So Long, Foreign Food Aid Programs. Project 2025 Has Weaseled Its Way into the USDA.

Back on May 6, political scientist Joseph Nye Jr. of Harvard University passed away at the age of 88. It was Nye who first coined the term “soft power” to describe how the United States could exercise its influence in the world without the use of military power. From The New York Times:

Mr. Nye developed the concept of soft power in the late 1980s to explain how America’s ability to get other nations to do what it wanted rested on more than the power of its military or economy; it also derived from American values.“Seduction is always more effective than coercion,” he explained in a 2005 interview. “And many of our values, such as democracy, human rights and individual opportunity, are deeply seductive.” Soft power tools include diplomacy, economic assistance and trustworthy information, such as that provided in Voice of America broadcasts. He laid out his thinking in a 2004 book, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.”

(One of the sterling examples of Nye’s theories is a slim little book by Walter LaFeber titled Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. Thousands of pages have been written about Jordan, but LaFeber’s book is all we’d ever need to explain the phenomenon.)

It turns out that Nye outlived his own theory. Project 2025, of which the president knows nothing, is now the working policy of Trump’s administration. His minions have been beavering away at creating an America in its grim and icy-hearted image. Its eye now has fallen on the Department of Agriculture. From Reuters:

Food for Progress grantees were notified by the USDA on Wednesday that their awards were terminated and that staff would work with them on the “security, integrity, and disposition of any commodities” associated with the awards, according to an email seen by Reuters. The cancellations appeared to affect all existing awards, including some dating back to 2018, said one of the sources. Reuters could not independently confirm how many awards were canceled.

Trump’s budget had proposed eliminating Food for Progress and other foreign food aid programs, including the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program run by USDA and the Food for Peace program administered by USAID. The USDA issued more than $218 million in Food for Progress grants in 2024, to send crops like milled rice, soybean meal, wheat, and yellow soybeans to countries including Tanzania, Tunisia, and Sri Lanka.

On a purely pragmatic political basis, this kind of thing makes no sense at all. Food for Progress benefited American farmers in Iowa and Kansas as surely as it benefited hungry people in Tunis or Dar-es-Salaam. That’s what soft power is all about. As strange as this may sound, if you feed hungry people instead of dropping ordnance on their homes and villages, they will like you more and, perhaps, sell you some of their rare metals in return. On a constitutional basis, cancelling money already appropriated by Congress is, as it has been since the president decided to play Truth or Dare with his oath of office, completely illegal. It’s impoundment in sheep’s clothing.

On a purely humane basis ... oh, why bother?