This Thursday at the White House, President Donald Trump again engaged in a feat of irony. He formally signed the “Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative” into existence, which his daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump announced late Wednesday as a program to organize and push forward the U.S. government’s efforts to support women all around the world.
TRUMP & WOMEN: Pres. Trump celebrates the launch of Ivanka's Women's Global Development & Prosperity Initiative. The initiative is funded by the Agency for International Development, whose budget Trump has repeatedly tried to slash
Posted by NowThis Politics on Thursday, February 7, 2019
The initiative, otherwise known as W-GDP, will utilize a $50 million fund from the United States Agency for International Development, otherwise known as USAID, whose funding the Trump administration has repeatedly sought to cut alongside other key global development agencies like the State Department itself.
That’s not even where the irony ends. In one of the very first acts of his administration, Trump signed a renewed version of the so-called Mexico City Policy into existence, which bans global health services providers from presenting abortion as an option in any fashion whatsoever if they receive U.S. government funds. Although the so-called “Global Gag Rule” has been in place under previous Republican administrations, the Trump team geared up to enforce the restrictions on groups receiving American money for anything from family planning to treating diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, going further than before — and threatening billions of dollars worth of aid around the world.
In other words, the size of the W-GDP program’s fund pales in comparison to the drawback the Trump administration has already threatened. The situation is similar to when the president touted a Chinese commitment to buy an unspecified amount of American agricultural products when American farmers had already been put hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole thanks to the trade wars his punitive tariffs started.
The W-GDP program is meant to allow for recipients of U.S. aid to become “self-reliant and trading partners with the United States,” Ivanka Trump explained during the signing ceremony for the program’s creation in the Oval Office this Thursday — perhaps making the almost positive sheen of the program fit more clearly into the Trump administration’s agenda. After all, we all know how dearly the Trumps prize their foreign trade.
President Trump himself didn’t say much during the program’s Oval Office launch, instead simply deferring to comments from people around the room, including Ivanka, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton. Pompeo and Bolton explained the program as an important part of the Trump administration’s national security strategy because economic security would supposedly insulate people from militant ideologies.
The program is meant to target 50 million women in developing countries around the world by 2025, Ivanka has explained.
‘This new initiative will for the first time coordinate America’s commitment to one of the most undervalued resources in the developing world — the talent, ambition, and genius of women.’
Ironically, her father sought to claim credit for women’s empowerment efforts just this week too. During his State of the Union address, he pointed to an increased number of women in the workforce and more specifically in Congress as if his administration has something to do with the developments.
It doesn’t. The vast majority of female members of Congress are women — and overall, the legacy of the Trump administration is pretty clear.
Featured Image via Screenshot from the Video
