Administration’s words, deeds collide as Tillerson visits Africa
NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK, Kenya — On the outskirts of a sprawling reserve of Kenyan grasslands where endangered animals roam wild, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lavished praise on an Americanfunded forensics lab that tracks down elephantpoachers for prosecution, and urged aggressive action in Africa on conservation.
Yet this month, the Trumpadministration lifted the U.S. ban on importing African elephant trophies, to the dismay of groups that said it sends precisely the wrong message. U.S. words and deeds are colliding as Tillerson travels across Africa. On trade policy, HIV/ AIDS and humanitarian aid, the United States at times seems at odds with itself, muddying efforts to show it wants the continent to flourish and is here to help.
In the case of the elephants, conservationists appeared to have a powerful ally in President Donald Trump, who intervened last year to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from lifting the Obama-era ban on tusks imported from Zambia and Zimbabwe. Trump called the practice a “horror show.”
At the forensics lab at Nairobi National Park, Tillerson agreed Sunday when famed conservationist Richard Leakey warned that the “huge interest” in wildlife products such as elephant and rhinoceros parts was fueling the international trafficking trade.
“That’s really the key ... to shut it all down,” Tillerson said.
But three months after Trump’s move to keep the ban in place, his administration reversed course again, saying elephant trophies could be imported on a “case-by-case basis.” The U.S. agency said it chose that course of action to comply with a court ruling that said the Obama administration failed to follow proper procedure in enacting the original ban.
In Kenya, the newTrump policy fell flat. Paula Kahumbu, an elephant expert and CEO of Wildlife Direct, a leading Kenyan environmental group, said past U.S. support for ban- ning the ivory trade has pushed China and other nations to act as well. “To then say, ‘Oh, but we have a special case for some of our people, they should be allowed to have ivory,’ it totally undermines the U.S. leadership role.”
American leadership has been repeatedly questioned since Trump took office in January 2017 as Washington pulls back from past commitments to NATO, to the United Nations and to aid programs that form the core of U.S. “soft power” diplomacy.
Tillerson’s trip to Kenya was designed in part to highlight the success of PEPFAR, the HIV/AIDS program that has saved millions of lives and helped see the continent through an epidemic that once threatened to wipe out a whole generation.
So HIV/AIDS advocates are scratching their heads at why Trump has proposed cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from PEPFAR. The nonprofit ONE Campaign warned that the cut would lead to hundreds of thousands more people dying of AIDS each year.