Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Is American foreign aid under siege in the era of rising powers and under the Trump presidency? If so, how and under which conditions is the foreign aid apparatus of the United States, as the world’s largest foreign aid donor, under threat? The core argument developed here states that the dominance of the US in the international development sector is under serious threat from two principal challenges: (1) the lack of coherent and credible strategy from the Trump administration amidst the rapidly increasing influence of China as a donor country, and the (2) the declining legitimacy of the US a foreign aid donor due to the current exclusionary discourses of Trump vis-à-vis the perceived the decline of American power.