| Summary/Abstract |
In the aftermath of the 1970s, the United States’ foreign assistance program posed a particular challenge to free-market policymakers. For Peter McPherson, senior consultant to the presidential campaign of then-Governor Ronald Reagan in the spring of 1980, the question of how to optimize aid would be crucial to rethinking U.S. bilateralism. In a report envisioning “A Cheaper and More Effective Foreign Aid Program,” he argued that “the U.S. foreign aid program should be changed to emphasize self-help and technology transfer rather than resource transfer. Studies have shown a higher ‘rate of return’ for ‘investments’ in the self-help/technology transfer programs.” The change in emphasis, McPherson continued, would be consistent with the emerging ideology of Reaganism, although the presidential hopeful should still be “sensitive to the fact that U.S. business provides most of the goods included in resource transfers.”
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