Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned that President Trump’s executive orders and his goal of tightening the federal budget likely means trouble for foreign aid, which could put global health projects at risk.
In separate interviews published Tuesday in the run-up to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter, the billionaire suggested one move already made by Trump has removed a vital conduit of funding for women’s and children’s health abroad.
Gates told the Guardian that the reinstatement of the “Mexico City policy,” which bans U.S. foreign aid going to any group that provides abortions, could “create a void that even a foundation like ours can’t fill.”
“The U.S. is the number one donor in the work that we do,” Gates said. “Government aid can’t be replaced by philanthropy. When government leaves an area like that, it can’t be offset, there isn’t a real alternative.”
Gates told USA Today it’s “not clear” where the U.S. is headed on the question of how much the country might cut from its billions of dollars worth of donations annually in foreign aid to poor countries.
He said Trump’s slogan, “America First” is a good indicator that African issues won’t be getting top billing in his administration. But Gates is determined to fight even harder for financial support.
“With this new crowd, and with some of things they want to do fiscally, it just means we’re going to have to tell the story of how amazing this work is,” Gates said.
The preface to the foundation’s annual letter addressed to billionaire Warren Buffet, who in 2006 pledged to give their foundation the majority of his vast wealth, said it hopes to “remind everyone why foreign aid should remain a priority — because by lifting up the poorest, we express the highest values of our nations.”
The letter offers an optimistic view of things to come in their foundation’s global fight to end malnutrition, expand access to contraception and find vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
While he could not offer a timeline for these things, Gates wrote, the “future will surprise the pessimists.”
