Huge US food aid programs to continue globally despite USAID’s closure, but… – Trump govt. officials

The United States of America (USA)’s policy on huge export of American grown commodities to aligned countries in need will continue despite the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), but under President Donald Trump, the policy will be focused on putting America and its farmers first.

The policy will also be refocused towards reorienting the international food assistance programs of the country towards ensuring that today’s recipients of food aid will transition to commercial buyers and trading partners of the US.

Three top US government officials, Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, Ambassador Mike Waltz, US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), and Luke Lindberg, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, made these points at a recent media engagement moderated by the New York Foreign Press Center. They gave as example Japan, which started off as a food aid recipient after World War II but has become an important ally and the fourth-largest purchaser of American agricultural products in the world.

They noted that since the scrapping of USAID, which they said was “wasteful and abuse-ridden,” the US has moved its food assistance programs to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has “a track record of administering international food aid programs,” and which has since been moving surplus commodities to countries in need that are aligned with the priorities of the US, the largest economy in the world.

Part of the Trump agenda, they also stressed at the “Roundtable On Exporting American Grown Commodities To Aligned Countries In Need,” is to “realign supply chains” to ensure the displacement of “adversarial countries'” involvement in the feeding of the needy in different regions, especially those that had historically purchased American products, and are potential trade partners, like Gaza.

They noted that Gaza is a region that has “historically purchased quite a bit of wheat and other products from adversaries of ours around the world, and we’re making sure that through the generosity of the American taxpayer, we are taking opportunities to realign supply chains and those investment dollars to promote American commodities and restructure the way in which our commodities get into that region and then become part of the long-term trade agenda, and displacing some of those adversarial countries’ involvement in the region.”

Graduating from aid recipients to trade partners is at the heart of the Trump agenda which aims to create new markets for the export of American farm produce, they pointed out: “Our intent is that these (food aid) programs are not eternal. They happen, and then they end, and the countries graduate off and are in a better place,” and they “transition from food and aid recipients to commercial buyers.”

The Trump administration is also consciously “building an infrastructure that develops the right taste buds for American commodities that will then help us promote trade down the road and make sure that our folks, our farmers back here, have access to those countries and refined, developed markets that want and demand our products.”

There must, indeed, be returns for the huge investment of American taxpayers’ dollars, the officials insisted, noting, for instance, that in September alone, USDA announced and purchased 417,000 metric tons of commodities from American farmers in support of programs such as the the Food for Peace program, the target being to restore integrity to these food aid programs, support American farmers and feed people across the world.

Through Food for Peace, they revealed, more than four billion people in over 150 countries have been fed, with the program making “$2 billion worth of annual commodity purchases, equivalent to more than 1 million metric tons of American-grown food to reach millions suffering from hunger around the world.” These and other such gestures, they pointed out, has positioned the United States, from the humanitarian standpoint, as “the most generous nation in the world.”

The senior officials pointed out, however, that President Trump’s America First agenda, which puts the country’s farmers and ranchers in the driver’s seat, is combining humanitarian assistance that is being funded by American tax payers with trade deals to benefit American farmers and producers. “The U.S. is investing taxpayers’ dollars. We should be getting something back for those investments,” the officials insisted.

Stressing that in the four years of the Joe Biden presidency, not one new trade deal was struck, the officials noted that in 10 months of Trump, “dozens upon dozens” of deals have been signed, and pointed out that these deals have opened up new markets for US farmers who presently export $170 billion worth of products around the world every year.

The officials commended Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his efforts in refocusing and streamlining the Trump administration’s food assistance programs, and Rollins and Lindberg hailed Ambassador Waltz for the work he is doing in the United Nations to coordinate international organizations and agencies, such as World Food Program, UNICEF, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, to align with the Trump peace agenda especially as it concerns the American farmer and country’s agricultural sector as a whole.

They also commented on some concluded trade and agricultural deals, and ongoing negotiations, like with Japan and Vietnam, as well as on the issue of the re-opening of the US-Mexico border and the need to protect the American cattle herd. They equally touched on the ongoing efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and how it concerns Ukraine’s obviously impacted agricultural sector, but the America First policy, they insisted, underlines all that the Trump presidency is doing around the world.