← Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
The DOGE Alum Asking if Foreign Aid Is America’s Problem
00:47:33
Does America have a moral obligation to the world? The former Department of Government Efficiency staffer Jeremy Lewin, now deputy administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, explains how he is implementing President Trump’s foreign aid philosophy and what it means for humanitarian assistance going forward.
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- [00:01]
Ross Douthat
The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections, I can immediately navigate to something that.
- [00:10]
Jeremy Lewin
Matches what I'm feeling. I go to games always doing the.
- [00:13]
Ross Douthat
Mini, doing the wordle. I loved how much content it exposed me to things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for. This app is essential. The New York Times app. All of the Times all in one place. Download it now@nytimes.com App from New York Times Opinion I'm Ross Douthat and this is interesting Times Doge's cuts to USAID aren't just a case study in the Trump administration going after woke spending or trying to change the federal government's bottom line. It was also crucial to a larger shift in foreign policy strategy, a change in how the US does aid and development work, in how it promotes democracy around the world, and in the way it relates to foreign governments, where the whole apparatus that the US has used traditionally to exercise soft power is being gutted, redirected and transformed. And it's still unclear, even to me, where America's humanitarian mission programs like pepfar, the AIDS Fighting Initiative fit into the new vision of America. First, my guest today is well positioned to bring some clarity to this shift in strategy and values. Jeremy Lewin is a youthful veteran of Doge, a 28 year old with no government experience before January, who's now a State Department official in charge of implementing the administration's sweeping changes to foreign aid and development work. Jeremy Lewin, welcome to Interesting Times.
- [02:06]
Jeremy Lewin
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really great to be. It's great to be here.
- [02:17]
Indoma Kinsu
What's up everybody? I'm Indoma Kinsu, super bowl champ and investor. Throughout my NFL career, when I wasn't sacking your favorite quarterback, I was networking with some of the sharpest business minds in the world. Now I'm bringing those conversations to you on no Free Lunch, a podcast from the Athletic and the New York Times. On the show, I talk to experts and athletes to find out how the most successful people in sports and business are growing their wealth and how we can learn from their example. No Free Lunch drops Tuesdays and Thursdays. Find it on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:56]
Ross Douthat
So we're going to talk about policy, about the transformation of foreign aid especially, and how the Trump administration sees America's humanitarian obligations. But first, I want to talk a little bit about your own career and background and how you ended up as a Senior bureau official for the Office of Foreign Assistance. So you came into the government through doge, right? The Department of Government Efficiency.
- [03:22]
Jeremy Lewin
Yeah, that's right. So, you know, the president won a resounding victory in November. I was going about my life in Los Angeles in the private sector, and a friend of mine who worked with Elon Musk, I'd never met Elon in my life, but he worked with Elon and sort of had become one of the first employees in what was then doge, as part of the Trump administration's transition effort, called me up and said, hey, I think you'd be a really good fit for this. Do you want to join the effort? And at first, I was sort of reluctant. I never sort of viewed myself as having a career in government, partly because the way that government has been conducted in the last 30 or 40 years is something that, like many people who support the president, we just simply don't see as aligned with our sort of vision for the future. But when he ran. So I've been a Trump supporter in various forms since I was in college, and he first ran for president in 2016.
- [04:16]
Ross Douthat
Were you. Were you in college then?
- [04:19]
Jeremy Lewin
I was, yeah. And so when. When he first ran in 2015, what first actually drew me to the president was his message on China. At that time, we were sort of waking up to the realities of. Of their capture of, of various sort of International organizations, of NGOs, of the trade infrastructure, of the World Trade Organization, of the World Health Organization, et cetera. And the President was the only person who was really speaking clearly about these issues and really talking about the effect on sort of economic policy, on trade, on jobs, et cetera, in America.
- [04:51]
Ross Douthat
So you were in college then. What were you planning? Since you mentioned you you didn't plan to go work in government, what was your plan for your 20s, and what did you actually end up doing?
- [05:01]
Jeremy Lewin
Yeah, so I graduated. I went to law school. I had sort of done some finance in college. I thought maybe I'd go back to that. I ended up working at a law firm doing litigation, regulatory work. I was in D.C. and I did clerk for the U.S. court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. So it's not like I wasn't that interested in public law and public policy. But I went back to Los Angeles, sort of planning on getting married. I'm engaged and was going to start a life, have a family, and sort of work in the private sector and be a citizen. I mean, be politically involved. To the extent that I read things, that I discuss it but particularly the last sort of four years of the Biden administration were deeply upsetting, I think, to a lot of people who wanted to have any chance at resetting where things had gone in those sort of Obama years. Right. Because as someone who was a critic of the Obama years, it was very exciting. Obviously, when the president was in office, 2016-2020, President Biden ran on this mission of sort of restoring certain things on, bringing decency and bipartisanship. And then, of course, you see through the sort of growth of the, of progressivism and these neo Marxist socialist ideas, the critical race theory, all of that on the left, you see this presidency, and that was very sort of depressing, for lack of a, you know, not to use the Internet term, but it was sort of a black pill, in a sense, to watch the country decline into that. At the time, he's. He's prosecuting the president. You don't know whether a President Trump is going to go to jail. You know, you sort of have this obviously senile man running the country. You're not really sure who's running the country. The policy outcomes are horrible. You've got sort of mass immigration.
- [06:35]
Ross Douthat
But you supported President Biden or then, I guess, candidate Biden for president in 2020, isn't that correct?
- [06:42]
Jeremy Lewin
That's simply not true.
- [06:43]
Ross Douthat
No.
- [06:44]
Jeremy Lewin
I voted for President Trump in every election since I've been a voter.
- [06:50]
Ross Douthat
So when Joe Biden was elected in 2020, did you not send a celebratory message saying that you were so proud to be part of Team Joe since last fall? Because that was reported in a screenshot, I believe, in the Boston Globe.
- [07:04]
Jeremy Lewin
There were a lot of lies that were spread about me in the media. When it was announced that I would be taking a leadership role at usaid, a lot of people went back, a lot of people from my background who don't agree with me sort of said various things on various things, took various points out of context. You know, at the time, in 2020, I think a lot of people felt as though there was a certain vision of a Biden presidency again, which was. Turned out not to be true. And maybe there was some degree of optimism when he was inaugurated and talked about, you know, bringing America back together and working on conservative ideas and that was the failure of his presidency. But, no, I've supported. I've been a Republican since I can remember. I've worked with Democrats, I've engaged with Democrats. I've been open to Democratic ideas, but I have been a Republican for my entire adult life.
- [08:00]
Ross Douthat
So you were you were happy when Trump won. You're 28 years old. You have an impressive resume. You have a little bit of law and business experience. Right. You weren't planning into going into government. Your friend. So your friend. Did your friend work for one of Musk's companies? The friend who called you up?
- [08:16]
Jeremy Lewin
Yeah, he worked at Tesla. Okay.
- [08:18]
Ross Douthat
So he calls you up and says, send your resume to Doge. Like, what was actually the process for joining?
- [08:25]
Jeremy Lewin
I'm not going to get into all of the specifics, but it was a series of sort of calls and interviews, frankly. This quotient of the administration that's doing the hard operational work, it's less about ideology and more about being operationally excellent, especially for Elon, because ultimately, and I think this is like a key realization in government. Everyone wants to be their own policymaker, and we can sit here and discuss my views. I certainly have my own views, but that's not my job, and that's not the job of nearly anyone in the administration. Your job is to execute division that the president, that the secretary, that senior leadership lays out. You notice this in the bureaucracy all the time, there's sort of a. Well, I have to follow the letter of this command, but do I have to follow the spirit? Is my job to actually implement what the President or the Secretary wants, or is it to sort of narrowly do what I'm told, but also implement my own vision? And so I think, you know, this idea that.
- [09:18]
Ross Douthat
But it's also a shift where you're not at all someone who, you know, worked in the diplomatic corps. Right. Worked in the State Department, worked on foreign aid. So part of the model, clearly, is bringing in, let's say, smart young generalists. Right. And sort of setting them to work inside the bureaucracy. That's why you are where you are right now, right?
- [09:41]
Jeremy Lewin
I suppose, in some sense, yes. And I think there's tremendous value in having the objectivity that comes with not having been part of the diplomatic core. But ultimately, again, it's about working hard and executing faithfully the vision that's sort of set forward by the people who are elected, confirmed, and sort of are leading the policy vision. So that's always been my task, whether it was on Doge or now in a more formal role at the State Department. It's to execute the secretary's vision and the President's vision and to do so faithfully. And so I think that's the most important qualification. I happen to have certain skills or a certain mindset that has allowed me, I think, to be effective in that.
- [10:17]
Ross Douthat
So were you assigned to the State Department after you, after you onboarded with Doge, or was it, you know, was this a choice? Like, how, how did you start?
- [10:27]
Jeremy Lewin
Well, so I was going to have a different role in the administration and then sort of when the US Situation sort of came to the fore, so backing up the idea of sort of taking uscid, which was this unaccountable independent institution that was doing foreign policy and foreign assistance out of alignment with the national interest, out of alignment with the diplomatic priorities at the State Department, out of align with what the President, the Secretary of State, wanted to be doing. That's sort of an idea that's been kicked around for a long time. And there have been various proposals to merge USAID under State, and certainly the Secretary had been thinking about that for a long time. That being said, Doge did not go in with the idea that they would be part of this rapid change in the structure of foreign assistance. And so about the second week, and Elon has talked about this before, we realized, and sort of indicative of the sort of lack of accountability and leadership at usaid, that they were making payments that were in violation of some of the President's executive orders, foreign assistance, pause, et cetera. And so Elon had been tasked by the President with sort of investigating the situation. And then there was a determination that, you know, we would be much more rapidly implementing the sort of restructuring of usaid. And at that point, yes, I suppose in some sense I was, I was assigned to assist with that.
- [11:44]
Ross Douthat
Okay. And just, just so USAID then becomes a special focus. Right. As you said, there had always been sort of running critiques from conservatives, especially that USAID is basically, you know, build, building a kind of progressive oriented matrix of programs and so on.
- [12:04]
Jeremy Lewin
It's not even progressivism, I think, like if you just back up, USAID viewed its constituency as the global humanitarian complex. It did not view its constituency as the American taxpayer or the national interest of the United States. So, I mean, you hear this and you see it in all of the documents that they prepare. One of the biggest complaints is, and I've talked to more than 30ambassadors, most of whom were appointed by Biden or are members of the career, you know, foreign service. Right. And you would see examples where they would say, hey, this country in Africa doesn't actually want this program. It's not in alignment with what the government wants. It's not in alignment what's on the ground. But, you know, who wanted it was some non governmental organization or international organization that, you know, A bunch of Obama, Biden alums or all these people that worked at USAD were at, right? So they would push and you'd have senior Biden officials traveling to countries and batting down career ambassadors telling them, no, you don't understand the diplomatic priorities. What matters here is what the UN is telling you, right? And so you've got America's representative on the ground saying the country that we're implementing this foreign assistance in doesn't even want it and it's not advancing our interest. To the contrary, they're upset about it. And yet we are still paying, we're still using American taxpayer dollars to pay for a program that our ambassador on the ground doesn't want, the country doesn't want. What conceivable benefit are we as Americans getting for the national interests of this country by funding that program? And I think that's the problem that we were really seeking to address most of all with the sort of restructuring of USAID and also frankly again, to get rid of programs that do not deliver for the American people.
- [13:37]
Ross Douthat
So I want to get into the specifics of what you think doesn't deliver in a minute, but I want to ask you about the speed here and how quickly this was accomplished. A lot of the critiques of what happened with DOGE was that speed basically became a license to have programs stop working for a while because you're trying to change things so quickly or you're canceling grants that then have to be restarted and so on. And so in the case of foreign aid, you know, you have a promise that life saving aid gets, would get a waiver from the suspensions. But then there were all kinds of questions about like, well, how are you delivering aid if you are cutting staff over here or if this system isn't working over there. So again, before we get into the specifics, why did it need to happen so rapidly, right? Like, isn't there, isn't there a benefit in terms of the continuity of programs and the success of programs that you want to keep, to take an extra month to make sure that the aid shipments are all getting delivered right or that the waiver is actually taking effect and the people who are eligible for getting anti malarials and so on are actually getting them on time?
- [14:45]
Jeremy Lewin
A couple points. I think it's first worth noting what the Secretary said at his budget testimony a couple months ago. He was in the Senate for more than a decade and people had talked about these various ideas, including sort of the restructuring of usaid, the restructuring of foreign assistance, many of these Ideas were talked about in the first Trump administration and they didn't get done because of how, how sort of entrenched the bureaucracy is, how difficult it is to get these things done. So if you don't move quickly, there's sort of a tremendous, you could think about the laws of physics, but you need to sort of move quickly and with a lot of energy to get a lot of these things done. And so I think that's the first observation. The second observation is, well, first of all, you know, we've always tried our best to mitigate the sort of ill effects. That doesn't mean you're going to be perfect. No one's perfect in everything. But I think there's this narrative that the administration or the secretary are sort of don't care about these stop which affect sort of these costs that happen when there's tremendous change. And I think, you know, on the one hand, the mainstream media coverage has talked about in vague sense, the historic nature of some of these reforms. Right. But it hasn't talked about what they mean for the next 30, 40 years of engagement in the world. And when the secretary is thinking about these reforms, he's thinking with that lens, a historical lens, a sort of generational lens. And when you think about reforms in that way, the cost benefit of some disruption in the short term versus the long term benefit of significantly realigning foreign policy, foreign assistance for the American people, it makes a lot more sense. Why you're willing to tolerate some degree of disruption doesn't mean that. And we can sort of argue all of these various specifics. We can engage in the hand to hand combat that many of your colleagues on the reporting side, you know, would like to engage in. But ultimately, the point here is the Secretary has the vision of what this means. The point is to do diplomacy, real diplomacy, bilateral relationships. You want this, I want that. Let's get a deal done. How are we dealing with this security situation? How can we talk to each other so we avoid war? Right. The last reorganization of the department ironically occurred under Clinton. Right. And where do they reorganize it? Around. They reorganize it around the growth of policy offices, the growth of these issue offices, the growth of this. Well, let's promote all these ideas, let's engage with these international organizations, let's build all these complicated bureaucratic multilateral constructs both inside the US Government, both sort of on a global scale, and that's how we're going to sort of create this control.
- [17:10]
Ross Douthat
Right. But I think the expectation behind those kind of changes was that these kind of networks were in the American national interest, right?
- [17:17]
Jeremy Lewin
Well, yeah, but that's exactly what I want to talk about.
- [17:20]
Ross Douthat
Well, I just want to give a due explanation of that theory. Right. Because part of what makes the Trump administration shift meaningful is it's not just a bureaucratic reorganization. It is reorganized around a change in the vision of U.S. foreign policy, where basically the argument that you're making, right, is that a network of civil society promotion, non governmental organizations and so on, funded by US Tax dollars around the world, doesn't help the US get its way around the world. And embedded in that. Right, is the assumption that where there are unpleasant governments, authoritarian governments and so on. Part of the post Cold War assumption was that, you know, with a little bit of pushing, those governments would become democracies. And that was, I think, clearly a big part of what led to the shift.
- [18:11]
Jeremy Lewin
It's demonstrably failed. I mean, just go look back at history and look what happened. I mean, what you see is the growth of these civil society organizations. Well intentioned, I'll grant you. But what have they actually accomplished? Where have they gone? We've seen how they've moved themselves towards authoritarianism with some of these critical ideas that have grown in the sort of progressive left, how a lot of these international organizations have turned to censorship on a global scale, have turned to regime change. I mean, one of the key things about realigning foreign assistance is a few sort of general principles, right? The program has to work, it has to be accountable. It can't be funding. I mean, you know, we talk about, people talk about fraud, right? Doge didn't find that much fraud at usaid. This is a definitional question. What is fraud in the sense of, well, you know, maybe I defrauded you. The grant says I do X and I do Y. Right. That's a very narrow conception of fraud. But is it a fraud to say you have this organization that the New York Times has painted as feeding all sorts of poor and destitute people around the world, but in fact, a significant portion of the money is going to pay $400,000 salaries at UC Berkeley to do climate and sort of race science research. Right. Is that a fraud on the American people? I mean, I would say it kind of is.
- [19:23]
Ross Douthat
Well, but just, just pause on that issue. So one of the things that Secretary Rubio has said and that I believe the Vice President said when I interviewed him was that in many cases you had something like an 85, 15 or 90:10 ratio of how much aid is Actually getting to people on the ground versus getting consumed in the kind of things you're describing. But in fact, as far as I can see, that's not right. What that statistic is describing was how much aid goes directly to a charity that, you know, that is based in Uganda or Eritrea or wherever else versus how much goes to a charity based in the US and yes, some of those, some of those organizations are connected to climate projects or what have you, but a bunch of them are, you know, things like, you know, Samaritan's Purse or Catholic Charities. Right. Like organizations that historically the U.S. government, for kind of conservative reasons assumed would be better at delivering aid. Right. So it's a little unclear to me sometimes what the administration is critiquing. Are you critiquing sort of left wing politics? Are you saying that, well, evangelical and Catholic Charities based in the US were doing a bad job? Like what is the concrete critique there? It can't all be UC Berkeley climate projects. Right.
- [20:49]
Jeremy Lewin
Again, the idea is it's, it's multifold. Right. There are a lot of different ways to look at this sort of question that you're talking about, about how much of the money actually reaches people in need. You know, you can build from the idea that a lot of these grants have really high indirect cost rates. It's going for programs that are sort of non core, that are not desired by the country, that are not in fact life saving in any meaningful sense. They're not leading to development goals, but I think just more abstractly backing up. We have failed to develop a lot of places where we've invested the most money over the last 10, 20 years. The system has demonstrably failed. We all sort of know it to be true. From a common sense perspective. The results in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in the Western Hemisphere, from USAID projects and investments have not been significant. We have invested $100 billion through USAID in Africa in the last decade and China's eaten our lunch. Right. I mean, because what we've seen is that African countries, and this is, the President is a tremendous dealmaker, the Secretary is a tremendous dealmaker when he sits down with these countries. And I've had the pleasure of participating in some of these meeting, having my own conversations with governments around the world. What we hear from the governments is they want bilateral partnership, they want economic partnership, they don't want moralizing, they don't want programs they can't control. They don't want these international organizations that don't care about their sovereignty, that don't care about their government they want to actually develop, I mean, from a historical perspective.
- [22:09]
Ross Douthat
So your sense basically to take the example of China, right, is that. So China has invested heavily in Africa along the lines that, that, that you describe, right?
- [22:17]
Jeremy Lewin
Well, actually not, not quite along the lines that I described. China engages in exploitative debt trap diplomacy. The Belt and Road is sort of a trap, right. And that's not what we're offering. The president is offering real, genuine above board bilateral trade relationships and sometimes there's an assistant component of that, whether it's critical minerals, whether it's investing in promotion of infrastructure, real infrastructure. Like I'm excited that we're working on a compact that I hope to announce in the next few weeks to deliver American made innovative sort of 21st century drone infrastructure in a bun countries in Africa to help them do last mile delivery for humanitarian assistance and for other purposes. Right. Package delivery, et cetera, in places where the road infrastructure isn't as fully developed. Right.
- [22:57]
Ross Douthat
So you have two things going on, right? It seems like that, that you're suggesting. First, you have, and at the same.
- [23:04]
Jeremy Lewin
Time, by the way, China has eaten our lunch. Right.
- [23:08]
Ross Douthat
So part of what you're arguing, right, is that essentially the US can do a fairer, better, more equitable version of the kind of investment that China has been promising Africa. Right. So you're saying basically we've gone in with, you know, aid and grants and NGOs and they've gone in and promised to build trains, ports, to use your example, maybe now, drone infrastructure. Right. And so you're saying we can beat China by promising those kind of deals on better terms. Right. So that is, that's part of it, right?
- [23:39]
Jeremy Lewin
That's part of it. And I think with an assistance component too, right. Where it's strategic. Right. I mean, so like I, you know, I, I just approved a program to deploy small modular nuclear reactors built in the United States to an allied country to help with their sort of energy infrastructure. We are building ports. We just announced on the back of the President.
- [23:57]
Ross Douthat
Which, which allied country would that be?
- [23:58]
Jeremy Lewin
I can't tell you, it's not public yet. Okay. We just announced nearly $100 million in new assistance building hard infrastructure in the Philippines. And you know, these are programs again that are developed with our ambassador and with the Philippines government. So, and this is sort of like it's hard infrastructure. It's stuff that's actually going to help, help develop in a meaningful, real sense. It's not going to be. There's this model of UN humanitarianism and I don't want to go to like, incentives and everything, but if you think about the United nations incentives, and the UN has grown to be a massive sort of infrastructure that has all of these. All of the money just goes from one organization to another, the subcontracts, all of this stuff. Right. But the UN has thousands of employees making a lot of money all around the world, and they benefit from crises and they benefit from keeping people dependent and keeping people from developing in any meaningful sense from progressing beyond aid. And the Secretary said from the beginning, our vision of success for foreign assistance is that we don't need any more foreign assistance. The best foreign assistance is that which sort of ends. Right. So we will invest on the infrastructure side, on sort of the economic promotion side, sometimes on the. On the sort of civil liberties side, where appropriate, and on the humanitarian component, where there's a real and sort of exigent crisis. But we will invest with an eye towards building countries up to become bilateral partners. And we will make sure that all of the assistance is tied to sort of trade market access to foreign policy priorities, et cetera. And that we think is going to be better for the countries that are recipients of aid, and that is obviously going to be better for the United States because we're going to be investing with a sort of a timescale that takes into account the fact that we need to see results.
- [26:00]
Ross Douthat
Okay, so what is then on the humanitarian side? Right. Humanitarian aid, which is by far the most controversial aspect of these cuts. Right. And you mentioned, I guess, hand to hand combat with my colleagues over specific cuts that the administration has either proposed or actually made. And I should note here for the audience that it's all a little complicated to figure out what cuts are actually happening because there were cuts that were proposed, there were cuts that Congress did not approve in the rescissions package. There were cuts.
- [26:30]
Jeremy Lewin
Well, those are budgetary cuts. They're separate from program cuts. Right. I mean, so there's a fair question about the murkiness of identifying all of this. I would say it's been sort of exploited unfairly by certain elements of the media. It's mostly based on leaks from people in the building. This building leaks like a sieve. I mean, it's kind of remarkable for a security agency. You can't keep a single thing secret. We have to hand walk memos around like we're in the 40s. Because if you put something in our. We have an entire computer system dedicated to memos at the State Department. Right. And if you actually upload anything there, it's on Reuters within an hour, so you can't use it. So we're hand walking around paper like we're in the 40s, and I think.
- [27:10]
Ross Douthat
A lot of times not on the basis of leaks, just on the basis of. Of our conversation together. Right. The, the administration in the rescissions package asked for cuts to pepfar.
- [27:21]
Jeremy Lewin
Budget cuts. Budget cuts.
- [27:22]
Ross Douthat
Right. Spending cuts.
- [27:23]
Jeremy Lewin
Yes.
- [27:23]
Ross Douthat
Right.
- [27:25]
Jeremy Lewin
You're.
- [27:26]
Ross Douthat
Can you confirm in. Out of all of these pots of money and, you know, different. Different aspects. Right.
- [27:32]
Jeremy Lewin
Secretary is clear that we're continuing to spend on PEPFAR and on malaria and on.
- [27:38]
Ross Douthat
The administration wants to spend less money on treating some of.
- [27:44]
Jeremy Lewin
No, I think when you look at what PEPFAR was spending its money on, those cuts, very modest amount of money that was cut from PEPFAR was not for direct treatment, treating people with HIV and stuff like that. It's on sort of like LGBTQ education programs or whatnot that were sort of funded because PEPFAR was a tremendously successful project and one of the most successful humanitarian projects in the history of the United States. Right. But it became so successful that it outgrew some of its need. Countries graduated, sort of their infection rate came down. Some of them became wealthier enough that they could take more of the burden themselves. Right. Because it was so successful. This is a classic DC story. You keep on appropriating more and more money to pepfar, and then you don't know what to do with it, so you start spending it on things that are sort of non core. You start spending it on things that are sort of outside of the scope of what it's supposed to be doing. And then suddenly, I mean, Almost anyone in D.C. who's thought seriously about these issues will admit that PEPFAR had more money than it really needed to accomplish its core agen HIV treatment and disease prevention mission.
- [28:44]
Ross Douthat
Presumably, a lot of the extra money was spent on the assumption that ideally you're not just treating cases of the disease. You mentioned education. Right. Like you, you know, maybe you're trying to educate people about, you know, not having the kind of sex that transmits hiv. Right, sure.
- [29:00]
Jeremy Lewin
And there's a question about whether those things are abstractly good or whether the American taxpayer needs to pay for all of them, or whether other countries, whether else, multi. Other multilateral partners, et cetera, can pay for some of these things. But the Secretary is absolutely committed to PEPFAR's mission and to, you know, beating HIV around the world. I mean, he committed, you know, I was part of that. More than a billion dollars to honor the U.S. commitment to the Global Fund to Fight HIV, we continue to spend, we just obligated more than a billion dollars across PEPFAR's global programming to sort of continue all of these key programs around the world through the next few months. So there's no question that we remain committed to the program. We think we can do it more efficiently and with different model. USAID had tons of us direct hires, people that were all around the world, a decentralized payment system that was built decades ago, before we had modern technology. I mean the Department of State, this doesn't get any play, right? But we helped build the first of any federal agency, as far as I'm aware, payment system that tracks grants, appropriations payments, Right. We have more than 300 career staff that are already using it. And so we have more, our financial controllers at our hub in Charleston here instead of around the world. And that's less expensive, right? So then your operational budget is less expensive and you cut some of the programs where other countries can pick up some of the slides where you know, a country has, has its transmission rates are low enough, it's wealthy enough that it can share more of the burden of HIV transmission. That's a success story, right? In D.C. that's a failure. Cuz you've stopped giving money somewhere. But you know, to anyone else that's a success story. We have helped get a country's HIV rates low enough that they can manage it on their own. And so when you put all those things together, you need a little bit less money to do the same mission with pepfar. Doesn't mean we're backing away from it.
- [30:35]
Ross Douthat
So why aren't you backing away from it? PEPFAR is the most prominent example. It's the case where there's the most Republican support for foreign aid, precisely as you said, because it's seen as this huge success started under George W. Bush. Right? But there's a range of diseases around the world that are treatable, relatively cheap level, the US is well positioned to support treatment for those diseases and so on. Right. But why is it in America's interest right now? I want you to make the case, the America first case for spending on HIV prevention, HIV treatment, malaria treatment and so on. Like how does it fit into the national interest to spend money in those areas?
- [31:19]
Jeremy Lewin
Again, you know, when we go back to this vision of foreign assistance, there's a part that is very sort of transactional, economically oriented security assistance that's very sort of what are we getting? This is a US ally, this is a US trading partner. We want Access to your markets, all of that. But there's also a component, the Secretary said this. America will continue to be the most jealous, generous nation in the world. China does no meaningful humanitarian assistance. By the way. You know, there's this myth that China's going to step in and pay for all these programs. China does virtually no real humanitarian assistance. We have done 10 times, you know, what China has done for the last several years. We will continue to do several times what China does. Right. And so the United States, there is value in being means tested, strategically oriented, sort of narrowly fighting these epidemics. And you know, as as many people have pointed out, hiv, the scourge of HIV, continues to be a global and regional HIV happens to be one where again, the ROI metrics on a lot of these direct treatment programs are high. And so we are seeing efficacy and we are seeing real results for every dollar spent. And so again, the administration continues to look at these things on a case by case basis. The President, the secretary sort of make those judgments. And pepfar, again, is an area where we continue to invest, as is malaria, by the way. I would say that we obligated a ton of new money to fight malaria because that, as many people have pointed out, continues to be a very low cost, high efficacy way of supporting, supporting humanitarian goals around the world. So again, the idea that we're backing away from some of these UN multilateral constructs, from some of these, we need to solve every problem in the world and we need to be the only one doing it. We don't have to ask for sort of contributions from our allies, from the countries that are actually dealing with these problems. Just because we're backing away with that doesn't mean we're completely abandoning the idea that the United States has any obligation or, or sort of, that it would be in our strategic interests, targeted and high ROI ways invest in the world.
- [33:07]
Ross Douthat
Right.
- [33:08]
Jeremy Lewin
I want to walk you crises.
- [33:09]
Ross Douthat
I want to walk you towards the, toward the theory behind that one point.
- [33:12]
Jeremy Lewin
So just one last point.
- [33:13]
Ross Douthat
Yeah.
- [33:14]
Jeremy Lewin
When we do this now, we expect there to be an end date. Right. What we're objecting to is these programs that have no expiration date. So as we think about realigning pepfar, one thing that we're doing is doing more government to government. Right. This is actually something that President Obama started with at USAID where you're doing more government to government. And I'll tell you why. Right. With PEPFAR and with all of these health programs, we expect the government at some point when they're able to Take over more of the responsibility and so we can kind of burden, share a little bit more. Right. And when the PEPFAR crisis, when you HIV in a country goes down, transmission rates go down, the country becomes wealthy enough they can sustain their own healthcare system, we will happily recede and they can take over. Right. What we object to is these idea, they're humanitarian projects where the United States has been investing billions of dollars for 40, 50 years with virtually no result, no end in sight, no game plan to sort of wind down or have anyone else do anything. And clearly it's not working if the crisis has persisted for 30, 40 years. Right. And also I want, but I want you to aid in the UN that actually exacerbates, exubates the crisis.
- [34:11]
Ross Douthat
I want you to define, I'm really interested, sorry, in the abstract, slightly more abstract question here, which is when the US does something like funding malaria treatment or something like that, does it do this for reasons that are sort of directly linked to the national interest, where it's like the US Wants to be perceived as altruistic so that other countries will like us? And I know this is not your job, as you keep saying, right, this is President Trump's job and it's Secretary Rubio's job, but you talk, talk to people higher up than yourself. Do you have the sense that the Trump administration believes that some of these programs are good in and of themselves, or is it more a sense of like the US Wants to defeat China, contain China and so on, and we want to be perceived as altruistic?
- [35:00]
Jeremy Lewin
I'd say the slippery slope of beginning to moralize about all these issues around the world leads you to sort of the failed model of the last 40, 50 years. I would say that doesn't mean that as human beings we don't feel tremendous sort of, of, you know, the situation in many places in the world is tremendously challenging and it's sad to see. And the global aid complex, which I really think had grown to be self serving and corrupt, exploits in many ways the emotions of people that understandably feel as though they have some sort of moral obligation as a human being to deal with these crises around the world. But as an elected official, like the president or the secretary is appointed and sort of me as an appointee of the administration, our job is to advocate for American interests first and foremost. And that's full stop, right? It's Americans that we, we champion, we protect, we advocate for American interests and American citizens. And so when we think about these programs, that has to be our lens first and foremost. And, and you know, look, it is rewarding, obviously, to deliver food, to deliver aid. And you know, as someone who's approving a lot of this stuff now, you feel good when you sort of help people. There's no question about that. But again, you have to do it through the lens of is this good for the United States? Is there real return here? Is this a problem that we should be addressing, that, that, that it advances our interest? And some of them certainly are sort of. There are values based interests of the United States. No one's denying that.
- [36:26]
Ross Douthat
What are the values based interests of the United States?
- [36:29]
Jeremy Lewin
Well, you know, I mean, again, this is a question that the president and the Secretary define more than me. But the values based in, you know, we are a responsible party. We go back to China, right? You talked about we're doing this in a way that is more respectful of people's sovereignty, of their dignity. I mean, I think it's kind of funny, right? I had din a foreign minister of a Gulf country who was talking about how, oh, thank God you guys are here, because, you know, in the last administration, it started under Susan Rice, they kept on sort of agitating for the unionization of the foreign workers in my country. And there's a real point of tension with diplomatic sort of tension between the United States and this country because they started saying, well, you need to unionize your foreign workers, all of that stuff, right. I mean, completely detached from any sort of American interest. And so sort of like you get to these points where, Sure. I mean, you might abstractly believe in the United States, I happen to not be sort of a proponent of organized labor, but that's another thing entirely.
- [37:22]
Ross Douthat
Well, I mean, the issue as a.
- [37:24]
Jeremy Lewin
Matter of sort of.
- [37:24]
Ross Douthat
Wait, wait, wait. The issue in the Gulf countries, right, is whatever you think about organized labor is that there is a scale of exploitation of their foreign workers that goes a bit beyond the question.
- [37:33]
Jeremy Lewin
Is that our problem? Right. I mean, is it our problem as the United States to be spending our diplomatic capital, our sort of trait? I mean, everything has a cost in diplomacy. That's the fundamental truth of diplomacy, right? I mean, you have relationships, you have good relationships with the president. Secretary, are master sort of negotiators, relationship drivers? At the same time, the fundamental reality. This is a realist administration. Countries should act in their national interest. This is sort of a general principle of economic theory, of geopolitical theory. Countries should act in their interest. And when they do so, and they do so rationally, you sort of come to agreements and that's how the system is supposed to work. Right. And so it is not rational in our interest. We were the suckers of the global system for so long because we're one of the only countries in the world that was sort of bumbling around acting in other people's interests instead of ours. Right. And you can't serve two masters at the same time. I mean, as much as we'd like to sort of advance these humanitarian interests in our private capacity, in our personal capacity and our moral capacity, our religious capacity, ultimately you cannot serve two masters. The United States and the United States diplomatic corps in the United States government need to advocate for American interests, American citizens, American security interests, economic interests.
- [38:41]
Ross Douthat
But I started, start. We've just gone through a long discussion that started with unionization in the Gulf states. In response to me asking you what are our values based interests. Well, I'm so I'm going to, I'm going to return. Right, so you're saying that's an example of what it's not. Right. What is a situation. What is a situation where the US by advancing its moral values, the values of a democratic society that has a Bill of Rights, right. That support supports human freedom and human dignity in some way. What is the point at which that becomes part of our foreign policy if it does?
- [39:16]
Jeremy Lewin
But is it our idea to go pander? I mean, I think it's funny that the previous administration that would play identity politics and all of that was so sort of condescending to other countries in the world, telling them they needed to manage their government and their affairs in the same way that the United States had done it or sort of, they had to adopt these rights based principles that we had adopted in our law or that our voters had endorsed. Right. Which is sort of the pinnacle of, of Aryans, frankly. Right. And it was hurting our diplomatic relationship. So what I think it's not is we can proudly proclaim our own values and we will. And there are times at which certain countries, you know, particularly our allies, will abridge certain fundamental rights and we will at times check them. There's no question about. The Secretary's been very clear about the sort of abuses of the Venezuelan regime. The President's been very clear about the abuses of the Brazilian regime in recent days. So there's no question that sometimes when allied countries and sort of countries that are our partners abridge certain fundamental rights, we will continue to call them out. But the question is our fundamental purpose in doing that, to sort of moralize to them, to sort of get them to change their own ways or to get them to live by certain overriding rules. And I think when we think about overriding rules, we're thinking much less of collective rights, much more of individual liberties and sort of basic theories of the polity that come from sort of Judeo Christian values, from natural rights jurisprudence. I mean, in the State Department reorganization, we reorganized the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which reports to me now in sort of my current capacity to focus on these issues, on democracy and Western values, on sort of our conventional conceptions of democracy, of individual liberties, of free speech, rather than these sort of tenuous, attenuated principles of collective rights that are advanced by the United nations and in these various policy documents. I mean, so, I mean, let me.
- [41:00]
Ross Douthat
Just, you know, break the interviewer's mold and give you my own opinion for a minute, and you can react to this. Right? So I agree with a lot of your arguments and critiques about where administrations going back to the end of the Cold War have gone wrong. And I sort of take it for granted, as the Trump administration does, that we're living in a moment where the US's ability to promote democracy the way we did around the fall of the Berlin Wall is quite limited, and we're stuck dealing with regimes like the regimes you mentioned in the Middle east, our allies who are not going to become democracies anytime soon. Soon. We have to live with that. We have to do diplomacy with them. We have to do bilateral diplomacy along the lines that you described. I think that that is a very reasonable part of this administration's vision for the world. I also, though, am a very strong supporter of many of the things that we have done in terms of basic humanitarian assistance in places like Africa. And so what I want from the administration as an interested observer of its foreign policy is a sense that its realist vision of how the world works has room for saying, look, you know, from our surplus as a rich country, we're going to save lives in Africa. I know people who work as basically like missionary doctors in really, really bad parts of the world, right?
- [42:28]
Jeremy Lewin
We have 12 groups from religious groups, right, who are doing that work and have never before had the opportunity to engage with the State Department of uscd, because they weren't doing at the scale, they weren't doing it in the way that sort of fit within the whole UN bureaucracy, all of that, who we are going to try to partner with to deliver foreign assistance in Africa and other places. And so I, you know, like, we can have this discussion about whether it's because of as an abstract philosophical matter, whether it's because of some sort of moral commitment or whether it's because of our strategic interests. But again, the, the fact of the matter is Secretary Rubio and the President have been very clear. We will continue to deliver life saving assistance, whether it's in Africa, whether it's in the Middle east, whether it's elsewhere in the world, Southeast Asia, etc, we will continue to do that, but we will continue to do so more efficiently, more tailored, more targetedly, you know, in a way that is not creating dependency. Right. And again, the point here is that this is a really long timescale. This is a, a generational. Again, USAID defined this sort of failed Clintonite engagement in the world that had us lose to China, that had us fail to develop, frankly. I mean, you talked about Africa, right? We may be keeping people alive as a basic subsistence matter, but for all the money we spent there, did we really, really help develop sub Saharan Africa? Not really. I mean, we sort of failed in that mission. We have successes, sure, but we have plenty of failures. And so I think the idea here is that over the next couple of years, we will continue to sort of articulate a prospective vision to flesh it out, to make investments that are demonstrative, to show the American people what President Trump's priorities are, what Secretary Rubio's priorities are, but again, are grounded in American national interests, in real investments that we think will have lasting effects. And as the President has kept on saying, peace through strength, peace through trade, peace through mutual respect.
- [44:13]
Ross Douthat
Jeremy, I'm sorry to keep trying to pin you down on this, but I just want you to say straightforwardly, for the sake of people who are concerned by specific stories about cuts to malaria programs and so on. So you think it is in the interest of the United States to save people's lives from disease where we can around the world? That's in the national. That's in the national interest.
- [44:39]
Jeremy Lewin
Secretary Rubio and President Trump will continue to support high impact programs in malaria and PEPFAR and HIV and tuberculosis and child and maternal health in a lot of these key categories. They're looking at these programs based on where they are in the country level, who's implementing them, what the real results are, what the costs are, but there will be continued investment in those programs. You know, you're not. My job here is not to tell you what the President's motivation in doing that is, but I can tell you as a factual matter, we will continue to invest in those things. We're excited to make PEPFAR more efficient. We think we can meet President Trump's goal of ending mother to child transmission by the time that he leaves office. So, I mean, there are a lot of different things that we're excited about and they're a key part of our affirmative vision.
- [45:21]
Ross Douthat
Okay. So now looking forward, you keep talking about this as a generational change and we started this conversation with you talking about what you as a college kid saw as the failures of, of the post Cold War paradigm with regard to China. So if we were looking back on this conversation 15 or 20 years from now and we were looking around Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia, what would you expect to see as indicators of a successful change in how America does aid and development work?
- [45:51]
Jeremy Lewin
It's a great question. Again, I think I'd like to see real economic development, trade deals, market access stuff, American companies investing there. I mean, we talked about Africa, right? Chinese companies are all over Africa and American companies have a very difficult time accessing those markets for a variety of reasons. We have American aid workers everywhere. But I'd like to see real American investment. I want to look at sub Saharan Africa and see American companies, American workers doing trade and mutual exchange, not just delivering aid year after year as part of the sort of UN construct or anything like that. Right. That would be a real measure of success. And I think the most important part of this interview is what you said. Our model is to take what was a dependency based sort of foreign assistance for the NGO complex, et cetera, and turn it into something that is a more appealing, more humane version of the sort of bilateral relationships that China has been offering. Successfully eating our lunch all around the world. And so that's what's going to define the next stage of American investment in the world. It's going to be not patronizing, not pushing all these sort of Western causes all around the world, but saying what we believe in the way that you are going to have human flourishing in your country. And if you sort of look on a scale, what has led to more development, life expectancy, well, being sort of human utility around the world than economic development. That's the cornerstone of everything. And when we engage in the world, that's our touchstone. But with the lens that the United States national interest must come first in every instance.
- [47:24]
Ross Douthat
Great. Jeremy Lewin, thanks for joining, mate.
- [47:27]
Jeremy Lewin
Thank you so much.
- [47:53]
Ross Douthat
Interesting Times is produced by Katherine Sullivan, Sofia Alvarez, Bow Boyd, Andrea Batanzos and Raina Raskin. It's edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Sophia Landman. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuluski. And our director of opinion, audience, is Annie Rose Strasser.