U.S. lawmakers Thursday weighed the impact that President Donald Trump’s 90-day foreign aid freeze will have on competition with China.
Trump signed an executive order within hours of being sworn in as president ordering a halt to all U.S. international assistance while the new administration determines whether the aid aligns with his “America First” policy.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch said the move was a necessary step to prioritize fiscal responsibility as the U.S. faces a debt of $36 trillion.
“This is obviously a work in progress,” Risch, a Republican from Idaho, said Thursday.
“It was intended to underscore the fact that we’re going into debt at the rate of $1 trillion every 100 days. I think that has certainly been underscored as a result of this. If you think this is bad, when our debtors come and want their money and we can’t pay it, that’s going to be really bad,” Risch said. “It’s caused everyone to take a breath and look at how we’re spending our money, where we’re spending our money, seeing that it’s done as efficiently as possible. Admittedly, there have been some inconveniences along the line, but they’re continuing to work on this.”
Democrats said the pause in aid creates a void that will be filled by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
“I’m particularly concerned about the expansion of China’s influence, both at home and abroad, as a result of a freeze on our foreign assistance — and, in particular, the way it’s implemented in its cascading effect,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said in a hearing about Chinese influence abroad.
“There is nothing China wants to do more than limit the reach of our global influence, than to reinforce its imprint,” Coons added. “[That way] we’re an unreliable partner with countries throughout the world and particularly in the Global South, and my concern is that we put our security, our economic and our diplomatic interest at risk with an abrupt pause that puts a halt to actions to counter malign activity by the PRC, to advance to invest in infrastructure.”
But Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Democrats should not be the only ones concerned about evaluating and restoring the aid.
“I hope that all of you on the other side of the aisle will share your concerns with the administration and point out that this is not a partisan issue,” she said. “This is about what are we going to do to ensure that our influence continues around the world in the interest of our own national security.”
Around the world, U.S.-funded foreign aid programs have already begun shutting down their programming and laying off staff in the wake of the freeze. The U.S. is the world’s largest foreign aid provider but is outspent by China in some areas. According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2013 and 2022, China spent $679 billion on global infrastructure projects compared with the United States’ $76 billion.
“Foreign aid is a really important arrow in the quiver of U.S. national security, along with other tools such as diplomacy, military assistance and so on,” Jennifer Lind, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, told lawmakers Thursday. “And so ideally, we would want to be using all of our different tools in a coordinated fashion to achieve our objectives. For that reason, I think it’s understandable if the administration wants to take a short pause and assess: Are we using the right tools in the right way?”
But Melanie Hart of the Atlantic Council said the freeze “is hobbling America’s ability to compete with China in every domain.”
“Over $1 billion more foreign military financing for Taiwan. Frozen. NDI [National Democratic Institute] and IRI [International Republican Institute] are shutting down global operations. Human rights organizations — frozen,” she said. “Washington has effectively abandoned the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.”
Hart said she understood the administration’s desire to maximize the strategic focus of the aid and appreciated the State Department’s waivers, but that “this broad freeze hobbles America at a moment when we are in the battle of the century.”
“It is a massive gift to Beijing. The longer it goes on, the harder it will be to regain the ground we are already losing today, tomorrow and this week,” Hart said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver last Friday unfreezing emergency food assistance and earlier this week issued another waiver unfreezing humanitarian assistance.
The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China on Thursday welcomed Rubio’s waivers but said more had to be done.
“While periodic review of foreign assistance programs’ contribution to U.S. national security is necessary, abruptly freezing any foreign assistance directly cedes ground to our foremost adversary: the CCP,” said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, in a statement.
“At a time when the CCP is aggressively investing abroad, rerouting supply chains and buying authoritarian favor, the United States must double down on foreign assistance — not kneecap ourselves.”
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