How to DOGE USAID: The Wall Street Consensus under Trump
We often hear that the new Trump administration inaugurates the age of technofeudalism. Just look at Elon Musk, pontificating about so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) democracy from the Oval Office while undemocratically occupying the US Treasury payment system. But is the administration simply using bullying as a mode of power, as Adam Tooze recently diagnosed it, destroying institutions without measure or plan?
But this was not smashing without a plan. We learned in early February from Bloomberg that the Trump Administration planned to shift some USAID funding to the US International Development Finance Corp (DFC). Created during the first Trump administration, the DFC deploys public money to leverage or mobilize private investment overseas, in partnerships with institutional investors. As Bloomberg summarizes it: “The new approach would see reduced humanitarian assistance and a greater role for private equity groups, hedge funds, and other investors in projecting economic might as the US competes for influence and strategic projects overseas with China.”
At first glance, this looks like the privatization of foreign aid: a shift from public provision to market solutions. But there’s a larger story at play. The new Trump Administration is turbo-charging the lesser known but increasingly dominant agenda within USAID: “mobilizing private capital.” This approach, which I have termed the Wall Street Consensus, is a decade-old international development paradigm that has been promoted by the World Bank, the United Nations, and rich countries’ development agencies, including the USAID under the Biden Administration.
The Consensus reimagines the role of the state as a facilitator of private investment through various subsidies to investors that are often described as “derisking.” Development is no longer a public good to be directly financed by states, but a market opportunity to be unlocked through the alchemy of public-private partnerships (PPP) into “investible,” privately-owned projects.
Related:
The Battle Over USAID Is Heating Up
But there is also a very heavy soft power component. So trying to use civil society programs, libraries, interaction with people, often poor people in these countries as a way to extend soft power and get people to like them.
What Will Become of U.S.A.I.D.’s Funding? A Billionaire’s Son Has Some Ideas.
Mr. Black has law and business degrees from Harvard and a master’s in taxation from New York University School of Law. He was associated with the Council on Foreign Relations for five years and was an associate at Apollo for two years after his stint at Goldman Sachs.
The Council on Foreign Relationsis a long established deep state milieu.Although perhaps the most public of all such groups, it is nevertheless highly influential within the US deep state, and is often mentioned in conjunction with the Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission. Its influence may extend to de facto control of the US State Department.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 