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EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration is laying out its clearest blueprint yet for what comes after decades of traditional U.S. foreign aid, arguing that private investment, trade and American business — not taxpayer-funded assistance — should become America's primary engine for development abroad.
At a U.S. Mission to the United Nations "Trade Over Aid" forum in New York Monday, Ambassador Mike Waltz, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that the administration is "completely reforming how we do aid" by moving away from taxpayer-funded programs and toward private-sector-led development.
"For too many years, the United States and other countries have poured billions and billions of dollars into these aid programs and got very little in return," Waltz said. "You go to these forums at the United Nations and at development agencies around the world, and you never find the private sector. You find NGOs and academics and governments, but you don’t find the creators of growth and the creators of jobs."
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Waltz said the new model is designed to "create jobs, to create business for American companies in line with America First," while also raising living standards abroad and reducing instability that can fuel terrorism and poverty.
The administration moved to dismantle USAID in 2025, arguing the agency was inefficient and too often disconnected from U.S. foreign policy. Asked directly whether "Trade Over Aid" is replacing USAID, Waltz said USAID’s functions had been folded into the State Department as part of a broader efficiency effort, but insisted the initiative is about something larger than one agency.
"What we’re doing, this isn’t about USAID or what replaces it," Waltz said. "That was an efficient effort to get our aid to serve our foreign policy, not the other way around. But what I think is more important is how do we help American businesses and how do (we) help create jobs around the world and reduce dependency."
The stakes are immediate: with USAID reorganized under the State Department and aid budgets under pressure, the Trump administration is trying to show that it has a replacement model for how the U.S. helps poorer and fragile countries. The answer it is pitching is not more traditional aid, but more private capital, more trade, more deals for American companies and fewer open-ended taxpayer commitments.
The forum brought together representatives from dozens of countries, U.N. agencies, international financial institutions and major private-sector players, including Microsoft, Google, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Walmart, Mastercard, Meta and others.
Czech Environment Minister Igor Cerveny, who attended the forum, said the idea resonated with his country’s own post-communist experience.
After communism, he said, the Czech Republic had to rebuild through work, business, industry and innovation rather than dependency.
"If you work on your economy, on your industry, on your society, on nature as well, probably two, three, five years later, (you will) be in a better position," Cerveny told Fox News Digital. "You have your own money. You are not now the slave of (asking). You are now the master of your destiny."
Cerveny said trade gives countries an "opportunity to cooperate" rather than forcing them to return again and again with the same request: "Please give me some money."
Ambassador Dan Negrea, who is spearheading the initiative in the U.S. Mission, told Fox News Digital that shrinking aid budgets around the world make a new model necessary.
"We need to think differently about how we help developing countries in an environment in which, in the United States, we are indebted and we cannot continue to spend money on helping other countries the way we used to," Negrea said. "Development aid is going down not only in the U.S., but in countries around the world."
Negrea said the initiative has received less resistance from developing countries than from traditional donor nations.
"Interestingly, there is less pushback from countries receiving aid than from some donor countries that like to continue in this attitude of charity, being magnanimous to other countries," he told Fox News Digital. "For years and years and for decades, many developing countries are saying that they want to end this status of recipient of charity and move to a much more dignified relationship of partners and development."
But some leaders from developing countries also warn that trade cannot replace aid overnight, especially in emergency settings. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation, and Francophonie, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, told Fox News Digital that aid remains critical in crises such as the Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC.
"Aid sometimes can transform dramatically a situation," she said. "This is not something you can change overnight with trade. But yes, over a long term, trade is the pathway to create greater growth, greater economic prosperity, and therefore also more equal relationships between countries."
Kayikwamba Wagner added that the shift must be "adapted to circumstances" and not be "too abrupt."
The initiative already has drawn 46 countries, and launched a digital library with 63 capacity-building offers from private companies, governments, NGOs, philanthropies, academic institutions and international organizations.
But when pressed on what those offers have produced so far, Negrea acknowledged the initiative is still in its early stages. The library was inaugurated last week, he said, and the goal now is to turn offers into concrete outcomes.
"We want to see more deliverables," Negrea said. "We want to see actual transactions that were done. We want to see countries using the digital library to see usable capacity building offers coming from around the world. So we want to help without the cost to the U.S. taxpayers, but at the same time creating opportunities for American companies."
The central challenge facing the effort is whether private capital will go where aid has traditionally been most needed: fragile countries with weak institutions, unreliable infrastructure, corruption, conflict or markets too risky for major investors.
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Waltz argued that is exactly where institutions such as the U.N. Development Program, the World Bank and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation can play a role.
"When we talk to organizations like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others, they’re saying, we want to invest hundreds of millions into these industries abroad, but they need better laws, they need better arbitration," Waltz said. "We need to know that we can get our money out for our investors here in the United States."
He said the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and U.S. contributions to the World Bank can provide "risk insurance and guarantees" for investments in riskier markets, including critical minerals projects needed by the U.S. technology sector.
"It is incredibly risky," Waltz said. "Sometimes these capital providers like on Wall Street and in New York are only going to go to the safest place. Sometimes it makes sense, for example, as we’re looking for critical minerals for our tech industry, to go into risky places, but they need a little help."
The strongest note of caution came not from critics outside the room, but from inside the forum itself.
Alexander De Croo, the former Belgian prime minister who now leads United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said trade and aid should not be treated as enemies.
"Trade is a destination, but development is how we get to that destination," De Croo said. "Markets do not build themselves. They have to be built."
De Croo said investment flows when rules are predictable, institutions are trusted and workers have the skills to seize opportunity. He described UNDP’s role as helping countries build those foundations. "There is no country over the past decades that has successfully developed without a strong private sector and without trade being a big part of that," he said.
Christopher Sharrock, Microsoft’s vice president for United Nations and international organizations, also warned that aid still has a role that markets cannot fully replace.
"Aid does do an essential job and it does a job that possibly nothing else can do," Sharrock said, pointing to vaccination campaigns, famine response and natural disasters as areas where assistance remains critical.
For the Trump administration, "Trade Over Aid" is being pitched as a more disciplined, America First answer to development: fewer handouts, more deals, less dependency, more jobs for American companies and foreign partners alike.
But the test will be whether it can deliver not only in countries already ready for investment, but in the hardest places — the places where aid has long filled the gap because markets would not.
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