This budget supports USAID’s efforts to aggressively communicate the stark differences between authoritarian financing tools and the approach that we and our allied donor nations use. Our approach is true assistance. It helps partner nations build their own self-reliance and a more dynamic, private enterprise-driven future. It incentivizes reform to spur private enterprise and free markets, attract investments, and again, foster self-reliance.

We also aim to help partner countries recognize the costs of alternative models, like those of China and Russia. Their approach seeks to weaken confidence in democratic and free market systems, saddle countries with unsustainable debt, lead to the forfeiture of strategic resources, and further the militaristic ambitions of those authoritarian actors. In coming weeks, we will unveil a framework that we’ll use to help counter malign Kremlin influence, especially in Europe and Eurasia and Central Asia, and this budget supports that work.

Today, the United States airlifted additional humanitarian relief supplies from Florida to Cúcuta, Colombia, intended to help people affected by the man-made political and economic crisis in Venezuela.