Republican lawmakers are eyeing the International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that lends money for projects around the globe, as the natural successor to the largely dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development.
The two organizations have often focused on similar regions, but they don’t have the same mission. USAID was intended to provide humanitarian relief, offering grants, food and life-saving medicines to people facing starvation, poverty and epidemics. The Development Finance Corporation was created by Congress during President Donald Trump’s first term to boost private sector investment in developing countries — expecting returns on any loans made with taxpayer money later — and to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
While USAID is being fed into the “wood chipper,” as tech billionaire Elon Musk phrased it, Republican supporters of the Development Finance Corporation are attempting to help the agency avoid the same fate.