204 billion since 2001. The Heritage Foundation will continue to support ending programs that abuse taxpayer dollars and uplift programs that bring real relief to Americans and our partners abroad.