Ambitious. Effective. Built to End.

Since 1961 USAID was America's premier foreign assistance agency. Its successes were real; so were its failures.

For those of us who support foreign assistance, it is tempting to bring back what USAID was. That's not good enough.

It's time for what comes next.

The New Foreign Assistance is the conservative voice for reform.

01 The Record

What Went Right.

American foreign assistance has produced some of the most successful international programs in history. The numbers tell the story.

26 million

Lives saved by PEPFAR

Since 2003, a $100 billion bipartisan investment has supported 20.6 million people on antiretroviral therapy and prevented millions of new infections.^{1U.S. State Department, PEPFAR Latest Global Results Factsheet (Dec. 2024)}

940,000

Malaria deaths prevented

The President's Malaria Initiative prevented an estimated 185 million cases and nearly one million deaths between 2005 and 2017.^{2Winskill et al., “The US President’s Malaria Initiative, Plasmodium falciparum transmission and mortality: A modelling study,” PLOS Medicine (2017)}

$17 in benefits

Per dollar invested in innovation

Development Innovation Ventures funded evidence-backed solutions and let results speak. Nobel laureate Michael Kremer found DIV generated $17 in social benefits for every dollar spent — a model for what cost-effective foreign assistance can look like.^{3Center for Global Development, “The Case for Evidence-Based Innovation and Implications for USAID (and Beyond)”}

The three programs above don't capture everything. The Millennium Challenge Corporation pioneered conditional aid that rewarded country reform. Feed the Future lifted 23.4 million people out of poverty through agriculture-led growth.^{4U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bipartisan resolution on Feed the Future (Risch, Casey, McCollum, Smith, 2020)} Prosper Africa, launched under the first Trump administration, mobilized American private capital across the continent. The Higher Education Solutions Network put America's top universities on the hardest development questions.

When American foreign assistance has been focused and bipartisan, it has changed outcomes at scale.

02 The Diagnosis

What Went Wrong. What Comes Next.

USAID's failures were not about its people or its mission. They were about the slow accretion of rules, mandates, and reporting requirements that, over decades, crowded out the work of development. Each well-meaning reform added a layer…nothing was ever removed.

What went wrong

Programs were spread too thin

Too much focus on internal bureaucracy, not external impact

Viewed development as a top-down technocratic puzzle, not an emergent phenomenon to be unleashed

Programs detached from foreign policy

What comes next

Targeted programs that move the needle on major challenges

Fast and flexible design and procurement; pay for what works

Partner with the private sector, remove barriers to entrepreneurship and investment

Focus on trade, not aid; bilateral partnership

03 The Framework

Six Principles for a Reformed Approach to Foreign Assistance

A framework for what U.S. foreign assistance should look like.

01.Focus on Economic Growth

Trading partners and allies, not a global safety net.

02.Do What Only Governments Can Do

Public goods and systems change. Leave the rest to civil society and competent local governments.

03.Commercial First

Work through markets where markets can deliver. Support them; don't displace them.

04.Partner with Reformers, Not Failing States

Reformers earn deeper partnership. Predatory governments do not.

05.Assess Everything,
End What Doesn't Work

Set clear objectives. Measure outcomes. Reallocate from what fails to what works.

06.Finite by Design

Clear end dates. Self-reliance is the goal, not permanent dependency.

Read the full framework →

04 Live Tracker

It's being built.
Track it in real time.

Every major foreign assistance commitment, pledge, and policy action from the State Department since it assumed responsibility for U.S. foreign assistance. Updated weekly.

Open the tracker →

05 The Long View

Two centuries of economic growth

In 1820, every region was poor. Since then, average incomes have risen everywhere — at very different rates.

Source: Maddison Project Database (Bolt & van Zanden, 2023), via Our World in Data. GDP per capita in 2011 international dollars.

Escaping poverty is possible. There's still work to be done.