In a flurry of sound and fury, bluster and chaos, the White House is now the centre of presidential efforts to change the world at kneejerk speed. But behind every Trumpian executive order cheered on by the immorally crazed are real people suffering real-life consequences. As our team of journalists reported this week, the shutdown of the USAid programme in North America affects countries around the world where medications are vanishing from clinic shelves, projects are closing their doors and people are being sent home from work to uncertain futures. I hear from some quarters people applauding the withdrawal of aid as if it is some kind of extravagant gift that the west bestows on poorer nations. It’s a dangerous response to what is happening. Aid is undoubtedly a complex system that needs improving: it is riddled with double standards, unfair conditions, and often benefits those in nations who give it more than those who receive it. It can also keep nations in a cycle of dependency. A country without developed industry, and in constant debt dressed up as handouts or with budgets tied to tight conditions, can’t scale up. So they have to keep on selling their resources, their minerals and metals, at raw material prices to industries in wealthy countries, such as the US, who make vast profits. The very construct of our economies leaves people behind, and at the global level the wealth of the US and other nations only exists at all by leaving entire countries behind. Aid saves lives. It also, as a concept, needs a fundamental rethink but unfortunately thought is far from the heart of this administration’s actions. Tracy McVeigh, editor, Global development
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