“TAKE your money with you,” said Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, when told about Trump’s plans to cut aid to Latin America, “it’s poison.”

USAid (US Agency for International Development) spends around $2 billion annually in Latin America, which is only 5 per cent of its global budget. The temporarily closed-down agency’s future looks bleak, while reactions to its money being cut have been wide-ranging. Only a few were as strong as Petro’s and many condemned the move. For example, WOLA (the Washington Office on Latin America), a leading “liberal” think tank which routinely runs cover for Washington’s regime-change efforts, called it Trump’s “America Last” policy. 

While USAid does some good — such as removing landmines in Vietnam (themselves a product of US wrongdoing) — as an agency of the world’s hegemon, its fundamental role is aligned with projecting US world dominance.