As an American in Brazil, I don’t see or hear the impact of US Aid in the country. I believe this is because much of it is squandered. As someone who has built schools for incredibly impoverished people and dug water wells for those without water, I’m concerned when I hear about organizations that do similar work receiving grants, using those funds to pay US-based staff, overhead, and company self-promotion, yet never actually building a school. I question the value of such practices.
The US Aid program is a major problem. Its $43 billion budget is being used ineffectively, and it has lost focus on the basic needs of billions of people. US Aid has become a tool to push ideological agendas rather than promote actual US goodwill and sound foreign policy.
For example, US Aid should prioritize school construction, water wells, mini health clinics, and hunger relief. It should not allocate a $20 million grant for a Sesame Street TV program in Iraq. I suspect that, like my own children, Iraqi children have more engaging programs on YouTube and other online platforms. My kids weren’t interested in watching Sesame Street, and simply funding a program doesn’t guarantee viewership. Furthermore, if someone owns a TV, they likely shouldn’t be eligible for US Aid. US Aid should target the absolute poorest populations in each continent.
Consider the Brazilian Amazon. It needs approximately 2,000 schools, each with four to five classrooms. The government has the teachers but lacks the political will to build the schools. When I built similar schools, the cost was about $300,000 each, totaling a $600 million investment. This need is replicated worldwide. Assume about 100,000 schools are needed in rural, impoverished regions of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Some schools may be smaller, others larger. Assuming an average cost of $500,000 per school, this amounts to $50 billion, spread over ten years, or $5 billion annually.
The same concept applies to mini-health clinics and hospitals, requiring another $50 billion over ten years. Hunger programs would need an additional $100 billion to distribute US grains to the poorest populations. Water wells, a major issue, would require about ten million wells at $1,000 each, totaling $10 billion.
Other programs are needed to counter China’s influence. For example, China funds delegations from developing countries to attend international events, providing politicians with free trips and garnering praise for China. US Aid could fund similar initiatives.
US Aid should also lobby for laws that benefit the US. One example is regulating illegal mining, which destroys forests and pollutes oceans with mining runoff. Developed countries require heavy metals to be weighed before and after mining to prevent environmental contamination. In contrast, illegal gold mines in the developing world release these minerals into the rivers, which flow into the oceans, increasing mercury levels and contaminating the food chain. US Aid should focus on enacting laws to address this issue. If you eat fish, you’ve seen warning labels for decades, such as those from the Great Lakes, due to massive mercury runoff into the ocean from developing countries. Eventually, the oceans themselves will require warning labels on fish as well.
The last thing US Aid should do is not help countries shape their laws to benefit themselves. For example, Brazil’s industrial and tax policy appears as if China wrote it, designed to collapse Brazil’s industrial base so that China could manufacture everything for Brazil. This is in China’s economic interest, so naturally, they promote this agenda. It is in the US interest to ensure Brazil can compete with China, and the US needs to help countries pass laws enabling them to compete in the 21st century.
Finally, the CIA’s influence on US Aid needs to be enhanced. Over the past 25 years, US Aid has shifted from building infrastructure, pushing US foreign policy agenda and gaining favor to pushing agendas, favoritism, and ideological goals.
Reforming US Aid to its original mission would be a welcome change for an agency that has been wasting money for too long. When one thinks about it, the USA could reshape the world with school infrastructure, health clinics, water wells, and food in impoverished regions for less than the current yearly budget of US Aid.
