Why cutting USAID will hurt American foreign policy | Ian Bremmer's Quick Take

The US Agency for International Development is in the process of being shut down. Nearly all Washington staff have been put on leave, they're closing missions abroad, the State Department moving to evacuate all staff around the world. Why should we care? Does this matter? Subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔): http://www.youtube.com/@GZEROMedia Sign up for GZERO's free newsletters on global politics: https://www.gzeromedia.com/subscribe Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: The US Agency for International Development, which is in the process of being shut down. Nearly all Washington staff have been put on leave, they're closing missions abroad, the State Department moving to evacuate all staff around the world. Why should we care? Does this matter? This agency was set up back over 50 years ago, 1961, by then President John F. Kennedy, and it was meant to coordinate the distribution of foreign aid for the United States all over the world and differentiate that from military support that was provided by the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the US isn't providing charity, that's not what foreign aid is, that it should be providing support for US national interests. And I agree that it should be providing support for US national interest, but it is important to recognize that actually when USAID was set up, it was set up in part as charity, that President Kennedy's position was that the United States had a moral obligation to support poorer people, and poorer countries around the world. They are fellow human beings, after all, and the United States has historically benefited massively from developing resources all around the world, and frequently, the people that lived in those countries didn't get very much as a consequence, and the US has benefited massively, as have other wealthy countries, from industrialization, and putting carbon into the atmosphere that now poor countries can't do because of climate change, and we're saying, "We need to transition," but the US, of course, has gotten the benefits of that historically. You know, my view is, I'm okay with charity. I actually think that helping save lives with food and medicine for millions of people and especially babies and children. I mean, even if it did nothing for the United States directly, I would be okay with spending some of the money of American taxpayers on that, especially as opposed to say a war in Afghanistan or the latest sort of bomber program that is expensive and more than the Americans need. So, I push back on the US should never do charity argument. But leaving that aside, you don't need that argument to focus on the importance of USAID. And I want to, before I get into the national interest side, I do want to say I am empathetic with why it is unpopular. Because at a moment when so many average Americans feel like the US government has not taken care of them, and this is why you see so much backlash against all of the illegal immigrants that have not been addressed by administrations for many years, and why there's so much backlash against the US establishment, whether it's Democrat or Republican, in saying, "What about the average working American? What about our healthcare? What about our public school system? What about things that you should care a lot more about than sending aid to brown people around the world?" Which is essentially what USAID is mostly doing. I get that. And in that regard, it's an easy target for Trump. It's a particularly easy target for Elon Musk. I would ask first, "Why tax cuts for and regulations written by billionaires in the United States before poor people and Americans?" That would be my higher priority if I was really, really angry and antagonized by how badly money is being spent in the US. But that's a different story. Keep up with global news and why it matters. Follow GZERO! X: https://x.com/gzeromedia LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/gzeromedia Instagram: https://instagram.com/gzeromedia TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@gzeromedia Facebook: https://facebook.com/gzeromedia Threads: https://threads.net/@gzeromedia GZERO World on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gzero-world-with-ian-bremmer/id1294461271 GZERO World on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/13QW2sLPCjVbdDE6fmJCNf?si=9d00ce9ed2184c59 GZERO Media, a Eurasia Group company, is a multimedia publisher providing news, insights, and commentary on the events shaping our world. Our properties include GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, our weekly show on US public television; our newsletters GZERO Daily, GZERO AI, GZERO North, and GZERO Daily with Ian Bremmer; our parody series Puppet Regime; our digital video series including Ian Bremmer's Quick Take every week; and the GZERO World Podcast. Our content is free and available at https://www.gzeromedia.com/. #QuickTake #USAID #Trump