This lays bare the actual reasoning and motives for US “aid” around the world: to wield power and obtain leverage.

Samantha Power, the former director of USAID, also laid bare how the US weaponizes humanitarian aid by masking its strategic interests with the rhetoric of altruism. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Power acknowledged that the agency has “generated vast stores of political capital” in the countries where it works and uses its leverage to bolster American financial interests, like helping a US company “enter a new market.” New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat who once worked for USAID, was even more blunt. “USAID isn’t charity,” he wrote in a post on X. “It’s a foreign policy tool with bipartisan origins that is critical in this dangerous global environment. Gutting it means gutting our ability to compete and keep America safe.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-history-controversies/