The Distribution of United States Foreign Aid

Over the last few decades, the United States has largely provided foreign aid based on political interests instead of humanitarian needs. Conditions for providing aid include enforcing foreign recipients to use the aid on American products and prioritizing aid to countries with a larger presence in popular media platforms. Thus, foreign assistance is not being directed to countries that need it the most, which can significantly affect political instability in the foreign country as well as exacerbate any existing refugee crisis. On a more macro-scale, the United States’ failure to provide aid to the neediest also ultimately harms its sphere of influence, especially when undemocratic foreign countries end up addressing the humanitarian gap that the United States could have fulfilled. This paper aims to elucidate the global scale of this problem and propose some strategies to address this issue from a financial and political point of view.