President-elect Joe Biden will assume office at a critical time for global development, with a looming famine in war-torn Yemen, the unparalleled Syrian refugee crisis and a global pandemic that has claimed over 1.2 million lives. On Biden’s long foreign policy to-do list, development experts say, is restoring the American foreign assistance dollars imperiled by the current administration. 

His key foreign policy adviser on the campaign, Antony Blinken, has pledged the Biden team would “bring aid back to the center of our foreign policy” through an emphasis on diplomacy, democracy and development. 

In contrast, Trump has called for aid to be given only to “friends" and revoked from those who don’t support US policies. Driven by his belief that other countries need to pony up their fair share, the Republican president sought massive foreign aid cutbacks during his four years in office.

His budget proposals, however, were routinely rejected by bipartisan majorities in Congress and the United States has remained, even under an aid-skeptic Trump, the largest donor of foreign assistance worldwide.