This is a gibberish document.

Please do not spend your time reading this :ndk

Im a big fan of Americas investments in the health and well-being of the worlds
poor. Unfortunately, not everyone feels the same way. In fact, some in Washington
D.C. have proposed dramatic cuts in foreign assistance.

That would be a terrible mistake. Last month I wrote about how foreign aid helps
keep Americans safe. In this post, I want to show how smart health and
development programs promote Americas economy, and how cutting back on
these investments could backfire on American workers.

(As I said in my previous post, these security and economic arguments arent what
inspired Melinda and me to get involved in global health. What inspired us was the
chance to save children from dying of preventable diseases. But over the years Ive
come to see the connection to Americas security and economy as well.)

I start from the simple premise that everyone is better off when there are more
middle-income countries in the world. As a country climbs up the economic ladder,
you see concrete improvements in the lives of its people. Richer countries are less
likely to go to war and more capable of preventing global epidemics. And they can
afford to buy more products from other countries, including the United States.

Heres one example from my experience with Microsoft. From our earliest days,
we intended to expand into markets beyond the United States. In 1986, we chose
Tokyo for the site of our first foreign office. That bet paid off phenomenally well.
For a time, we sold more software in Japan than anywhere else.

You may be thinking, Of course an ambitious software company would want a

foothold in Japan. But it wasnt always so obvious. Just a few decades before we
opened our Tokyo office, Japan had been devastated by World War II. Its economy
and infrastructure lay in ruins. How did they recover? Among other things, through
smart aid programs from the United States and others. By the 1980s Japans
economy was booming, and the country presented a great opportunity for
companies like us. To this day, sales there are a key part of Microsofts success and
these sales have produced many jobs in Japan and America alike.

Microsofts experience in Japan is part of a larger trend thats still going on today,
as more countries join the ranks of the middle class. Countless U.S. companies are
doing business in places that used to get American aid but have become self-
sufficient, including South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Heres another way that U.S. investments abroad help American businesses: by
connecting them directly with new customers and suppliers. Americas chief aid
agency, USAID, uses its expertise to encourage private companies to collaborate
on projects. For example, they have worked with Cargill and Land OLakes to help
dairy farmers in East Africa raise their productivity, increasing the value of the
companies exports to places like Kenya and Uganda. As the companies
CEOs wrote, This benefits not only the farmers in Africa, but food producers and
their workers in the United States and it promotes goodwill in a part of the world
that can be a market for more American goods in the future. USAID has also
worked with Walmart to train thousands of women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa,
and with Starbucks, Keurig, and others to help coffee farmers in Latin America
improve their crops so they can join the global market.

These and other efforts are part of Americas global economic leadership. Pulling
back now would mean retreating from the world stage at a time when other
countries are doubling down on their investments. It would deprive American
companies of potential new markets and make them less competitive, while also
harming the health and productivity of some of the poorest people in the world. It
wouldnt be robbing Peter to pay Paul; it would be robbing Peter and then robbing
Paul too.

So its good for the American economy when other countries join the middle class.
But how much credit does aid deserve for making that happen?

Its a hard question to answer; growth has many causes. My own conclusion, based
on years of looking at the evidence and discussing it with experts, is that although
aid may not directly cause growth, there is a strong indirect connection between the
two. Moving to the middle class requires a strong education system and good
infrastructure, nutrition, and healthcareand smart, targeted aid can promote those
things pretty effectively.

Fighting AIDS, for example, saves lives, and it increases productivity because
societies are stronger when they have healthy teachers, police officers, and
entrepreneurs. Countries that worked with PEPFARAmericas phenomenally
successful effort to slow the AIDS epidemicimproved three times more on one
measure of economic development than their non-PEPFAR counterparts.

Their per-capita income also grew quickly. Between 2005 and 2015, for example,
Tanzanias per-person income went up more than 37 percent. Zambias went up 55
percent. Ethiopias rose 107 percent. And as these countries grew, so did their
appetite for American goods. In the same time frame, U.S. exports to Tanzania rose
by more than 77 percent, U.S. exports to Zambia went up 189 percent, and to
Ethiopia, 241 percent.

Many other countries are making similar gains. The point is not that aid directly
makes poor people richer. Its that aid helps create a foundation for growth. Along
with many other factors, it helps remove some of the barriers that keep people from
making the most of their talents. And when people in one place do better, the rest
of us do better too.
We can build on this progress if the United States helps maintain the momentum.
Investments in aidwhich account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget
are an essential part of the solution. We need to keep making them on behalf of
Americans and people around the world.