Trump’s ‘America First’ Budget Slashes Foreign Aid, Multilateral Funding

President Donald Trump’s first budget proposes 28 percent cuts to the United States Agency for International Development and the State Department and recommends slashing funding to the United Nations.

By Sophie Edwards

The draft budget, which was released Thursday morning, reveals plans to stop U.S. funding for U.N. climate change deals, but will preserve support for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and meet commitments made to the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

The budget also proposes scrapping a number of independent agencies, including the U.S. African Development Foundation, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the United States Institute of Peace.

There is likely to be fierce debate in Congress about the level of the cuts to foreign aid, which many observers believe means the budget is unlikely to pass in its proposed form. Before firm details were announced, Trump’s cuts to State and USAID had already sparked opposition, including from senior Republicans such as Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, who said a rumored 37 percent cut would be “dead on arrival,” and Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, who gave a speech on the Senate floor outlining his arguments for foreign aid.

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