Trump is taking a hammer to traditional pillars of soft power

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🗓️ 19 March 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

The argument for international aid is in part a moral one, but it's also been about U.S. interests. As then-senator Marco Rubio put it in 2017: "I promise you it's going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism, anti-American terrorism if the United States of America was the reason why they're even alive today."

Now, as secretary of state, Rubio serves under a president who is deeply skeptical of the idea of international aid. "We're giving billions and billions of dollars to countries that hate us," President Trump said in a speech last month. His administration shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. A federal judge said this week that move violated the constitution. What's left of the agency has been folded into the State Department.

Trump has also moved to gut government-funded, editorially independent broadcasters like Voice of America, and attempted to effectively eliminate the congressionally-funded think tank the U.S. Institute of Peace.

This sort of soft power has been a pillar of American foreign policy. Is the Trump administration walking away from it?

We talk to former Democratic congressman and former secretary of agriculture, Dan Glickman, who sponsored the legislation that created the USIP.

And NPR's Emily Feng reports on the legacy of Voice of America in China.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The argument for international aid is in part a moral one, but it has also always been about U.S. interests.
0:09.5	Here's then-Senator Marco Rubio making that argument back in 2017.
0:14.0	I promise you it's going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism, anti-American terrorism,
0:23.5	if the United States of America was the reason why they're even alive today. Today, as Secretary of State, Rubio sounds more like his boss. President Trump calls
0:30.3	the United States Agency for International Development a left-wing scam. Here's how he described
0:36.9	it in his speech to CPAC last month.
0:39.3	We're giving billions and billions of dollars to countries that hate us.
0:43.6	The administration shuddered USAID, which a federal judge said this week may have violated the Constitution.
0:51.1	What's left of USAID has been folded into the State Department, and Rubio announced last week that 83% of its contracts had been cut.
1:01.0	He said they did not serve and in some cases even harmed the core national interests of the United States.
1:08.7	It's part of a broader turn away from traditional sources of U.S. soft power and toward
1:14.6	new ones, like tariffs on allies.
1:17.6	Tariffs are also a powerful tool of diplomacy and all around the world are moving quickly
1:22.5	to bring back peace through strength.
1:24.5	Trump has also effectively shut down the voice of America, the editorially independent,
1:30.1	government-funded broadcaster that brought the news to 360 million people around the world
1:35.7	in nearly 50 languages. Taxpayer funded radical propaganda, says the White House. Trump also
1:43.1	terminated government funding for Radio Free Europe,
1:46.2	Radio Liberty. It was launched in the Cold War to bring news to people living behind the iron
1:51.1	curtain without access to a free press. It still serves listeners living under authoritarian governments.
1:58.2	President and CEO Steve Capus said the spending cut is a quote massive gift to
2:04.2	America's enemies. We're a lifeline to the people who live in those countries and they have no
	...

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