Ten ideas for the incoming Trump Administration
Those who care about America's role in the world can do better than just saying no to change – we can build a better, more defensible model
Dear Unlock Aid,
Earlier this month, the United States voted to elect Donald Trump as its next president and also to put Republicans in control of the U.S. House and Senate.
If the past is prologue, there will almost certainly be proposed cuts ahead for the U.S. foreign aid budget. That said, massive disruption can also create white space to enact reforms that just months or years ago would have been unthinkable.
As we wrote in April in Foreign Policy, champions for U.S. global development should seize on this moment to push for long-overdue reforms to our long-outdated approach: “Faced with the prospect that U.S. foreign aid could go away, those who care about the United States’ role in the world can do better than to just say “no” and instead propose a better, more defensible model.”
This is especially true for foreign aid spending focused on longer-term development needs, such as building markets, livelihoods, and economies with countries around the world – areas that have dominated our work at Unlock Aid to date – as opposed to humanitarian spending to respond to wars and conflicts, natural disasters, and displacement.
President-elect Trump’s time in office is likely to be dominated by three themes: disruption, conservative principles, and adherence to an America First agenda. In that context, below are ten areas where we see opportunities for reform under a new administration and Congress, developed through input with members of our coalition, staff and Members of Congress from both political parties, and likely incoming Trump Administration officials:
1. Prioritize jobs and mutually-beneficial, sustainable economic growth
No country has ever graduated out of poverty as a result of foreign aid. Aid is needed in the most dire circumstances, such as to respond to humanitarian disasters. However, a greater share of U.S. development dollars intended for longer-term needs should be used to promote investments that lead to employment and sustainable economic growth, especially in countries with more stable economies and stronger state capacity. Investments that create jobs and promote sustainable growth, not dependency on aid, are also what countries and communities increasingly say they want, too. Economic growth is also the only way for countries to create tax bases sufficient to respond to their own citizens’ demands.
The next administration should make promoting sustainable economic growth a more central focus of U.S. development strategy, particularly in countries ready for a more peer-to-peer relationship. It can do that by: a) directing a greater share of long-term development investments via agencies designed to promote growth, like the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the latter of which President Trump created during his first term in office with a bipartisan backing from Congress; b) bringing down the cost of capital by blending more USAID and MCC grant and contract dollars with DFC investments, especially in sectors primed for greater private sector participation, such as in power, supply chains, healthcare, responsible tourism, and agriculture; c) leaning on China, NATO and G7 allies, multilateral banks, and private creditors to forgive or restructure loans to highly debt-distressed economies; and d) working with Congress to pass trade bills that make it easier for U.S. firms to sell goods and services to low- and middle-income countries, and vice-versa, while continuing to support two-way trade and investment initiatives like Prosper Africa, which was also created during the first Trump Administration. Click here for more specific ideas on how to beef up agencies like the DFC and MCC.
2. Break up big aid industry awards and invest in local actors and markets
The open secret in Washington, DC about U.S. global development spending is this: there’s not a lot “foreign” about foreign aid. Most U.S. foreign aid dollars go to a handful of large, legacy aid industry players, including a mix of for-profit government contractors, international nonprofits, and UN agencies headquartered in cities like Rome, Paris, Geneva, and New York City. Many of these organizations market themselves as “intermediaries” that can manage local firms’ back office needs, but the reality is that too many big aid industry players keep for themselves the vast majority of what they make rather than pass on funding to local and other frontline actors. Worse, large aid projects managed by big aid industry players too often displace local groups that can do the very same work. Aid industry personnel salaries, which are usually many multiples of what local firms can pay, can also distort local markets, create parallel economies, and perpetuate brain drain.
It’s not enough for USAID to announce new funding for new priorities and celebrate that as if it’s progress. Such performative acts might get headlines, but they won’t produce the outcomes we need unless we’re also just as focused on who is getting that funding to achieve what measurable results.
USAID’s forthcoming $17 billion NextGen Global Health Supply Chain project, the largest in the agency’s history, is emblematic of these problems. Designed with the purpose of bolstering local supply chains and distributing medicines around the world, this $17 billion project is a renewal of a $9.5 billion project, which was a renewal of $2.5 billion project before that, which was a renewal of a string of health supply chain projects going back to the 1960s. USAID officials said the $9.5 billion contract could be so transformative that the agency would potentially not need to do this kind of award again. Instead, it’s been rife with problems. It is now up for renewal, with USAID set to continue its 60-year streak of contracting to its largest Washington, DC aid contractors and expecting different results. Rather, USAID should cancel the planned but unused NextGen contracts and instead use this money to enable countries to build self-reliance, such as by investing directly in local health logistics firms via an agency like the DFC, or by issuing public tenders at the country or regional level that local market participants can actually compete for, win, and take over long-term financial and management responsibilities.
The next administration should double down on efforts to shift U.S. global development resources out of the Washington, DC Beltway and large European capital cities to local actors. This is also something the conservative Project 2025 strategy called for, too (see page 263). It can do this by:
Spending a greater share of resources via local USAID missions to promote competition and increase participation among local actors;
Investing more via pooled funds with low overhead designed explicitly to channel funding to local and highly cost-effective frontline groups (see #5 below);
Channeling more funding via country platform models like joint compacts through which the U.S. and foreign partners can co-invest, jointly set priorities, and jointly select service providers;
Directing a greater share of funding via agencies with a strong record of investing locally, like the DFC, MCC, Inter-American Foundation, and U.S. African Development Foundation;
Breaking up big contracts designed for the aid industry, like the USAID’s NextGen Supply Chain project, and instead re-competing significant portions of those projects within 60 days via local USAID missions, or as DFC investments;
Holding accountable big aid industry actors that market themselves as “intermediaries” by ensuring they devolve at least 75 percent of their funding to their local and subcontracted partners;
Using innovative but underutilized procurement tools such as USAID’s Other Transaction Authority and Innovation Incentive Award Authority to invest more development dollars with and alongside private firms and non-traditional players;
Banning aid contractors that earn more than $100 million annually from the U.S. government from winning future awards unless they can demonstrate that more than 40 percent of their revenue comes from sources other than the U.S. government. Large aid contractors should be able to demonstrate that they provide a service that someone other than Uncle Sam is willing to pay for;
Taking on weedy issues like red tape and performance incentives to increase results, efficiencies, and promote more competition, especially among local and frontline groups (see #9 below).
3. Replicate Operation Warp Speed’s success over and over
Operation Warp Speed was one of the first Trump Administration’s great success stories, resulting in multiple working Covid-19 vaccines being produced in record time. By making an advanced pledge to buy from producers that could develop Covid-19 vaccines with high efficacy, the U.S. government (and by extension, U.S. taxpayers) took no upfront risk because it paid only for successful prototypes. But without the financial incentives the government offered, the successful private industry effort would never have gotten off the ground.
Using success as a model, the next administration should publish a list of high-priority needs with corresponding advanced market commitments to pay for the dissemination of successful prototypes in areas across the board. This could unleash a technological and innovation revolution while also producing global goods for which we all would benefit. Recent advances in fields like artificial intelligence and synthetic biology make success more likely.
For example, few market incentives exist for industry, universities, or laboratories to invest in the research and development (R&D) required to eradicate tuberculosis or to develop diagnostic tests that can quickly detect dangerous antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. However, by committing to buy a prototype of a proven cure for tuberculosis or a functioning diagnostic to detect resistant bacteria, the U.S. government could help eradicate tuberculosis and prevent the next global pandemic. The same goes for other sectors, too, like developing alternative-to-cement building and road materials, climate-resistant crop varieties, or low-cost, low-power ways to refrigerate goods or cool and heat homes and buildings – an exploding need as global energy demand balloons. Need more ideas on where advanced market commitments can work? Check out this list.
4. Prioritize investments to prepare the United States and emerging markets for the global innovation economy
The global economy is set to change dramatically over the next decade. Artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and a slew of other technologies will change how countries and communities interact with one another. Making investments over the next five years in the underlying infrastructure that enables the United States and emerging markets to participate in the global innovation economy will pay dividends over the next fifty years.
The next administration should prioritize investments that:
Turbocharge entrepreneurial ecosystems, such as by funding startup hubs, incubators, and accelerators, as well as education and exchanges in science, technology, and engineering;
Enable countries with vast access to critical minerals and rare earths to build sustainable industries around them, such as by enabling the DFC to invest in countries where it presently cannot, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chile, and investing in ways that would enable local entrepreneurs to own their mines, process their minerals, and sell them to the rest of the world—including the United States—with protections against slave labor and environmental degradation;
Invest more via USAID, the MCC, and DFC in sectors that will shape the 21st century, such as in biomanufacturing and global supply chains;
Expand access to electricity and digital infrastructure, critical components to sustainable economic growth, invention, and innovation;
Facilitate two-way technology transfer between partners around the world and top U.S. research institutions, national laboratories, and U.S. government innovation agencies, such as advanced research projects agencies (ARPAs), helping to diffuse research gains in non-sensitive sectors to help leapfrog development goals, as well as bring new discoveries developed abroad to the United States; and
Increase the use of blockchain and crypto technologies as a way of making payments, including to reduce corruption, to ensure proof of delivery for direct cash transfers, and to increase cost efficiencies.
5. Increase cost-sharing with NATO, G7, other partner governments, philanthropy, and the private sector
Every time a U.S. government agency like USAID or the State Department publishes a major multi-million (or billion!) dollar request for proposals (RFPs), this creates an enormous human resources and financial strain on the funding agency. The process is too long, often taking a year or more to run the entire solicitation process from start to finish, and it creates the fiction of free and open competition when everyone knows the winner is going to be one of a small handful of legacy aid industry players.
Meanwhile, dozens of pooled funds already exist, set up so that multiple funders can share the financial burden, including other governments, philanthropists, investors, and the private sector. These funds are typically capable of disbursing money faster, have very low overhead, and they are often much more effective conduits than the U.S. government ever could be to get funding to local communities and frontline innovators that deliver results. Examples include the Global Innovation Fund, Gavi Infuse’s Scale-Up Fund, Africa Frontline First, Grand Challenges, pay-for-outcomes funds, and mutual aid network funds set up by survivors and diaspora groups of conflict-affected parts of the world.
The next administration should use the next four years to:
Modernize the role of the G7, NATO, and other global alliances, with a focus towards sharing costs to solve shared worldwide challenges and to co-invest in sectors that will shape the 21st century, such as digital infrastructure, critical minerals, and in advanced market commitments;
Co-invest more with philanthropies, doubling up on their most effective investments via pooled funds, rather than recreating the wheel with brand new RFPs and other funding solicitations to achieve similar goals, including in areas where markets or foreign governments might not have incentives to invest, such as preventing slave labor, sexual exploitation, corruption, environmental degradation, and promoting the rule of law and human rights;
Task each major bureau within each U.S. foreign affairs agency to identify at least 10 pooled funds they can direct resources to achieve defined results rather than issuing funding through the traditional (broken) RFP process;
Negotiate “mutual-recognition agreements” between USAID and other major donors in which each side would accept the due diligence done on recipient organizations rather than conducting duplicative pre-award eligibility and suitability reviews;
Use USAID’s gift authority to attract funding from other donors to co-finance more awards derived from the agency’s most innovative and successful programs, such as via the agency’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) program;
Enforce existing but long overlooked legal requirements on cost-sharing, such as those included in Section 110 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA); and
Leverage the United States’ role as a board member to major multilateral development banks and UN agencies to direct those agencies to do more to bolster private sectors, leverage innovation, and flow down the majority of their funds to support local actors.
6. Stop thinking in one-directional terms. Bring great innovations here, too.
Many of the world’s best innovations have been developed outside of the United States, but U.S. foreign affairs agencies like the State Department and USAID too often think in one-directional terms, e.g. what can the U.S. government do for other countries?
The next administration should task U.S. embassies and consulates around the world with finding the world’s best innovations that can solve problems anywhere in the world, including in the United States. Then, break down barriers to getting those solutions to where they’re needed the most.
For example, drug verification technology developed in Ghana could be used to combat the rise of counterfeit medicines in the United States. Water filtration technologies developed in places like Dhaka, Bangladesh and Hanoi, Vietnam could be used in places like Mexico City, Mexico, or Johannesberg, South Africa. The City of Chicago recently started working with a Liberian group to bring down crime by using methods first tested and proven in Monrovia, but this is a model that is ready to be replicated in other cities.
7. Create a Global Innovation and Commercialization Office for Development to spearhead new commercial innovations
We take it for granted that companies like SpaceX now deliver more than 60 percent of NASA’s commercial deliveries to the International Space Station. But back in the 2010s, SpaceX experienced stiff resistance from NASA officials who didn’t want to break with the agency’s longstanding defense and space contractors like Boeing. It was only as a result of interventions from executive-level agency leadership that NASA began to work with more innovative commercial providers such as SpaceX. Dozens of technologies and other innovations can similarly reshape global development, delivering solutions that are faster, cheaper, more effective, and more sustainable than status quo approaches. However, U.S. foreign affairs agencies have been far too slow or resistant to embracing these solutions.
The next administration should create a semi-autonomous Global Innovation and Commercialization Office for Development, ideally housed at an agency like the DFC. This office should be led by someone senior with deep private sector, commercialization, and innovation expertise.
Among other duties, the new office should:
Oversee a program modeled after the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) for development, creating pathways for more innovative technology firms and other non-traditional partners to work with U.S. foreign affairs agencies;
Oversee a program modeled after the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) for development that can provide tiered funding to companies to prototype, test, and scale new and commercializable solutions for development challenges, while ensuring that eligibility to participate includes entities from the United States and its partners. This program’s explicit focus on developing commercializable solutions should complement but not replace existing and high-impact USAID offices like DIV, which primarily focus on testing and replicating evidence-based approaches;
Oversee initiatives to facilitate greater two-way technology and innovation transfer between the United States and its partners around the world; and
Shape government procurement and hiring practices to make it easier for U.S. foreign affairs agencies to work with the world’s most innovative firms.
8. Scale what works
Every year, U.S. government agencies spend millions of dollars to test and pilot new innovations for global challenges. But U.S. agencies too rarely then bring what works to greater scale. Last year, The New York Times reported on similar challenges within the Pentagon’s procurement bureaucracy, demonstrating how the United States is dangerously slow to embrace innovative solutions to hard problems. Entrepreneurs tell us the biggest problem they experience is the “Valley of Death” or the “Missing Middle.” All startups — even the best funded — go through this treacherous interim period between securing early-stage capital and turning a profit. The vast majority of startups close their doors before exiting this phase.
The “Missing Middle” is especially relevant in global development. While philanthropists and socially-minded investors have been the primary sources of startup funding, in many sectors social enterprises need to be able to work via the public sector to deliver their impact at a larger scale. Small USAID innovation programs like DIV have also delivered outsized returns on investment and they are among the best points of entry for more innovative organizations to work with the agency. However, these programs have too often tended to operate in silos. USAID has too infrequently brought to greater scale successful DIV-financed investments or successful innovations piloted at other parts of the agency.
The next administration should prioritize scaling what works. We have enough data from decades of investments to know what types of spending will have the most impact for every dollar spent. At the start of each fiscal year, USAID should make sure that these solutions are the first in line to receive U.S. foreign assistance funding. The Offices of the Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Economist can lead an annual process to draw up this list of high-priority investments. First on the list should be the highest-impact solutions supported by DIV. However, that list should also include: successful innovation investments incubated by the future Global Innovation and Commercialization Office; those developed at other parts of the agency; and innovations supported and de-risked by other global development donors, too, such as those vetted by outside trusted groups like GiveWell, which spends 30,000+ hours per year updating a list of the top organizations that “save or improve lives the most per dollar spent.”
9. Focus on results, not process
The incoming Trump Administration proposal to create a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to improve the ability of government to deliver better results faster can find support across the aisle. After all, many of the underlying ideas for DOGE have also been championed by former Obama Administration officials like Jen Pahlka, author of Recoding America, as many of the challenges that constrain agencies like USAID and the State Department affect other U.S. federal agencies, too.
As Pahlka writes, “The problem of government addiction to process and procedure at the expense of meaningful results is real. We’ve been very cautious with change for decades. Advocates for de-proceduralization and bureaucracy-busting have been told to do it the cautious, thoughtful way, and ended up despairing of that approach.” Indeed, there are many people presently working inside U.S. foreign affairs agencies who want big changes, but they need top-level political cover to make this a priority.
Too often, new administration officials (of both political parties) take over an agency, announce big policy visions, and then take years to develop new plans and strategies, rather than focusing more on execution and delivering results. At the end of their terms, the big successes those officials can point to are policy changes and policy papers, rather than tangible results as a consequence of moving funding in entirely new ways.
Getting to results over process requires an overhaul of hiring and performance management, creating good incentives for strong performance, and moving out bad performers. We need entirely new pipelines to get a new generation of people into government with experience at meeting time-bound goals, too, along with individuals with specialized expertise in fields like business, finance, innovation, entrepreneurship, and in sectors critical to our national and economic security. New contracting rules and regulations are essential, too, optimizing for new systems that bring down barriers to entry, promote competition, and that pay for and incentivize results. Last year, we outlined how an administration could start making reforms.
10. Cut visa processing times from years to hours
Business and tourism travel to the United States is one of the country’s best drivers of two-way trade and economic growth, but we needlessly constrain how many visitors can legally travel to the United States each year because we’ve let visa wait times spiral out of control. As of today, in Mumbai, India the average wait time just to interview for a U.S. business and tourism visa is 408 days. In Accra, Ghana, it’s 460 days. In Bogota, Colombia, it’s 678 days. During this time, foreign investors will take their money elsewhere. Would-be tourists will make other plans.
The next administration should prioritize fixing this by cutting visa red tape, revamping the entire visa application process, and surging U.S. visa officers to embassies and consulates with long wait times.
BONUS – Take on at least one big moonshot
Five years ago, World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said that, for $6 billion, billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could “help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated.” Musk responded, “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.”
It may be a long-shot but it’s also not out of the realm of possibility that the next administration could take on at least one big moonshot like ending world hunger – and they should. President-elect Trump and his confidant Elon Musk are no strangers to taking big bets. Committing resources to solve a massive global challenge like world hunger could be one of their biggest yet. Want more ideas? Our coalition has already dreamt up some other moonshots for early inspiration.
President Trump and his administration will be able to achieve many of these ideas through executive action alone, but Congress will have a say in others. Fortunately, Members of Congress from both parties also want major reforms. Look no further than the forthcoming initiative from Senators Ricketts (R-NE) and Coons (D-DE) that promises to “transform” U.S. global development spending as one example.
Many in the global development community are concerned about likely overall cuts to the top-line foreign aid budget. We share those concerns, and we will work with others to guard against harmful cuts and to protect where progress has been made.
But now also presents us with a window of opportunity to enact transformational changes that are long overdue to improve the quality, sustainability, and the impact of U.S. global development spending. It’s time to get to work.
To Progress,
Unlock Aid