Quote:WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s restrictions on foreign aid and targeting of a key agency funding programs around the world may be offering an opening to America’s biggest adversary — China.
From the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development to quitting international groups, Trump’s drastic “America First” moves have raised concerns among some lawmakers and experts about whether the U.S. is ceding global influence to its rivals, especially at a time when Washington is fretting over Beijing’s growing clout at the cost to American interests.
Foreign assistance offered the U.S. a source of “soft power” — allowing it to cultivate goodwill, build alliances and counter adversaries in a bid to shore up national security without having to dispatch troops, weapons or other more coercive measures.
In Cambodia, the contrast could not be sharper than China sending $4.4 million to support demining operations, as Trump halted a $6.3 million grant from the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement partly meant to clear “U.S.-origin unexploded ordnances as the remnants of war.”
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“The second Trump administration will deliver the goal for China” of wielding greater global influence, Feng Zhang, a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said at a recent debate in Washington.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-china-f...47d8d8fcb6
