As USAID flops, Atlas Network shows how to foster international development

Elon Musk is helping President Donald J. Trump reign in profligate, reckless, and corrupt federal spending via the new Department of Government Efficiency.

Democrats are not amused.

Left-wing domestic terrorists have responded by firing bullets into the windshields of electric vehicles at Musk's Tesla dealerships. They have torched Tesla charging stations, set Teslas ablaze in parking lots, and used Molotov cocktails to ignite multiple Teslas Tuesday morning beside a Las Vegas showroom.

Devolving into the party of arson is unwise for Democrats, especially after last month's Harvard-Harris survey found that 76% of U.S. voters support chopping waste and fraud from federal expenditures. One need not be Milton Friedman to be enraged by what DOGE uncovered in Haiti: Since 2010, USAID has made some $2 billion in grants tied to that star-crossed Caribbean nation. Only 2% of these funds actually reached Haitian companies and organizations.

Inefficiency is one thing. When Haitians see a mere $40 million of a $2 billion outlay, this smacks of money laundering.

USAID's tragicomic global antics contrast with the fine work of private-sector, non-profit organizations that spur international development without incinerating tax dollars.

The Arlington, Virginia-based Atlas Network partners with more than 500 independent think tanks and civil-society organizations in America and 101 countries worldwide. This 501(c)(3) supports these groups from afar as they leverage local expertise to reduce government barriers to upward mobility. (Full disclosure: I have been an active supporter of and senior fellow with Atlas Network since 1994.)

Rather than give the poor fish or teach them to fish, this 100% privately funded foundation empowers local champions of liberty to build "fisheries" that feed communities via the free market. Unlike America's federal foreign-aid apparatus, Atlas Network's formula recognizes, rewards, and reinforces grassroots groups rather than often-counterproductive, top-down Western directives and Beltway-driven nonsense.

Whereas USAID spent $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid "binary-gender language," Atlas Network has paid roughly $600,000 since 2015 to that south-Asian country's Advocata Institute. After a devastating debt crisis fueled hunger among the poor and prompted others to flee, Advocata Institute persuaded policymakers to implement a pro-market platform that reformed state-owned enterprises; removed price controls on products like cement, petroleum gas, and wheat; and reduced tariffs on everything from maize to feminine-hygiene products.

In Latin America, USAID blew taxpayers' hard-earned dollars on gendermania, including $47,000 to produce a transgender opera in Colombia and $2 million for a transgender comic book in Peru. The 48% of Peruvians who lack safe drinking water, according to Water.org, must think: "We're dying of thirst, but thank God for The Adventures of SupermanSuperwoman."

Since 2012, Atlas Network has assisted Colombia's Instituto de Ciencia Política Hernán Echavarría Olózaga with approximately $250,000. ICPHEO has protected the rule of law and rural private property. It stopped legislative and executive actions that undermined property rights, threatened constitutional safeguards for land ownership, and decelerated investment and economic growth.

Uncle Sam's $7.6 million in Argentina since 2001 includes $55,750 for a "climate-change" presentation to empower female and "LGBT" journalists. (Research this: Does carbon dioxide affect the gay gene?)

In contrast, Atlas Network backed Fundación Libertad y Progreso with about $650,000 since 2012. It helped President Javier Milei and the Argentine government pursue executive-branch reform, deregulate, privatize, and slash monthly inflation from 25.5% in December 2023, when Milei arrived, to 2.2% in January.

USAID spent $71 million in Mexico in 2023, much of it for a parade of media projects. Meanwhile, Atlas Network bolstered Estudiantes por la Libertad Latinoamérica with a $12,000 grant. ELL has taught more than 6,000 people entrepreneurship and other free-market values. What does more to advance liberty, subsidizing media elites or teaching everyday Mexicans to start their own companies?

Atlas Network counts 270 such public-policy victories last year by the institutions in its orbit. These triumphs increased freedom and prosperity at low cost, with private money, and not even one transgender opera in the mix.

© 2025 Deroy Murdock