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The vast majority of Americans care about improving the lives of Americans. Trump and Musk are likely no exception.

They might care about other things more than that though...

The problem with that simplistic reasoning is that helping people in other countries also can help Americans, sometimes in ways they directly helping Americans can't do.

(I'm not saying that every dollar deployed by USAID succeeds in having a large impact on indirectly helping Americans. But the net effect is surely positive.)

A big example is that almost all plastic in the ocean comes from a couple of Asian countries. No amount of money spent in the US could stop that. But it would likely be very cheap to combine funding plastic recycling with threats of sanctions against those countries.

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