by Giles Merritt*
His disdain for the global development agenda presents the EU with daunting extra challenges, but also a heaven-sent opportunity to reinforce its role on the world stage.
The focus of attention since Trump’s election has been on the tensions he’s created between richer countries. The plight of poorer countries in Africa, the Arab world and parts of Asia has all but disappeared from the headlines.
Trump’s ‘America First’ translates into ‘Global South Last’. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent excoriation of the IMF and World Bank’s development policies as “mission creep” underlines Washington’s withdrawal from longstanding multilateral efforts to improve the lot of poorer countries.
The Trump administration evidently sees those billions of people as ‘losers’. This leaves the European Union and other concerned nations to pick up the pieces and repair the damage as best they can. As well as hostile trade deals and abandoned economic development policies, the list of deteriorating crisis areas includes food and water resources threatened by climate change and unsustainable debt costs.
The future of the ‘Global South’ was bleak, but the US withdrawal threatens to make it catastrophic. By mid-century, Africans will have doubled in number to become a quarter of the global population, and they will be a hugely volatile source of geopolitical instability. Instead of leading modest rural lives, as is still largely the case, they risk starvation in African megacities that will many of them house 5-10 million inhabitants.
Africa’s agricultural output lags further and further behind its population growth. Food imports have doubled since 2019 to over €110bn annually, and climate change is forecast to cut crops and farmers’ revenues by a third over the coming few years.
Drought is at the heart of this, coupled somewhat paradoxically with flooding. The World Bank forecasts a two-thirds shrinkage of fresh water resources in Africa by the end of the century and globally the shortfall will be almost one-third. The independent Washington-based Water Resources Institute says a $200bn yearly investment plan could avert this, but water funding is among the 5,000-plus development projects the Trump administration has reportedly axed.
Rice will be one of the major victims of water shortages. It is the staple food of half of mankind and already rice harvests are being reduced by rising temperatures across Asia. Hoarding and export restrictions like India’s are hurting poorer communities, yet global output will need to increase by a third to feed the ‘Global South’s’ expected population explosion of two billion more people.
Rich countries’ assistance was inadequate before Trump’s re-election, and now it’s deepening to disaster proportions. For development in Africa and elsewhere to be truly sustainable, an extra $3.8tn yearly is needed in fresh investment. That seems an impossible dream.
On aid, the OECD reported last year that the US was the biggest donor, giving $66bn of the total $224bn spent. But in terms of America’s economic weight, Europeans proportionately spent twice to three times as much. Trump’s cuts nevertheless threaten massive disruption.
The economic development of poorer countries is handicapped, meanwhile, by crippling debt burdens. Approaching half of Africa’s 54 nations spend more on interest repayments than on healthcare. The US is unlikely to participate in debt forgiveness discussions that have been on and off for some time, and Europeans’ interest has been overtaken by the need to divert financial support towards Ukraine.
Whether Europeans are willing and able to compensate for Trump’s scrapping of US support remains to be seen. The EU’s €300bn Global Gateway strategy for 2021-27 aims chiefly at climate and energy projects, with health and education accounting for only 16 per cent. It’s hard to see the EU having either the cash or the political bandwidth to launch a yet more ambitious effort.
An overwhelming majority of Europeans are united in their opposition to Trump’s tariffs and his one-sided handling of Ukraine’s future, but that’s not true of global opinion, which remains mixed. A first step to repairing the damage Trump is doing to international development should be for the EU to summarise it in a vivid report and denounce it publicly as dangerously regressive. It’s time to take the gloves off in the transatlantic arena.
*Founder of Friends of Europe
**first published in FriendsofEurope.org
By: N. Peter Kramer
