Trump dismantling progress in developing world

Singlehandedly, Trump is dismantling the progress made in the developing world.

As hunger escalates in Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia, the lives of millions of Africans hang in the balance; one man, hell-bent on “America First” social and economic isolationism, seems keen to make things worse.

His attack on poor African livelihoods is threefold. First, his foreign aid policy. Since news of famine hit the press, Trump’s cries to slash foreign aid have only grown more desperate. This is more than a lack of empathy: it is an economic siege on the principles of global responsibility and community. Perhaps if the aid money made its way to those beneath the domestic poverty line, such selfishness might be defensible. It isn’t.

Second, his willingly blind stance on climate change. Tuesday’s decision to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan in order to revitalize the coal industry is a direct affront to science and sensibility. Trump, though, isn’t paying the bill. The cost of global warming will be shouldered the most by poorly organized, undeveloped agrarian and fishing economies — economies like that of Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia. The refusal to curb fossil fuel use is a blueprint for the destruction of these nations and the lives and livelihoods of their citizens.

Finally, his stance on Islamist extremism. Waves of Islamophobic aggression are already providing radical organizations with decades of recruitment material, causing young Muslims in Africa to desert their villages and their faith in democracy for factions like Boko Haram. Hope, the fabric of social mobility and, thereby, national development, is being slowly eroded. Globalism should be a template by which it can be secured and applied.

It seems “America First” really means “everyone else last.”

Louis Triggs

South Hadley

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