US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during his maiden visit to the Caribbean, outlined that the Donald Trump administration will still be providing foreign aid to partner countries.

Rubio, while speaking at a joint press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kingston, Jamaica, on Tuesday, March 26, stated that though the issue of aid is controversial, his visit was to highlight the United States’ vision for aid moving forward.

“The United States is not getting out of the aid business; we are going to be providing foreign aid. The difference is we want to provide foreign aid in a way that is strategically aligned with our foreign policy priorities and the priorities of our host countries and our nation-states that we are partnering with,” he said.

He underscored that in the past, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donor countries would provide assistance to other countries based on what they believed they needed, which was not always beneficial to the receiving state. “These countries [would then] go and hire a non-governmental organization (NGO) that maybe are the ones that convinced them that this is what you need, and they give them a bunch of money, and they come into the country and do things. Some of these programmes are fine; they’re nice things. Other times, not so much.

“How [the US] want it to be in the future is that our embassies are involved with the host government, our partners, and we ask them, What are your needs? and we provide assistance geared towards the needs of the nation-states that are hosting us and that we are partnering with. At the end, our partner in Jamaica, our partner all over the world, is the government, the host government, which has a clear vision for the future, and to the extent that our foreign aid can be helpful. It is in furtherance of what the people of your country have elected you to carry out,” Rubio continued.

He further stated that the US foreign aid will be geared towards uplifting the partner states and the overall benefit of their citizens. “It should be geared towards looking for opportunities to increase skills training, looking for opportunities to attract investment and business and trade and, obviously, for opportunities to expand on your own domestic intelligence capabilities.”

Additionally, Rubio expressed that the US foreign aid will not only be aligned with its foreign policy but also the mutual, shared interest of its partners all around the world.

“I can tell you, Jamaica’s an incredible partner to the United States; it’s very cooperative on a number of fronts, and we will continue to work together, and we are going to work closer than we’ve ever worked before because we are now going to have US programmes for foreign aid that are going to be aligned with the vision that you’ve elected your leaders to carry out for the country and the benefits of us both.

“The US wants to ensure that when countries are corporative and work with us and partner with us and constantly seek ways to engage us that, that leads to positive results and outcomes, you can call it rewarding but what it really means is it has to be a mutually beneficial relationship and we want countries in the world, we want countries in the region to identify being close to the United States as something that is beneficial and helpful, helpful to develop, to grow and frankly helpful so that one day many countries can serve and I think Jamaica is already doing this as a model of what other countries would seek to emulate whether it’s on security, trade, investment on skills acquisition and improvement,” he added.