Strategic Foreign Assistance Transitions: Enhancing U.S. Trade and Cooperation Relations with Middle-Income Countries
Speaker:
Richard G. Lugar
U.S. Senator (R-IN), Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Panelists:
Rodney Bent
Director, United Nations Information Office in Washington; former Acting CEO, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Peggy
Philbin
Deputy Director, U.S. Trade and Development Agency
Patrick Fine
Vice President, Department of Compact Operations, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Richard Bissell
Executive Director for Policy and Global Affairs, National Academy of Sciences
Moderated by:
Daniel F. Runde
Director of the Project on Prosperity and Development and Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Justifying traditional U.S. assistance to middle-income countries is an increasingly difficult proposition, and refocusing limited U.S. government development resources away from middle-income countries offers an efficient way to identify savings in the foreign assistance budget. This is not the first time that the U.S. government has faced such questions, and it can draw upon past transitions—not all successful—for a variety of valuable lessons for repurposing the United States’ relationship with middle-income countries.
The United States is using inadequate instruments in a changing context and should broaden its bilateral relationships with middle-income countries to reflect mutual interests. These areas of interest are numerous, but in every case include cooperation on strengthening civil society, science and technology, triangular cooperation, people-to-people exchanges, and expanded trade.
Please join us for this discussion of how the U.S. government can gain significant savings in the foreign assistance budget through a strategic rethinking of its relationships with select middle-income countries. The report will be available at the event and can also be downloaded here.
Please RSVP to ppd@csis.org
