By Peter Singer
Donald Trump has wasted no time clarifying what “America First” – the dominant idea driving his election campaign – means in practice. So far, it means a 90-day freeze on most foreign aid spending, as well as the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris climate agreement.
The ostensible purpose of the foreign aid freeze is to review the efficacy of US programs. I am a strong advocate for getting the best value for every dollar available to assist people in poverty. I founded The Life You Can Save to promote that idea and enable individual donors to find the most cost-effective charities combating extreme poverty.
But reviewing aid programs takes time and expertise. It is not possible to conduct an adequate review of all the aid programs that the US funds in three months, and to freeze spending while waiting for the review to be completed is an irresponsible way to manage aid that is often life-saving.
The freeze has already disrupted programs that prevent deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in many poor countries. Thousands of health-care and aid workers have been placed on leave without pay. Many will have to find other work to support themselves, so even if programs survive the review and funds are restored, their expertise may be lost.
Ongoing clinical trials have had to stop, which means that months or even years of work have been wasted. An administration that had any real concern for the well-being of those assisted by US aid would have left funding in place, pending the outcomes of the reviews.
It is not as if there was an urgent need to cut official US foreign aid for fiscal reasons. When Americans are asked what proportion of US government spending goes to foreign aid, the average answer is 25%, and when asked what they think an appropriate level would be, they say 10%. The truth is that official foreign aid amounts to only around 1% of the US budget.
The United Nations’ target for wealthy countries’ official foreign-aid spending is 0.7% of gross national income (GNI), or 70 cents of every $100 that the country earns. In 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, only Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark surpassed that figure. The US gave only 0.24% of its GNI in official aid, below several less affluent countries, including the United Kingdom, Japan, and Poland.
Likewise, withdrawing from the WHO will save very little money. The WHO’s annual expenditure is roughly half that of the health department of the US state of Rhode Island, which has a population of 1.1 million, and US contributions amount to only 15% of the WHO budget.
The US withdrawal will significantly reduce international cooperation on health issues, and will deprive US health authorities of information about disease prevalence abroad, which could mean that Americans are less informed about risks when they travel. But pharmaceutical companies outside the US may benefit, because withdrawal will remove America’s voice from discussions within the WHO on evidence and quality standards for new drugs – a voice that American pharmaceutical companies have previously used to give themselves a competitive edge over international rivals.
Of all the decisions made by Trump thus far, the most catastrophic are likely to be those related to climate change, including pushing for more oil and gas production (even allowing this to override the Endangered Species Act); removing tax credits for electric vehicles; and, above all, withdrawal from the Paris agreement. US per capita greenhouse-gas emissions are 50% higher than China’s, and almost seven times those of India. Those countries’ leaders will now be able to argue that there is no reason why their own, less affluent, economies should forego fossil fuels if the US is not going to be bound by the targets it accepted in Paris and at subsequent international climate conferences. Other, smaller countries will then say that their emissions are insignificant compared to those of the US, China, and India. Why should they do what the world’s largest emitters are not doing?
Ironically, given that these actions have been taken in the name of “America First,” they are contrary to America’s true long-term interests. Over the coming decades, Americans will swelter through hotter summers, struggle with more severe storms and floods, battle even worse wildfires than those that recently gutted swaths of Los Angeles, and retreat inland as rising sea levels inundate low-lying coastal areas, including Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and much of South Florida.
The US has greater capacity to cope with the effects of climate change than poorer countries. Still, the outcome will be far worse for Americans than the much more limited costs of complying with international agreements to mitigate the severity of climate change.
Taken as a whole, Trump’s policies will damage, perhaps irretrievably, whatever claims the US had to be listened to in global forums. His decisions will only confirm the views of those who have been saying for decades that the US government is a short-sighted, self-seeking plutocracy.
None of this will make America great again. On the contrary, Trump’s return to the White House has given a giant boost to China’s claims to world leadership.
- Peter Singer, Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, is co-host of the podcast Lives Well Lived, Co-founder of the charity The Life You Can Save, and the author of Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Life You Can Save, and, most recently, Consider the Turkey.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.
