President Trump, flashing one weapon in his “America First” arsenal, often talks about the need to cut back on providing financial aid overseas.
Back in September, he used his speech at the United Nations to hammer home the point that he doesn’t want to support countries that don’t return the love.
“Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid for those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends,” he told world leaders in New York. “Few give anything to us, that is why we are taking a hard look at U.S. foreign assistance.”
Shortly thereafter, he brought it up in regards to the Central American migrant caravan.
“Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S,” Trump tweeted in mid-October. “We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.”
And now there’s talk of using foreign aid cash to build the U.S.-Mexico wall instead.
But, really, where does all that money go?
Cost-estimating website HowMuch.net created this huge visual[1] to illustrate where American dollars are sent and the issues they are meant to address:...
As you can see, HowMuch.net crunched data from USAID, the agency responsible for U.S. assistance to countries around the world, to put the expenditures in perspective and to highlight the biggest sector supported by U.S. cash. All told, 30 countries receive 82% of all U.S. foreign aid, led by Afghanistan and Iraq, while 121 countries get less than $100 million each. References^ created this huge visual (howmuch.net)