Secretary of State Marco Rubio has laid out a strategic framework to guide American foreign policy and development assistance in keeping with President Trump’s Inauguration Day foreign aid executive order: make America safer, stronger and more prosperous. These objectives feel intuitive to us a nd many Americans. Yet they leave much wiggle room for deciding which policy areas to prioritize and which interventions to fund.  If done right, America’s foreign assistance investments will have a more significant impact and better value for the taxpayer. But if they are poorly implemented, we will be inviting China and Russia to fill the gaps we create, unintentionally making America less safe, weaker and less prosperous. As a one-time foreign aid critic turned reform champion and an expert in the economics of international assistance, we offer here the beginnings of a blueprint for U.S. foreign aid that meets the gravity of the task. Start by breaking your test of assistance programs into theory and evidence.  By theory, does a particular award aim to change a country or region in a way that furthers American interests, and if so, specifically, is it by striving to make America safer, stronger or more prosperous? For evidence, do the award funding interventions yield measurable results or provide a rigorous impact evaluation to produce new, quantifiable results? America is safer when there is less conflict and more positive American sentiment. This translates to fewer terrorists. A dollar spent on properly designed and effective foreign aid (and diplomacy more broadly) saves many more dollars on bullets and boots, leaving more money in American pockets and secondarily furthering our prosperity goals. America is also safer with fewer contagious disease outbreaks, which could lead to the next pandemic. The concept of prosperity is straightforward: It involves increasing employment and earnings for American people and companies, increasing investment opportunities for American companies, improving markets for American goods and lowering prices for Americans to buy everything from food to electronics and clothing. So what makes America stronger, but does not do so strictly by furthering American safety and prosperity? Moral leadership and the view of America as a force for good in the world.  Rubio made this point as a senator when expressing support for humanitarian work because of his Christian values and empathy. He is not alone. In response to disasters, Americans of all stripes open their pocketbooks, moved by a shared humanity and desire to help those in harm’s way.  At a national level, this means maintaining our role as a values-driven, ethical and moral leader. Simply stated, America is great (or strong) when America is good.  We are stronger when we do the right thing for its own sake. The Golden Rule is rooted in countless religions and philosophies.  In the Bible, Matthew 7:12 says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” It does not add, “But make sure you make bank from everything you do.” Recognizing that helping others does make America stronger, many development programs would pass the “theory” test. They should also pass an “evidence” test. It isn’t sufficient to have a nebulous aim — it must also work. This is the challenging part, and doing this right can set the stage for a reimagined foreign aid that is effective and efficient and that serves the national interest.  We must ask about “programmatic efficiency,” not merely to get rid of programs that do not work, but to choose among programs that do as we allocate limited resources to international assistance. When one of us was recently at USAID as chief economist, he would often refer to himself as the “chief tradeoffs officer,” the role of helping budget-holders choose amongst their options to maximize impact.  Critically, when we already have enough evidence to know an intervention works, tracking results should mean measuring the successful delivery of the program. We must be judicious in collecting data, too, and use existing evidence when it is available and informative.  For example, the Development Innovation Ventures program at USAID, which championed more randomized evaluations than the rest of the agency, documented a whopping 17 to 1 return on investment from its past 10 years. Putting this all together, a sketch for guiding foreign aid decisions emerges.  For the “theory” test, for each sector determine the types of programs which, if designed well, satisfy at least one of the three criteria: “safer,” “stronger,” or “more prosperous.” For the “evidence” test, the award should either be measuring its own impact rigorously or be designed based on strong evidence. Many life-saving programs would get a green light under these conditions. Ultimately, the goal for U.S. foreign aid is to support programs that improve American safety, strength or prosperity, that actually work. Getting a zero for either renders the other pointless. Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, served in Congress from 2013 to 2021, during which time he was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Asia Pacific from 2017-2019. He serves as co-chair of the Consensus for Development Reform. Dean Karlan is a professor of economics and finance at Northwestern University and previously served as the chief economist at USAID from 2022 until resigning in 2025. ...read more read less