The US powers down

In his avowed effort to make America great again, Donald Trump is pulling the rug out from under one of the pillars of that greatness: aid diplomacy.

There are debates on whether foreign aid constitutes soft or hard power. Whatever it is, it gives the donor state a measure of influence over the recipient.

Beijing, in its rise to geopolitical power, recognized the power of aid diplomacy. It has fostered dependence on Chinese foreign aid, investments and trade to get what it wants on the global stage. Under Xi Jinping, this has turned into economic coercion, prompting several countries to begin economic decoupling from China.

In our corner of the planet, Chinese economic muscle flexing is being aggravated by military gray zone aggression.

Elsewhere in the world, however, there are needy countries that are gladly embracing Chinese official development assistance. And because Chinese ODA does not carry pesky conditionalities typically attached to aid from the West, such as respect for human rights, governments with an authoritarian bent prefer Chinese aid.

There are two main strings attached to Chinese ODA. One is that Chinese-funded projects are awarded to Chinese contractors or at least employ Chinese talent. It’s what Beijing likes to describe as a “win-win situation” – although this often translates into an inordinately bigger win for China.

Another string is commitment to the one-China policy.

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Recipients of US aid aren’t the only ones worried about the funding withdrawal. The US Agency for International Development is a partner of the aid agencies of other governments, with America often providing the greater amount.

Some of those foreign partners are now at a loss at their sudden weakness or inability to meet aid commitments because of the withdrawal of American funding.

Aid diplomacy is anchored on trust, which can be difficult to fully restore once shaken. The foreign partners of the US in aid diplomacy are concerned about the erosion of other nations’ trust in their governments.

Already, Trump’s move has provided fodder for the argument that in the Philippines’ maritime conflict with China, there’s no guarantee that Washington’s mutual defense commitment to its treaty ally is truly “ironclad,” as US officials keep saying.

Philippine officials have said US aid has merely been put on pause and military assistance will not be affected. So far, however, we haven’t heard similar reassurances from Trump administration officials.

Instead, what we’re hearing is the sudden mass pullout of USAID personnel worldwide along with the halt in US contributions to the United Nations and its key agencies.

And instead of prioritizing chats with US treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific, Trump is working for a face-to-face meeting with China’s Xi Jinping.

Of course talking is always better than fighting. Maybe Trump the ultimate showman can charm Xi. Remember, Trump during his visit to Manila in November 2017 charmed the rabidly anti-US Rodrigo Duterte so much Digong even crooned “Ikaw” at a gala dinner for ASEAN leaders at their 31st summit. Duterte said he was singing the love song “upon the orders of the commander-in-chief of the United States.”

As in Trump’s chat with his buddy Vladimir Putin, the US president’s planned meeting with Xi has long-time US allies worried about being sidelined in favor of global bullies who are upending the rules-based international order.

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Trump and his chief adviser Elon Musk are running the US government like a private enterprise. In business, Musk’s drastic downsizing and cost-cutting could make sense in terms of the bottom line.

I’ve heard Filipinos wishing that we could also have a Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, with no expensive offices or bureaucracy, and with an Elon Musk to carry out a genuine effort to liposuction the massive bureaucratic fat, eliminate waste and stop the abuse of government resources.

Instead what we get is a promise at the start of every presidency to rightsize the bureaucracy. And then, what almost always follows is the new team creating a new executive department for every problem. Unlike Musk’s DOGE, these new departments need their own offices (preferably brand new), staff and a host of officials with all the perks such as service vehicles with vanity plates plus a coterie of bodyguards.

At the same time, administration allies quickly get busy gerrymandering, from the provincial to barangay levels, to create new offices (meaning construction contracts awarded to their family-owned companies) and new positions that can be packed with their relatives, cronies and other beneficiaries of patronage.

Bloating the bureaucracy, with no corresponding improvement in crummy public service, is job generation, Philippine style.

With their billions, Musk and Trump are astute businessmen. The objectives of private enterprise and governments, however, and the paths to achieve them can be widely divergent.

Thinking like businessmen, the focus is on tangible profit rather than the objectives of governments (and UN agencies), which for hard-nosed entrepreneurs can seem unrealistic and abstract.

With the US withdrawing huge chunks of assistance for a wide range of activities around the planet in the name of cost efficiency, it is weakening its own power to win friends and influence people and events.

Instead of MAGA, the US under Trump is powering down on the global stage. He could be paving the way for the world’s second biggest economy to fill the aid vacuum and expand its global clout.