Trump Embraces Foreign Aid to Counter China’s Global Influence

Someone just explained to Trump that the American tax payer can tip the help instead of him

China has a 10-year program to upgrade its industry called "中国制造2025" this is normally translated to resemble the American idiom “Made in America,” as “Made in China 2025.” A better translation is “Chinese Manufacturing 2025.” The goal of this plan is for China to be able to manufacture its own high-tech products so as not to be dependent on foreign, especially US, suppliers for critical technology. This is a rather sane goal, I think. It is a program to break itself, and indeed break the world, from the US domination of high-tech manufacturing. Yet the New York Times consistently refers to this program as “Beijing’s plan for economic, technological and political dominance.” To break US domination is not the same as establishing one’s own domination. The rest of the world, so long harmed by the US’s own economic, technological and political dominance, understands this well.

Would have been cheaper to stay in the TPP, which would have had the added benefit of virtually eliminating the Canadian dairy tariff.

When I arrived in Guinea, West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer nearly 50 years ago, the Chinese were already on the ground building roads and hospitals to promote relationships with developing nations in Africa . It was understood that they recognized Africa as a potential source of the mineral resources that they would need in the development of their own industries in China. A few years ago a taxi driver in the tiny Caribbean nation of St. Lucia pointed out an immense new hospital dominating the landscape near Castries, the island's capital. He said the Chinese were involved in many projects across the Caribbean in order to gain good will and favorable votes in the United Nations. It takes decades for "foreign aid" to have much effect in peoples' attitudes about the generosity of great powers. This sudden epiphany by Republicans hoping to counter the influence of Chinese largesse among developing nations is too little too late.

No mention here of key USAID financing offices being integrated into the new OPIC, including an important guarantee facility, nor local currency lending which OPIC did not do. This isn’t the same OPIC with a larger budget. It could be akin to launch of the MCC, with finance instead of governance at the fore.

Finally he seems to be getting it.

Another TrumpScam. Guaranteed.

Or he could have stayed in TPP. He gave away his biggest bargaining chip against China in exchange for nothing. And now they’re running wild in the South China Sea and there ain’t a thing we can do about it. Man am I tired of the winning.

The best way to regain respect in the world would be to have Trump play golf and shut is mouth for the next two years...

Global Aid or not, Trump is going to bankrupt us as a nation. And when the cuts come in they will affect the poor and the disabled as well as the elderly. We are looking at a Depression far worse than 1929.

"The new bipartisan push to increase foreign aid began under the Obama administration...." Oh, the irony. The more Trump tears up Obama's plans and repackages them, the more he copies Obama's blueprint for global relations. The thought of Ted Yoho selling a massive foreign aid package to the House Freedom Caucus is straight out of the theater of the absurd. 'America First' is beginning to resemble 'Refried Globalism'.

Can this become any more bizarre- take money from the UN and set up a dummy corporation- who gets the money? Hotel and condo developers?

Send that 60 billion to the florida panhandle.

The really sad thing is you will never read anything positive about the African continent in The New York Times. Indeed there’s struggles in there but not like the doom and gloom they so eager to report

This would require “professional diplomacy” something which trump has declared fake, weak. liberal ideology, a perspective both Congressional Republicans and the trump administration definitively support.

Gees... we are broke and he wants to loan out more money? Take the billions that we give Israel and give it to countries that could really use it.... NOT....

Great piece. The map is very revealing about geopolitics. Unfortunately, average folks do not read NYT but concern about their struggling life and health care. Do not trust Donald for domestic infrastructure program which generates jobs. He is obsessed over the wall and sales of military hardware to allies and rogue nations like Saudi Arabia. Here is my argument. New Jersey is ready to foot its fair share of the bill to the Gateway Project which will be a new mass transit system under the Hudson River that will benefit the country's economy. Donald's administration has been stalling its federal funding share. I suppose it's a personal vendetta to New Jersey because he lost in the state. We are happy about that. He is not welcome to our state despite his repetitious to Bedsminster, NJ. A final word. Elaine Chao is incompetent and Donald's pawn as well as her husband.

OPIC has a long history of operating surpluses - while functioning with one hand tied behind its back. Yes, China has taken a serious lead in most infrastructure projects in Africa because of their ability to take a longer view, commit major capital and play by local rules of the game that the West, OPIC in particular, simply won't do. Having worked with OPIC in the past, I can tell you that there would be little, if any, US investment on the continent of Africa without them. Bringing more capital to the game is only good news for the US, Africa and everywhere else in the developing world.

Its basically corporate welfare that might also have some benefits for the recipient country, and likely will have very little foreign policy influence.

If you do good, hey we can do so too. This one-upmanship is wrong-minded. Where was the US when these countries direly needed investment and aid? The motivation is to counter China rather than provide investment and aid because such was needed--which was the raison d'etre of the more noble America of the past. Trumpian America bears no good will and has no heart.

I wonder how the America First crowd will react upon hearing this news. My guess is that they will never know about it. A cynical and cut-throat Democratic party could make a lot of hay with this news. Imagine the campaign ads: "Instead of building a wall, Donald Trump is giving away $60 billion to foreigners." But the Democratic party still has principals and knows that however, too-little-too-late, this is a move in the right direction for America's strategic interest. But this is why the Republican strategy is so effective. Obstruct, lie and interfere in any Democratic initiative and then turn around and adopt the same initiatives when they come into office. If accused of hypocrisy, just lie about it. This strategy makes it impossible for a Democratic President to ever govern again.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a comprehensive aid, trade and immigration policy from this administration. A little strategy might be good, rather than shooting from the lip.

I would like to know if the $60 billion is fully funded (the piece talks about a fund) or if appropriations will be needed along the way. Most of these "projects" are the latter.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only place on earth where total fertility rates are so high that the population will expand exponentially for the foreseeable future. By the end of this century ONE THIRD of the world’s population will be African. Along with mining, mineral extraction and energy, the Chinese are making large investments there in business services, wholesale and retail, import and export, construction, transportation, storage and even postal services. And expect to see the "Made in Ethiopia" label in your next seven dollar shirt at WalMart because the Chinese are setting up garment manufacturing businesses there, possibly to avoid tariffs. The new US program may be a reasonable response, but it sounds like "too little - too late" and if recent history is a guide, too much of this money will land in the hedge funds of Trump stooges and too little of this money will actually make it to Africa or South America or SE Asia.

Infrastructure Week is commencing, as planned, in Asia, Africa and the Americas! #MAAAGA

Coming soon: loans, loan guarantees, and insurance for the Trump and Kushner companies to do business in shaky locations.

This development is completely bizarre and head-spinning. The next question is, will these development "companies" really work with locals or will they try to impose schemes that will line their pockets? I smell a rat.

I'm baffled by this. What is the point of all the destructive 'America First' moves, just to reverse into this? Will all the funding now go to Russia and Saudi Arabia instead of our allies?

Perhaps we should start our infrastructure investment program here at home? Perhaps we could start here in Florida by burying our utility lines underground before the next hurricane: Or in California, before wires hanging on poles impact the next wildfire?

So where is the economic aid to prop up our infrastructure? This country needs billions to modernize and protect our electric grid, restore bridges and tunnels and modernize the transportation systems.

So half way through his term Trump finally gets the point of foreign aid. Meanwhile, he's dramatically undermined much of what the government does in terms of foreign policy, not to mention environmental protection and fostering regulation that protects the public. He's conducting his presidency in an unabashedly ignorant manner, being unwilling or unable to learn about anything that's not immediately in his face. The Nation, and the entire world will likely pay an unimaginably high price.

I guess now we know why Nikki quit. It's a bit hard to yell at countries that your "taking names" and then give out foreign aid to those same countries. I guess it's what we could call a paper tiger.

We live in a time of self-proclaimed "like, really smart" leadership, reliant upon gut reactions, "good instincts" and being "a quick study" (again, all self proclaimed). In the process individuals who have invested a career/lifetime into observing, studying and understanding specialized fields of knowledge, have been marginalized. Relegated to the back bench. Earlier in this decade, the Tea Party troglodytes and their acolytes succeeded in blocking funding for the Export-Import Bank, which underpinned General Electric Co. [founded by Thomas Edison, by the way] to announce in the WSJ (9/28/2015) that they would cease manufacturing gas engines in Waukesha, Wisconsin and move 350 jobs to a new factory in Canada in order to use that country's export financing regime to pursue new business. GE went on to say that financing from an export credit agency such as Ex-Im was required as a condition of sale for some $11 billion of projects for which it was preparing bids, including power turbines, generation equipment and aircraft engines. 2018 Update: The Waukesha plant has now been closed (and later sold), the US employees were all terminated, and the jobs moved to Canada. Good luck with those knee-jerk reactions, Leader of the Free World and, of course, your dealings with B.S.M. (Bone Saw Man) as he attempts to get away with murder under cover of diplomatic immunity in the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul.

Proof that what the Republican terrorists call the "deep state" is actually made up of capable experts who develop intelligent strategies that genuinely serve our long term national interests far beyond the latest slogan or sound bite.

If only this president could make any move for reasons other than making more money or punishing someone. How about altruism and benefiting people without financial reward or hurting someone who opposes you

This will fit well in changing the diversity of America's trade deficits from China to other third world countries. I don't agree with much that Donald Trump has to offer, but his approach toward China is based in reality, and we can no longer be suckers to their long term plans for world domination. China has four times the population of the U.S., and with a standard of living half of ours their economy will be twice as large, and they can have afford a very large military. All this would be OK if they weren't building islands in the South China Sea, and rigging economics so that domestic companies have the advantage. China is not our friend.

The imagery is clear. China plans longterm. Slow and sure. Firmfooted. Eyes open. Deals building upon deals. Alliances thickening like a vine spreading its tentacles. America is the sporadic one. Unpredictable. Uncertain of itself. Chaotic. Tantruming. Pouting. Devolving. In a spin of an agitated withdrawal. A fruit past ripe, falling and soon to rot on the ground. Visions are powerful. As much an agent of cause as effect.

So Trump finally is acknowledging that the world order existing prior to his taking office is what cemented the United States' economic, technological and political dominance. Perhaps destroying it wasn't that good of an idea.

I wonder how much of those billons of dollars will make it back into Trump’s friends pockets?

I guess President Trump hasn't been advised that the USA has a degraded infrastructure. Perhaps he should spend less time at Mar-a Largo and more time evaluating what is going on in the rest of the country.

So we plan to send more money to our friends, OK. Don’t we borrow from China already? How is that supposed to work we borrow from China to stop China?

Yet again, an uniformed Trump makes a rash decision (pulling out of TPP) only to realize after the fact that it was hugely dumb … and now will scramble to tell us what a brilliant strategist he is by replicating the essential parts of the program he denigrated but never actually understood.

Next will we see Mr. Trump endorse a reinstatement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership which clearly was designed to counter Chinese global influence?

Sad that foreign aid doesn't make sense to Trump on its own merits, but that's Trump.

Trump incorporated must get $ from this scheme.

This is the type of program Donald J. Trump balked at when accusing the global community of cheating America. His 95% (ers) cheered and jeered as Kim Jong Trump stood at the podium uttering his falsehoods and ignorance to the rabid crowds. Trump called it unfair to the U.S. and socialism. Now, it's okay because he's doing it and his 95% (ers) will cheer.

This is a fraudulent justification for doing nothing more than lipstick the OPIC subsidies for overseas corporate expansion. There is no new money here and an increased risk for poorer countries of growing debt. China will shrug and move on.

Foreign aid is rarely used for anything other than pure geo-politics. Isolationism only creates a series of power vacuums. It's lonely at the top and sometimes you have to buy your friends. Trump may be a political novice, but you would think he'd have a firm grasp on this if nothing else.

Why is it that we can't find any money to help our own country and our citizens, but we can find money to play political games worldwide. No money for healthcare or infrastructure, but plenty to bribe other countries to be our friend. Of course they hate us behind our backs, anyway.

Trump and the US are 20 years too late to this party. While we fight wars in the Middle East and bankrupt our children’s future (and ignore our own infrastructure) China has been investing around the world. Republican policy has starved our country and this year they drowned us in the bathtub with their tax breaks to millionaires. We shouldn’t be spending our tax dollars on someone else’s infrastructure until we fix our own.

Ah! We all thought Trump was an ‘America Firster’. Turns out that, vis-a-vis China, America is an also-ran.