US Development Policy

When Congress created the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) through the BUILD Act in 2018, it gave the new agency authority to make equity investments in funds and firms in developing country markets, building on the traditional lending programs of DFCs’ predecessor agency, OPIC...

In March, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) held its first board meeting of the Biden-Harris administration. At that meeting board members voted to approve just one project—a $300 million loan to expand a Brazilian bank’s lending portfolio to small and medium enterprises (SM...

The American Rescue Plan—the massive COVID-19 relief package recently signed into law—has featured in plenty of headlines. While the vast majority of the nearly $1.9 trillion package is allocated to domestic relief and response, the legislation provides nearly $11 billion in supplemental internation...

The House Foreign Affairs Committee recently advanced the Global Learning Loss Assessment Act. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation shines a light on the critical issue of learning loss—and the impacts of disrupted education more broadly—as schools around the world closed due to the COVID-19 pande...

The US International Development Finance Corporation has become a Rorschach test for the policy community: when they look at it, everyone sees something different.

The Biden administration and the Congress rightly went big in the recently passed American Rescue Plan at a time of tremendous need. The package was appropriately focused on the domestic side, but it did not neglect the rest of the world. One might reasonably ask then why $1 billion or $2 billi...