United States foreign aid

United States foreign aid is aid given by the United States government to other governments. It can be divided into two broad categories: military aid and economic assistance. Other large sums are given to non-government agencies and individuals in other countries through American foundations, churches and other organizations. Millions of individuals in the United States remit sums to their own relatives abroad, but that is not counted as "foreign aid". Foreign aid has been given to a variety of recipients, including developing countries, countries of strategic importance to the United States, and countries recovering from war. The government channels about half of its economic assistance through a specialized agency, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Government-sponsored foreign aid began a systematic fashion after World War II, with the Marshall Plan of 1948 and the Mutual Security Act of 1951-61. It has been politically highly charged, as most Americans believe the amount of aid given is much higher than the amount stated by the government. In the 21st century, the US government operates five major categories of foreign assistance: bilateral development aid (the largest amount), economic assistance supporting U.S. political and security goals, humanitarian aid, multilateral economic contributions, and military aid.

In fiscal year 2014-15, less than 1% of the national budget goes to foreign assistance.

In fiscal year 2014, the U.S. government allocated the following amounts for aid:

Total economic and military assistance: $43.10 billion

Aid from private sources within the United States in 2007 was probably somewhere in the $10 to $30 billion range. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimated that net private grants from the United States to developing countries totaled $12.2 billion that year. A private think-tank, the Hudson Institute, gave the following figures for U.S. private assistance for 2004.

Whether aid figures should include remittances by immigrant workers in the United States to their families outside the country is disputed. Some writers include remittances as aid, others do not. Though the Hudson Institute includes them in the above table, Daniel Drezner argues that remittances from the United States should not be counted as U.S. aid because, as he says, "Americans aren't remitting this money -- foreign nationals are."Nils Katsberg of UNICEF notes that remittances undoubtedly are a financial benefit to the families back home, but one must also factor in the negative effect, especially on the children, of the absence of the family member—likely a parent—who is working abroad.

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