Donald Trump’s plans to make dramatic cuts to the United States’ international aid budget could be a “big strategic mistake” that allows China to step in and further its global influence, the UK foreign secretary has said.David Lammy cautioned that Britain’s own experience of merging the Department for International Development (DfID) into the Foreign Office, announced by Boris Johnson in 2020 with little fanfare, was a serious blow to Britain’s “soft power” in developing countries and beyond.Thousands of USAid employees have already been laid off and programmes shut down worldwide, including in Ukraine, after the new administration imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign aid, ahead of consolidating it into the state department, a move decried by critics as a huge foreign policy blunder.Aid agencies have warned of a profound impact on the global development sector with a risk of escalating disease, famine and conflict, given the US accounts for $4 out of every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid. Security experts have said China could capitalise on the move.In an interview with the Guardian on a trip to Kyiv, Lammy said: “What I can say to American friends is it’s widely accepted that the decision by the UK with very little preparation to close down DfID, to suspend funding in the short term or give many global partners little heads up, was a big strategic mistake.“We have spent years unravelling that strategic mistake. Development remains a very important soft power tool. And in the absence of development … I would be very worried that China and others step into that gap.“We were hugely critical of the way that the last government handled the decision. So I would caution US friends to look closely at what went wrong in the United Kingdom as they navigate this decision.”On Friday night a US judge said he would issue an order blocking the Trump administration from taking some steps to dismantle USAid, adding that 2,200 employees from the agency would not immediately be placed on administrative leave. However, the ruling from district judge Carl Nichols in Washington is expected to be “limited” and temporary.Ukraine is reeling from the decision to pause all US foreign aid programmes immediately, with projects in the country from military veteran rehabilitation programmes to independent media and anti-corruption initiatives in effect stopped overnight.“We will do what we can to ameliorate those decisions but clearly the United Kingdom hasn’t got the resources available to the United States,” Lammy said. He added it was “not yet clear” to him whether Trump was planning to withdraw entirely from the development arena, or to absorb some of it back into the state department.Trump signed an executive order to authorise aggressive economic sanctions against the international criminal court on Thursday, accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel, after it is
Tăierea ajutorului extern de către Trump ar putea fi o ‘mare greșeală strategică’, spune Lammy
