Bill Gates’ latest challenge: Trump
The billionaire philanthropist says ‘America First’ may hurt funding of global initiatives
SUNNYVALE, CALIF. The evolution of Bill Gates has seen the Microsoft co-founder master technology and philanthropy. Now he may need to conquer diplomacy.
For the first time since creating the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, the billionaire pow- er couple find themselves in the role of convincing governments why funding global health initiatives are in the nation’s best interest.
In interviews with USA TODAY, both expressed deep concern over the inward-looking nature of the newly elected governments in the USA and Great Britain.
“If you interpret America First (the stated doctrine of President Trump) in certain ways, it would suggest not prioritizing the stabil- ity of Africa and American leadership in Africa,” Gates, 61, told USA TODAY during a visit to Silicon Valley, weeks after arguing that point in a private meeting with the then-president-elect.
“With this new crowd, and with some of things they want to do fiscally, it just means we’re going to have to tell the story of how amazing this work is,” he said.
The Gateses worry a new nationalist view in these two global powerhouses could jeopardize the $30 billion and $16 billion in foreign aid respectively that, when combined with the founda-
tion’s $40 billion endowment, are critical to preventing deaths in poor countries.
The foundation’s latest annual letter, out Tuesday, lays out the concern bluntly: “We hope this story will remind everyone why foreign aid should remain a priority, because improving lives abroad is in our own national interest as well as the world’s.”
The pointed reference to the new political climate is a detour from the foundation’s typical letters — a sign of how the shake-up in administrations in the USA and the United Kingdom, which voted to leave the European Union, ripples across many sectors, from manufacturing to philanthropy.
“Governments have to look outward,” Melinda Gates said by phone. “The message we are giving is, we are a global community. Ebola came here. When we help the world, peace and security also shows up on our doorstep.”
Melinda noted that the purposes of big government and private sector donations aren’t to create an infinite loop of charity.
“You don’t make these donations forever,” she said, alluding to the fact that she and her husband hope to give away their wealth within their lifetimes. “We are starting countries on a path. When you do the right thing for people in terms of health and agriculture and banking, you lift people out of poverty. South Korea used to be a recipient of aid from the world, and now they’re a donor country to the world. So we need to make these investments.”
They leaned on numbers to state their case.
Those include: 122 million (the number of children’s lives saved through vaccines and nutrition), 300 million (the number of women in the developing world using modern contraceptives, up 50% from 2003), 35 (the number of polio cases) and zero (the target the foundation has for cases of AIDS/HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other killer diseases).
“If you want to improve the world meaningfully in aggregate, with 2 billion very poor people, you have to think numerically,” Gates said.
“If you say, ‘I helped this guy and that guy,’ well that’s wonderful and connects to your heart, but given the size of our resources, we had to try and dramatically raise the health of all poor children in the world,” he said. “So that 122 million (lives saved since 1990), that’s the biggest impact we’ve had.”
The foundation’s letter starts with the words “Dear Warren” and is penned as an accounting of actions to investor and close Gates mentor Warren Buffett.
Gates said the United Kingdom’s annual foreign aid package, which, compared with the size of that country’s economy, dwarfs the United States’ 1% contribution, hangs in the balance as the anti-European Union-leaning government of Theresa May takes the reins.
In the USA, Gates is concerned that the new administration’s agenda could jeopardize a historically bipartisan commitment to global health.
That troubles him because “when you commit to bring lowcost HIV drugs to people (under a program started by President George W. Bush, PEPFAR, President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief ), there’s kind of a promise you’re not going to cut it off,” he said.
Gates reported that during his meeting with Trump in the weeks before the inauguration, the New York businessman was attentive.
“He admires people who are successful, so he couldn’t have been nicer and he listened,” he said. “But he has a lot of people around him” who could influence his policies.
In some ways, Gates sounded pessimistic about his ability to sell Trump and other officials on the importance to the United States of a stable and healthy Third World population.
“The budget is particularly tight, people are talking about increasing defense (spending), lowering taxes, interest costs will be higher,” he says. “So when you look at it mathematically you say, ‘Will the saving of millions of lives for less than $100 a year of drugs, will the U.S. continue to do that?’ It’s not clear where we’re headed.”
But the tech titan cautions against misreading that sober calculus. “I’m certainly optimistic,” he says. “We have the benefit of science. We will create an HIV vaccine, even it’s likely a decade from now. We’ll get a malaria vaccine, a TB (tuberculosis) vaccine. So all this scientific stuff we’re doing doesn’t go backwards. An election does not cause our vaccines to stop working all of a sudden. It’s all accretive.”
“When we help the world, peace and security also shows up on our doorstep.” Melinda Gates