Trump allocates $3.2B to WB fund for poorest countries
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump on Friday asked Congress to approve $3.2 billion in contributions to the World Bank’s (WB) International Development Association (IDA), which provides low- or zero-interest loans to the world’s poorest countries.
International finance experts hailed the sum, to be paid over three years, as a welcome surprise, given recent worries that Trump could skip making any contribution to IDA.
Former President Joe Biden had pledged to contribute $4 billion, but that money has not yet been transferred.
The new amount is lower, but will still help the World Bank get close to its goal of raising $100 billion for IDA by leveraging countries’ contributions, sources familiar with the process said. The final decision rests with the US Congress.
Asked if the Trump administration would stick to the $4 billion pledge, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had indicated the sum would be decided in the budget, with much depending on actions by World Bank president Ajay Banga and the head of the International Monetary Fund aimed at refocusing the institutions on their core missions.
Clemence Landers, vice president at the Center for Global Development, welcomed the amount proposed for IDA.
No money for Africa
“The US IDA number stands out as a rare bright spot in a budget full of drastic cuts to the US foreign assistance apparatus,” she said. “There has been significant speculation about the US role in the international financial institutions under Trump, and whether the US would pay into IDA at all.”
The budget proposal unveiled by Trump on Friday cuts foreign aid by $49 billion, a senior official with the Office of Management and Budget told reporters.
Documents released by the White House showed a cut of $555 million in funds for the African Development Bank and the African Development Fund, saying it was “not currently aligned” with the administration’s priorities.
The budget proposal did include the $3.2 billion for IDA, adding other donors and institutions should take on more of the costs.
“This fulfills the President’s promise to no longer dole out foreign aid dollars with no return on investment for the American people,” the document said.
Local spending
On Friday, the Trump administration proposed a $163 billion cut to the federal budget that would sharply reduce spending on education, housing and medical research next year, while increasing outlays for defense and border security.
The administration said the proposed budget would raise homeland security spending by nearly 65 percent from 2025 enacted levels, as Trump cracks down on illegal immigration.
Nondefense discretionary spending, which excludes the massive Social Security and Medicare programs and rising interest payments on the nation’s debt, would be cut by 23 percent to the lowest level since 2017, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
The proposal would cleave more than $2 billion from the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service and would slice the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by more than 40 percent.
Trump’s first budget since reclaiming office seeks to make good on his promises to boost spending on border security while slashing the federal bureaucracy. Congressional Democrats blasted the domestic spending cuts as too severe, and some Republicans called for boosting spending on defense and other areas.
