Imperialist, exploitative and egocentric — these words describe U.S. policy on the Global South. The policy is deeply ingrained in Trump MAGA agenda, but it’s a loser in the long run.
The 17 SDGs.
My eyes popped out of my head in early May when I encountered a news headline about the United States renouncing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs — the 17 goals, adopted unanimously by all 193 members of the UN in 2015 — include providing clean water and sanitation for all people and quality education for every child while tackling climate change.
The resolution was passed with great fanfare and hailed as a milestone in the history of development. The United States was on board and committed itself to achieving the goals by 2030. This time around, however, Edward Heartney, the U.S. counselor for economic and social affairs at the U.S. mission to the UN, told the General Assembly that “the United States rejects and denounces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and it will no longer reaffirm them” because they are “inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.”
My long career in international development has made it clear to me that Washington had never been genuinely interested in the development of poor nations. Although it provides what it calls development aid to countries in the Global South, its official development assistance has largely been self-serving — that is, gaining market access for its multinationals and exporters, promoting its values and “democracy” and engineering regime change.
It has also been geopolitically driven. During the Cold War, America’s foreign aid was intended to beat the Soviet Union. More recently, it has been designed predominantly to counter China’s influence in the developing world.
And yet, I never expected that Washington would one day stop pretending that it cares for less privileged nations. Nor did I anticipate it to go as far as to reject a grand project that is of critical importance to the well-being of the human race, one that is close to the heats of billions of people. The Trump administration’s blatant repudiation of this monumental initiative highlights its complete disregard for the efforts and common interests of the international community, thus placing the U.S. at odds with the rest of the world, especially the Global South, the major beneficiaries of the program.
Donald Trump’s renunciation of the SDGs through Heartney aligns with his general approach to the Global South. The day after he returned to the White House, Trump initiated the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. In May, his administration announced its pullout from the UN-backed Loss and Damage Fund, which provides financial assistance to nations most vulnerable to climate change. As the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, the U.S., in the words of Ali Mohamed, chair of the African Group of Negotiators, “bears significant responsibility for climate-induced damage in vulnerable countries”. The Trump administration’s attempt to wash its hands of responsibility for the cleanup amounts to shifting U.S. responsibility to its own victims.
Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, putting the WHO in crisis mode. Worse still, in an attempt to dismantle the WHO, it urged other countries in May to follow its example and quit the organization, whose work the Global South considers indispensable to global vaccine R&D, decease monitoring and pandemic prevention and control. All this happened as the Trump administration pushes for U.S. defense spending to be increased to $1.01 trillion for fiscal year 2026, a jump of 13 percent year-on-year.
Trump is not just cutting back on U.S. contributions to the public good but is also expected to dramatically slash its international development assistance. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it, aid is “part of the toolbox of foreign policy, not a stand-alone. … Foreign aid is not charity. It is designed to further the national interests of the United States.”
What is more, Trump has tried to extort wealth from the Global South to help pay for his MAGA scheme. His so-called reciprocal tariffs — a tax on goods from the rest of the world in violation of World Trade Organization rules — hit developing countries particularly hard. Among 27 countries subject to tariff rates exceeding 30 percent, all but one are from the Global South.
Such steep tariffs could cripple some poor countries. Trump’s 37 percent tariff on Bangladesh, for example, threatens to decimate the country’s garment industry, which accounts for nearly 85 percent of its exports and employs more 4 million workers.
And for around 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are nothing short of a body blow. They nullify the preferential treatment under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Products from those countries once could enter the U.S. market without importers paying a tariff. Now the importers are required to pay a minimum 10 percent import duty. Lesotho, a country that “nobody has heard of,” according to Rubio, was singled out as the only one to face the top rate of 50 percent. (One wonders how the White House ferreted Lesotho out from oblivion.) In stark contrast, China offers tariff-free access for all imports from all 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic ties.
Politically, Trump has placed the United States at the center of the universe and treats developing countries as inferiors whose interests are to be subordinated to those of America. Further, he is obsessed with power politics and is always ready to wield U.S. power to have his way with poor countries. He loves to set rules for the Global South as he pleases, as exemplified by his bogus reciprocal tariffs — “telling them what the deal is” by letter, without negotiation. As his threat to double tariffs on countries who would hit back his import levies shows, he would not hesitate to crush any resistance to his bullying. Trump’s vision of the world clashes violently with the aspirations of the Global South.
Apparently, there is no love lost between Trump and the Global South. He may even hold poor countries in contempt. In 2018, Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shit-hole” countries. It is doubtful that his view has changed at all.
However, it would be wide of the mark to say that the Trump administration is not interested in engaging with the developing world. Its presence is keenly felt in regions ranging from Latin America to Asia to Africa. Its intersection with the Global South is largely driven by two motives: securing access to critical minerals and keeping China down.
Trump’s craving for critical minerals in other lands is notorious. To secure these resources, he said he would buy Greenland and threatened to use force to acquire the territory if necessary. In the developing world, critical minerals are a major focus of the Trump administration. In Asia, the Trump administration is actively pursuing a strategic partnership with Indonesia and Uzbekistan. In Africa, it is negotiating with the Democratic Republic of the Congo for cobalt and other strategic minerals in exchange for security provided by the United States. And Trump’s support for the Lobito Corridor is widely believed to stem from the railway’s role in transporting copper and cobalt to the U.S. from the DRC and Zambia. Closer to home, Trump is cultivating personal ties with Argentina’s President Javier Milei, largely aiming at the country’s lithium deposits.
The Trump’s administration’s engagement with the Global South often revolves around its anti-China alignment strategy. It uses such interactions to undermine China’s ties with other developing countries. While visiting Latin America, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent smeared China’s economic and commercial activities there, accusing China of signing “rapacious deals marked as aid” that “added huge amounts of debt” to Latin American countries' balance sheets.
The administration also avails itself of every opportunity to try to turn other developing countries into a geopolitical tool to support its bid to thwart the rise of China. It coerces them to sever ties with China. It forced the Panamanian government to quit China’s Belt and Road Initiative and threatened Argentina with withdrawal of U.S. support for loans from the International Monetary Fund if the country did not terminate its currency swap agreement with China.
In negotiations with U.S. trading partners in the developing world, Trump demands that they scale back Chinese imports and restrict Chinese investment, but it’s clearly not to the advantage of other developing countries to break away from their largest trading partner and biggest foreign investor.
Imperialist, exploitative and egocentric — these probably are the words that best describe U.S. policy on the Global South, a policy that is deeply ingrained in Trump MAGA agenda.
But as Warren Buffet, former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway put it, it was a “big mistake.”
“When you have seven and a half billion people that don’t like you very much and you’ve got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they’ve done, I don’t think it’s right and I don’t think it’s wise,” Buffet said.
Indeed, Trump’s Global South policy will turn out to be counterproductive.
