The World Affairs Discussion Group

Imagine you’re the finance minister of a mid-sized African country that needs a port, a power grid, and a data center. Beijing sends one team with financing, engineers, and a quick answer. Washington sends... a maze. The Development Finance Corporation offers loans and guarantees. The Export-Import Bank offers export credit. The Trade and Development Agency funds feasibility studies. The Commerce Department runs its own market intelligence. The Millennium Challenge Corporation offers grants, but only if you pass its reform scorecard. Each agency has its own rules, its own criteria, and its own Congressional constituency. Few of them talk to each other.
For most of the postwar era, that didn’t matter. The U.S. and its allies were the only game in town. Not anymore. China’s Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road have been building ports, rails, and fiber for years, and this July Xi Jinping launched a new World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. Developing countries, especially those sitting on critical minerals, farmland, and digital chokepoints, now shop around. Meanwhile, the U.S. folded USAID into the State Department in 2025, a shake-up meant to align aid with foreign policy. Critics say it left the machinery just as tangled and removed some of the people who knew the local ground.
A recent CSIS commentary argues the U.S. doesn’t lack tools, it lacks a quarterback to call the plays. Its candidate is the little-known MCC, with its transparent scorecard and enforceable compacts. The authors say it could coordinate the other agencies without new spending.
So, in November, the World Affairs Discussion Group will take on this unglamorous but consequential topic. Can the U.S. compete with China’s state-directed model without copying it? Is fragmentation a weakness, or does a messy toolbox reflect a free-market strength? Does “America First” economic engagement mean investing abroad at all? And does anyone, including us, trust a single agency to be the quarterback?

Optional background readings -
-- U.S. Foreign Economic Policy Needs a Quarterback. https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-foreign-economic-policy-needs-quarterback Recommended.
-- What Roles Do Congress and the President Play in U.S. Foreign Policy?https://www.cfr.org/education/learn/reading/what-roles-do-congress-and-president-play-us-foreign-policy
-- Economy and national security – US foreign economic policy under Trump and Biden
https://www.pubaffairsbruxelles.eu/opinion-analysis/economy-and-national-security-us-foreign-economic-policy-under-trump-and-biden/