Stubborn Things, Stubborn Thought: Thinking Through Development’s Crossroads Moment

There’s little doubt that 2025 was the most significant year for international development in a generation. In the name of “trade not aid,” governments from Europe to the U.S. made deep cuts to international assistance and dismantled a range of programs, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) itself.

But as consequential as last year was, the year ahead will be much more important: it’s when policymakers will determine whether “trade not aid” was merely political cover for doing “less with less” or, instead, a sincere down payment on an innovative new framework.

Those of us who truly care about American global leadership should help the Administration shape the latter…or else we’ll all be consigned to the former.

The abruptness of DOGE’s termination of development programs and professionals shook many observers and raised questions about America’s reliability and commitment in many parts of the world. But that doesn’t mean the Administration’s underlying premise was wrong —that it was past time to modernize, reform, and reset international assistance. In other words, regardless of how we got here, we should seize this opportunity to build something new for these times —a framework that builds on the extraordinary accomplishments of programs like PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), but also recognizes how much the world has changed.

What are some of those changes? I’ll lay out several in part 2 of Stubborn Things, Stubborn Thoughts.