Fixing Foreign Aid Requires Confronting Fundamental Tensions

Aid critics ignore competing policy goals and structural trade-offs between control and flexibility.

A local farmer shows her produce in Nakapiripirit, Uganda on July 22. September 15, 2025, 12:09 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

Amid the widespread outcry over the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development, many of the agency’s defenders concede that the U.S. aid system needs to be reformed. They have argued that aid needs to be localized, needs to be nimbler, needs to be better aligned with foreign-policy goals, and ultimately needs to have an expiration date.

As longtime policymakers and practitioners in the sector, we’ve heard all these arguments, and we agree. But there’s a reason these go

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