The Trump Administration's $2B Deal to Fund UN Foreign Aid is a Mistake
A few days before New Year’s Eve, when hardly anyone was paying attention, State Department officials visited Geneva and signed a $2 billion aid deal with the UN. The State Department touted the deal as “more lives saved for fewer tax dollars” and called it a “Trump administration humanitarian reset”. The bottom line though is that it represents an initial commitment of $2 billion to the same corrupt and broken UN aid delivery system. Administration officials have emphasized that ‘initial’ $2 billion is significantly lower than the past $8-10 billion in funding, that the deal requires consolidating some of the UN’s bureaucracy and allows for closer management of the money we send to the United Nations. But some are questioning whether we should be providing any aid through the UN at all. The Memorandum of Understanding signed with the UN provides that “initial” $2 billion to a list of 17 countries including Ukraine, Haiti, both Sudans, Kenya, the Congo, El Salvador and others. Some of...