WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - National Security Matters: The Case for Foreign Aid

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

This week, Malia Thibado discusses U.S. foreign aid and the arguments for and against it. 

Hello and welcome to National Security Matters, the show where we discuss anything and everything related to U.S. international relations and defense policy. I'm your host, Malia Tibito. Today, let's talk about U.S. foreign aid. As we know, American aid programs have been rigorously criticized by the second Trump administration and MAGA conservatives. As part of his cost-cutting initiatives, Trumps paused all foreign aid programs, including humanitarian relief and economic subsidies. The MAGA conservative view of foreign aid is that it's taking away from money that should be kept to benefit the American people, whether through reducing taxes or by stimulating domestic industrial growth. Admittedly, recent overseas funding has gone to some questionable programs. Forty-five million

dollars in DEI scholarships in Burma and $2 million on teaching Moroccan pottery to Moroccans. The MAGA mindset believes countries using USAID grow needlessly dependent on us, and sometimes these countries use the provisions that America provides them against us. For example, when America tried to incentivize Afghani farmers to grow crops instead of poppy during the war in Afghanistan by supplying them with funding for pipes and canals, instead poppy production doubled, according to the Washington Post. Recently, USAID even gave nearly $1 million to the biobiles. our association, which has close ties with Hamas senior leadership. But foreign aid is a powerful tool for diplomacy.

We'd be fools to ignore that. China certainly isn't. Their belt and road initiatives sweeps through Asia, Africa, and South America, and it is still expanding. Former U.S. Marine Corps General and Secretary of Defense James Mattis famously stated, quote, if you don't fund the State Department, which includes foreign aid, fully than I need to buy more ammunition ultimately. This is theoretically true. Foreign aid allows for American leverage.

The government can and has threatened to halt funds to de-escalate tense international situations. What comes to mind is Egypt and Israel with the Camp David Accords. The U.S. can also reward democratic behavior in other countries by granting foreign aid to a potential future economic or military ally. What would be ideal for us would be something like our situation with South Korea. We gave them substantial financial and military aid when they needed it, but they have since proven to be one of our greatest allies. The U.S. provided the Asian country with over $127 billion, the bulk of which was from

1945 to 1960. Nowadays, in 2024, the number is at a consistent $1 million, which compared to the U.S.-Korean bilateral trade, which totals $197.1 billion, is really just a drop in the bucket. It proves that we can derive long-term benefits from our foreign aid programs. The U.S. Global Leadership Council estimated in 2024 that for every $1 that U.S. aid invested in a foreign country, it returned $3 to $4 to the American private sector through elevating trade and opening jobs. What may be a better metric, for provision of foreign aid is whether the country that we are aiding aligns with American values or is working towards aligning with them.

This would incentivize countries who want American sponsorship to move more towards democracy and it would ensure that taxpayer money doesn't get used to directly fund our adversaries. The U.S. should use foreign aid with the caveat that the people in charge remember is a tool for diplomacy. It's not a charity case. It would morally disgust me to say that we should disregard the rest of the world for our sole benefit, but we need to be cautious. The money that the government spends is taxpayer dollars and should not be spent frivolously on art preservation in a country that the majority of Americans can't name or find on the map.

The aid that we give should, and this isn't hard, be used to benefit Americans first. This has been National Security Matters with Malia Tibido. Thank you for listening on WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.