United States foreign aid
United States foreign aid is "aid given by the United States to other countries to support global peace, security, and development efforts, and provide humanitarian relief during times of crisis." US foreign aid is financed from US taxpayers and other government revenue sources that Congress appropriates annually through the United States budget process. It does not include money from private charitable organizations based in the United States or remittances sent between family members. The Congressional Research Service divides it into five categories: bilateral development aid, economic assistance., humanitarian aid, multilateral economic contributions, and military aid. Although the number of agencies and departments managing and implementing foreign assistance funds and programs can change over time, in recent years, "there are over 20 U.S. government agencies that manage foreign assistance programs."
Foreign aid recipients include developing countries, countries of strategic importance to the United States, and countries recovering from war. The government channels about half of its economic assistance through a specialized agency, the United States Agency for International Development. Government-sponsored foreign aid began in systematic fashion after World War II; there were numerous programs of which the largest were the Marshall Plan of 1948 and the Mutual Security Act of 1951–61.
Military aid is frequently provided to foreign countries of strategic defense significance, or experiencing civil war, and natural resource rich countries experience civil war more frequently than countries that do not have natural resources. Therefore, resource rich countries are significantly more likely to receive foreign aid.
While foreign aid typically enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, foreign aid is generally unpopular with the general public. A 2017 Rasmussen poll found 57.69% favor a cut in foreign aid compared to 6% who want increased aid. However, most Americans overestimate foreign aid as a share of the total federal budget. In the past, less than 1% of the national budget went to foreign assistance. As of fiscal year 2017, foreign aid provided through the U.S. State Department and USAID totaled $49.87.1 billion, or about 1.2% of total spending, but still equivalent to about 7.5% of the deficit.
Overview
In fiscal year 2017, the U.S. government allocated the following amounts for aid:Total economic and military assistance: $49.87 billion.
Total military assistance: $14.77 billion.
Total economic assistance: $35.10 billion, of which USAID Implemented: $20.55 billion.
| Country | Economic and Military Assistance FY 2017, $US millions | Aid received per capita FY 2017, $US millions | Economic Assistance FY 2017, $US millions | Military Assistance FY2017, $US millions |
| Afghanistan | 5,730.48 | 161.29 | 1,309.88 | 4,420.60 |
| Iraq | 3,711.99 | 96.98 | 734.53 | 2,977.46 |
| Israel | 3,191.07 | 383.45 | 16.07 | 3,175.00 |
| Jordan | 1,489.50 | 153.53 | 1,015.62 | 473.88 |
| Egypt | 1,475.61 | 15.13 | 173.33 | 1,302.28 |
| Ethiopia | 1,102.96 | 10.51 | 1,102.31 | 0.64 |
| Kenya | 1,060.40 | 21.34 | 1,026.19 | 34.21 |
| South Sudan | 924.10 | 73.48 | 913.37 | 10.73 |
| Syria | 890.96 | 48.77 | 890.96 | 0 |
| Nigeria | 851.88 | 4.46 | 848.38 | 3.50 |
| Pakistan | 836.78 | 4.25 | 555.78 | 281.00 |
| Uganda | 740.77 | 17.00 | 739.68 | 1.085 |
| Tanzania | 626.48 | 10.93 | 619.69 | 6.80 |
| Yemen | 595.15 | 21.07 | 594.90 | 0.25 |
| Somalia | 583.81 | 39.60 | 461.13 | 122.68 |
| Mozambique | 579.99 | 19.55 | 579.40 | 0.60 |
| Colombia | 517.63 | 10.55 | 405.62 | 112.02 |
| South Africa | 511.48 | 9.02 | 510.63 | 0.85 |
| Ukraine | 506.75 | 11.46 | 256.43 | 250.31 |
| Lebanon | 505.44 | 83.10 | 418.60 | 86.84 |
| Congo | 493.95 | 6.07 | 489.72 | 4.23 |
History
Earliest Instances
One of the earliest and least known instances of US foreign aid is also a good example of how aid has a long history of being used as a tool of foreign policy. On May 6th, 1812, despite continued hostilities over independence from British colonial rule, US Senator from Kentucky Henry Clay signed a bill appropriating $50,000 for disaster relief food aid to Venezuela after a massive earthquake devastated the capitol, Caracas, that was enacted on May 8th by the 12th Congress. Coincidentally, Venezuela was also fighting a war for independence from Spanish colonial rule, from 1810 to 1823. The food aid was accompanied by diplomat Alexander Scott, who stated that this aid was “.” A case may be made that some motivation for this act of generosity was diplomatic in nature, insofar as that both nations were seeking diplomatic recognition as sovereign from colonizers, and that this gesture would elicit such a desired reciprocal response. Later, in 1927, the US Congress appropriated $41,000 for the creation and transportation of to be erected in Caracas, where by all accounts it remains to this day, memorializing Clay as a symbol of US generosity abroad.World War I
During World War One, the Committee for Relief in Belgium, which sent food to the hungry in that war-torn country, received $387 million from the U.S. government. These government monies were given in the form of loans, but a considerable portion of those loans was forgiven.After the war, the American Relief Administration, directed by Herbert Hoover who had also been prominent in the CRB, continued food distribution to war-devastated European countries. It also distributed food and combated typhus in Russia during 1921–23. The U.S. Congress appropriated $20 million for the ARA under the Russian Famine Relief Act of 1921.
World War II
Levels of United States aid increased greatly during World War Two, mainly on account of the Lend-lease program. United States government aid remained high in the decade after the war because of contributions to European reconstruction, and competition for influence versus the Communist powers in the first years of the Cold War. By 1960, the annual aid amount had receded to about half of what it was in the early post-war years, and, in inflation-adjusted terms, it has remained at that level—with some fluctuations—until the present.The Lend-lease program, which began in 1941 was an arrangement whereby the United States sent large amounts of war materials and other supplies to nations whose defense was considered vital to the defense of the United States. It began with the passage by Congress of the Lend-lease act on 11 March 1941.
Initially, the main recipient was Great Britain; the Soviet Union began receiving supplies in June 1941 outside of Lend-lease, and was included in the Lend-lease agreement in November 1941. By the end of the war, most of the Allied countries had been declared eligible for Lend-lease aid, although not all received it. By the time the program was ended by President Truman in August 1945, more than $50 billion worth of supplies had been disbursed, of which the Commonwealth countries received $31 billion and the Soviet Union $11 billion. Although formally the material was loaned, in the end only partial repayment was demanded.
A second wartime aid program, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, was founded in November 1943, by 44 Allied governments, for the purpose of assisting and resettling displaced victims of the war.
Its initial focus was on assisting people in areas the Allies had captured from the Axis powers: distributing food, clothing and other essentials, and helping with medical care and sanitation. Later it also assisted in the resumption of agriculture and industry. Each of the 44 signatories was supposed to contribute one percent of its national income.
The chief beneficiaries were China, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Poland, the Ukrainian SSR and Yugoslavia. UNRRA returned about 7 million displaced people to their countries of origin and provided refugee camps for about one million who were unwilling to be repatriated. UNRRA ceased operations in Europe in mid-1947; some of its activities in Asia continued under other auspices until early 1949. In the end 52 countries had contributed as donors. Contributions from governments and private organizations during the four years of the program totaled over $3.8 billion; more than half of that was from the United States.
Cold War
After the war, the United States began giving large amounts of aid to Greece and Turkey under the Truman doctrine. Both countries were experiencing civil strife between communist and anti-communist factions, and the President and his advisors feared that their efforts to keep European countries from adopting communism might be about to suffer a serious setback. In December 1946, the Prime Minister of Greece visited Washington and requested additional United States aid. Truman promulgated his containment doctrine in early 1947, a major component of which was to be aid to the world's poor countries in order to blunt the appeals of radicalism to their hungry peoples and to bolster their anti-communist political elements. In May 1947 the U.S. government granted Greece $300 million in military and economic aid. Turkey received $100 million. The U.S. government gave Greece $362 million in 1949, and U.S. aid to Greece generally remained over $100 million annually until 1998.The most well-known, and largest, United States aid program in the immediate post-war years was the European Recovery Program. More often known as the Marshall Plan, it was the creation of George Kennan, William Clayton, and others at the U.S. State Department under Secretary of State George Marshall. Publicly suggested by Marshall in June 1947, and put into action about a year later, the Plan was essentially an extension of the Greece–Turkey aid strategy to the rest of Europe. The U.S. administration considered the stability of the existing governments in Western Europe vital to its own interests. On 3 April 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act, establishing the Economic Cooperation Administration to administer the program, and actual disbursements got underway. The focus was on promoting production, stabilizing currencies, and promoting international trade. To be eligible for the aid, a country had to sign an agreement with the United States government committing itself to the Act's purposes. The Communist countries were formally invited to participate in the Plan although Secretary Marshall thought it unlikely that they would accept and they did in fact decline the aid. Also in 1948, the United States and the recipient countries created the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation to coordinate the use of the aid. A large portion of the money given was used to purchase goods from the United States, and the ships used to transport the goods had to be of U.S. nationality. Until after the Korean War, military aid was not part of the plan.
The Marshall Plan ended in December 1951 and its functions were transferred to the Mutual Security Administration.
The United States government gave out about $12.5 billion under the Plan during its three-and-a-half-year existence. The countries receiving the most were Great Britain, France and West Germany.
From 1945 to 1953 – U.S. provides grants and credits amounting to $5.9 billion to Asian countries, especially China/Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan and the Philippines. In addition, another $282 million went to Israel and $196 million to the rest of the Middle East. The main category was economic aid, but some military aid was provided. All this aid was separate from the Marshall Plan.
U.S. Aid
Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act on 4 September 1961, reorganizing U.S. foreign assistance programs and separating military and non-military aid. The Act was established by President Kennedy two months later. USAID became the first U.S. foreign assistance organization whose primary focus was long-term economic and social development.2000s
| Implementing Agency | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
| U.S. Agency for International Development | 18,292.09 | 17,315.93 | 17,822.82 | 19,412.06 | 19,358.09 | 20,548.50 |
| Department of Defense | 17,954.16 | 13,681.98 | 10,521.37 | 14,823.81 | 15,347.51 | 14,500.82 |
| Department of State | 6,079.27 | 5,522.48 | 6,829.06 | 7,508.35 | 5,836.87 | 7,664.03 |
| Department of Health and Human Services | 2,281.97 | 3,079.00 | 2,694.02 | 2,640.30 | 4,217.89 | 2,659.52 |
| Department of the Treasury | 2,834.18 | 2,673.16 | 2,734.66 | 2,647.78 | 2,286.03 | 1,846.36 |
| Millennium Challenge Corporation | 413.02 | 1,115.55 | 567.34 | 429.57 | 963.23 | 1,012.08 |
| Department of Energy | 691.14 | 969.25 | 653.19 | 590.62 | 535.09 | 432.48 |
| Peace Corps | 426.11 | 406.72 | 396.453 | 441.56 | 440.16 | 479.34 |
| Department of Agriculture | 369.28 | 334.82 | 248.86 | 211.57 | 382.06 | 290.26 |
| Department of the Interior | 225.00 | 216.95 | 292.26 | 233.56 | 280.88 | 240.84 |
| Department of the Army | 170.30 | 90.22 | 72.34 | 117.87 | 85.72 | 2.09 |
| Trade and Development Agency | 44.14 | 40.64 | 49.22 | 51.11 | 58.10 | 67.77 |
| Department of the Air Force | 85.98 | 16.28 | 3.62 | 181.00 | 8.59 | 7.00 |
| Department of Labor | 12.16 | 30.55 | 17.00 | 81.18 | 44.17 | 24.58 |
| Department of the Navy | 22.21 | 55.06 | 104.08 | 20.49 | 7.56 | 0 |
| African Development Foundation | 29.64 | 42.54 | 31.78 | 20.34 | 27.15 | 20.23 |
| Inter-American Foundation | 31.12 | 26.20 | 27.84 | 26.41 | 27.47 | 30.09 |
| Environmental Protection Agency | 50.62 | 21.92 | 20.44 | 16.79 | 17.96 | 21.48 |
| Department of Justice | 18.72 | 14.06 | 13.85 | 13.04 | 10.21 | |
| Department of Commerce | 17.89 | 17.09 | 7.73 | 6.45 | 6.42 | 7.63 |
| Department of Homeland Security | 5.15 | 0.00 | 2.67 | 2.78 | 11.43 | 4.44 |
| Department of Transportation | 7.61 | 3.95 | 0.27 | 1.15 | 0.29 | 0.03 |
| Federal Trade Commission | 0.21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
President Obama announced to the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in September 2010 that the United States was changing its policy towards foreign aid. The President said the country would focus more on effectiveness, and make sure donated food, medicine, and money help countries get to the point where they no longer require such aid. Infrastructure set up for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief would be used to build capacity in local health care systems to improve maternal and child health, and also fight tropical diseases. The new policy would increase the profile and participation of the United States Agency for International Development, which would coordinate more directly with the National Security Council and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some observers criticized the link with national security and foreign policy as unhelpful for the impoverished, and others lamented the attempted streamlining as only adding more bureaucracy. Foreign aid is a highly partisan issue in the United States, with liberals, on average, supporting government-funded foreign aid much more than conservatives do, who tend to prefer to provide foreign aid privately.
Public Opinion
Several Interviews with 1,012 adult Americans were conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation in January 2011. Published by CNN, the response was that 18% felt that reducing aid to foreign countries was a good way to reduce the federal budget deficit, while 81% thought aid was more important than reducing deficit. Thomas Pogge, Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, has predicted that public opinion will not change even while the hardships suffered by poor people are rising, partly as a result of the Global Financial Crisis. Some claim the U.S. is helping corrupt governments with the aid.Worldwide opinion of the United States improves with contributions to developing countries.
Public knowledge of aid polls have been done assessing the knowledge of the US Public in regards to how much they know about the government's foreign aid spending. A poll conducted by World Public Opinion in 2010 found that the average estimate for how much of the government's budget is spent on foreign aid was 25 percent. The average amount proposed by the public was 10 percent of the federal government's budget be used on foreign aid. In actuality, less than 1 percent of the US federal budget goes towards foreign aid. Less than 19 percent of respondents thought that the percent of the budget that goes towards foreign aid was less than 5 percent. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, relates this overestimation towards an increase in hearing about foreign aid efforts during the Obama administration, but estimates of foreign aid have always been high.
A poll conducted in 2013 by Research Pew Center found that the majority of Americans wanted to either maintain or increase spending on all US government initiatives except foreign aid. This is attributed, by Alice C. Hu, to a gross misconception of how much of the federal budget is actually spent on foreign aid.
Opinions change
A study by the Washington Post from 2017 shows that Americans are easily persuaded in regards to their opinions on U.S. foreign aid. The percentage of people who were provided no argument regarding foreign aid and thought the United States spends too much on it was 67 percent. The percentage of people who were provided a positive argument for foreign aid and thought the United States spent too much on it was 28 percent. The percentage of people who were provided a negative argument against foreign aid and thought that the United States spends too much on it was 88 percent. This shows that the U.S. public is receptive to changing their beliefs about U.S. foreign aid based on the information presented.Because the U.S. public's attitude toward foreign aid is impacted by the positive or negative tone of messages on aid, Steven Kull, Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, laid out steps to preserve or create a positive outlook on U.S. foreign aid.
- Understand the attacks on foreign aid.
- Do not frame questions about public opinion in terms of priorities because people are likely to prioritize domestic issues.
- Emphasize that only 1 percent of the federal budget goes towards foreign aid, as the Clinton administration did in the 1990s.
- Americans feel that the United States does more than its fair share on the world stage, so differentiate between foreign aid and military spending.
- Note that other countries, as part of multilateral frameworks, are doing their part in contributing to foreign aid efforts.
- Address concerns about aid effectiveness, including sharing success stories in providing aid, articulating the role of international and local NGOs in implementing foreign aid, and mobilizing trusted public figures to address effectiveness.
- Point out that foreign aid is a safe way to improve U.S. relations with other nation-states, therefore promoting self-interest.
Recipients of foreign aid