President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget request included all of the expected proposals to cut United States global development spending, but it also endorsed one of the most significant aid reform ideas to gain serious traction in years: Creating a new development finance institution.

Just as it did last year, the Trump administration proposed to slash U.S. foreign affairs spending by roughly a third. The White House called for the elimination of entire accounts such as “food for peace” and “development assistance,” and pushed highly-consequential reductions in programs including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and contributions to United Nations peacekeeping.

Congress has already brokered a two-year budget agreement that bears little resemblance to Trump’s proposal, rendering it more a statement of the administration’s values than a real spending plan.

Anticipating parallel efforts in Congress, the White House called for the creation of “a new, enhanced U.S. development finance institution that will build the capacity and capability of developing countries and the private sector to drive sustainable change and economic growth, and thereby reduce the need for traditional development assistance, and reduce risks and costs to the American taxpayer.”

Read the full article on the Trump budget by Michael Igoe at Devex International Development