Project 2025 and Development Policy: I Read It So You Don’t Have To

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint, was released in late 2023 but has recently received heightened attention as some of its more extreme ideas have been amplified.

I perused the document for content on development policy, looking first at the section on the US Treasury Department, which oversees the multilateral development banks (MDBs), as well as the chapter on the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Some of the proposals are naïve and others unactionable. Many would reinstate policies from the Trump administration, especially those designed to counter China, roll back climate programs, and limit access to reproductive health. Special contempt is reserved for all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related initiatives. Here’s more on what’s in the document:

US Treasury and Development Policy in a Nutshell: A (Short) Rant Against Multilateral Agencies

The authors of this chapter include the “reversal of the economically destructive and ineffective climate-related financial-risk agenda of the Biden Administration” and “addressing the economic and financial aspects of the geopolitical threat posed by China and other hostile countries,” in their list of top six priorities, alongside tax policy, fiscal responsibility and improved financial regulation.

That said, there is scant detail on proposals for international engagement—the entire policy package for Treasury’s International Affairs department is condensed into a mere four paragraphs. The key message is this: “international organizations such as the OECD, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund espouse economic theories and policies that are inimical to American free market and limited government principles.” The IMF—the world’s global financial firehose charged with promoting financial and macroeconomic stability—is dismissed as an entity that is captured by elites who “regularly advance higher taxes and big centralized government.”

The chapter’s advice is a blanket contradiction: the authors propose that the Treasury Department “withdraw from both the World Bank and the IMF” while also “forc[ing] reforms and new policies” at these institutions, including by making “the addition of large new cadre of U.S. professionals,” a condition of future funding.

It will come as no surprise that the authors also call for the US to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement and instead “use Treasury’s tools and authority” to support oil and gas investments.

Whether the authors have any insights into how international economic policy was executed by then-Secretary Steven Mnuchin (Trump’s pick to run the Treasury Department) is unclear—none worked at Treasury during that period or ever, for that matter. At any rate, they might be surprised to discover that rather than withdrawing from the World Bank, Secretary Mnuchin supported a significant boost in its lending capacity.

The US also exerts strong leadership through the international financial institutions (IFIs) because of its disproportionately large voting shares (it is the biggest shareholder of the World Bank and IMF). This enables the US to advance major foreign policy objectives through the IFIs including, for example, support for Ukraine.

Notably, any pullback from the IFIs would create a significant leadership vacuum. This would create space for the IFIs’ third-largest shareholder—China—to move into, an outcome that the authors do not appear to have considered.

In rationalizing a withdrawal from the World Bank, the authors argue that: “if the U.S. is to provide economic assistance or humanitarian aid to other nations, it should do so unilaterally—not through the pass-throughs of international aid organizations, non-governmental organizations, or other nations. These organizations and countries simply create expensive middle-men, while U.S. funds are intercepted before being distributed to those in need.”

So, for guidance on how bilateral development policy should be executed, I also reviewed the USAID chapter. (Project 2025 does not cover the Millennium Challenge Account or Development Finance Corporation, which also have a role in US government development policy.)

USAID and Development Policy in a Nutshell: A (Long) Rant Against China, Climate and Gender Policy

The author of this chapter served at USAID under the Trump Administration and charges that “the Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.” Major proposed reforms are intended to blunt China’s influence, end support for climate programs, and limit women’s access to reproductive health.

The China-related initiatives are big on rhetoric but small on impact. For example, the author touts “a robust counter-China response called Clear Choice that contrasted America’s development approach based on liberty, sovereignty, and free markets with China’s mercantilist authoritarianism that pursued predatory financing schemes and economic and political subordination to Beijing.”

As described by then-USAID Administrator Mark Green in congressional testimony, Clear Choice was simply a propaganda exercise, not an alternative funding source: “USAID has been aggressive in communicating to partner countries the advantages of the U.S. development model—which incentivizes reform to spur private enterprise and free-markets, attract investments, and foster self-reliance—and the long term costs of alternative models that saddle countries with unsustainable debt, lead to the forfeiture of strategic assets, and further the militaristic ambitions of authoritarian actors” (italics mine).

Another example of USAID’s efforts to counter China was its decision to open in office in Greenland, apparently in response to China’s claims of being a “near-arctic state.”

There are also calls to “end the climate policy fanaticism that advantages Beijing,” and “eliminate funding to any partner that engages with Chinese entities directly or indirectly.” And here’s a pithy message for the global south: “The aid industry claims that climate change causes poverty, which is false.” The quickest way to end poverty, according to the author, is the “responsible management of oil and gas reserves.”

Finally, there is a strong repudiation of USAID’s women’s empowerment programs, which the author claims “aggressively promote abortion on demand.” In damning the agency’s gender policies, the document notes that: “without women, there are no children, and society cannot continue.” This section calls on USAID to “remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc.”

Instead, the author proposes to reinstate the Mexico City Policy (known by its opponents as the global gag rule), which blocks funding to foreign non-governmental organizations that provide advice, information, referrals, services, and/or advocate for abortions. All Republican presidents have imposed the policy since it was first introduced in 1984, but the Trump Administration expanded its scope from just covering international family planning assistance to all bilateral global health assistance. As detailed here, Project 2025 recommends going even further and applying the policy to all US foreign assistance.

While the stated goal of the Mexico City Policy is to reduce abortions, evidence shows it has had the opposite effect: In 2019, the Lancet reported that abortion rates in countries most affected by the funding restrictions increased by 40 percent, with contraceptive use falling by 14 percent, likely because providers had fewer resources to offer family planning services, including information on contraceptives. A more recent study found that the policy was associated with higher rates of maternal and child mortality and HIV infections.

Notably, this new agenda is to be accomplished by “working closely with the U.S. Congress to make deep cuts in the international affairs “150 Account”,” which funds USAID (italics mine).