A CGD blog with Ramona Godbole. After months of devastating news about cuts to US global health programming, the Trump administration’s America First Global Health Strategy presents some grounds for optimism. It signals continued US commitment to global health, including the delivery of lifesaving assistance, alongside containing …

A CGD blog with Helen Dempster. Since January, the United States has adopted a range of foreign economic policies with negative impacts on the rest of the world, including higher tariffs on exports, taxes on remittances, and reductions in US foreign assistance. We construct a ranking assessing the combined impact of these changes:…

A CGD blog. This week in New York, foundations that work in global development are busy discussing their role in a changed world. I think they have a critical role, but it is a role that acknowledges, advertises and responds to their limits. They can and should help directly save some of the lives and…

A CGD blog with Vijaya Ramachandran et al. What counts as climate finance? We replicated the scraping technique of an earlier paper to look at World Bank climate projects in FY23 and FY24. It still appears that almost everything counts in small amounts: the pattern of labeling a little bit of a lot of projects…

A CGD blog. The US Administration has made no secret of its intention to considerably reduce America’s engagement with international organizations. It has already announced withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and has declared it wi…

A CGD blog. The World Bank has issued a new procurement rule mandating that, for Bank-financed civil works contracting, bidders must allocate 30 percent or more of the total labor cost under the contract to employ local staff, unless otherwise agreed in project negotiations. The rule isn’t likely to have much e…

A CGD blog. The current picture of US foreign assistance suggests that the status of operations is in even worse shape than expected from the scale of the cancellation of awards announced in March and the rescissions package passed in July. Not least, obligations and payments are running considerably behind whe…

A CGD blog. The House Appropriations Committee has advanced a spending bill that suggests bipartisan support for continuing a similar level of global health funding next fiscal year. If realized that could help preserve the great majority of the million lives potentially at stake from the administration’s budge…

A CGD blog. Last week, Congress passed a rescissions package clawing back nearly $8 billion in funding for foreign assistance approved by lawmakers earlier this year. But looking at the size of the cuts alone underestimates the scale of the crisis facing US foreign assistance, where the immediate challenge is d…

A CGD blog. There is bipartisan concern-shared across the administration and Congress-in ensuring the US continues supporting highly effective lifesaving programs worldwide. The available evidence suggests that these programs were cut considerably less than other elements of USAID’s portfolio in the last few mo…