United States foreign aid

United States foreign aid, also known as US foreign assistance consists of a variety of tangible and intangible forms of assistance the United States gives to other countries. Foreign aid is used to support American national security and commercial interests and can also be distributed for humanitarian reasons.^[3] Aid is financed from US taxpayers and other revenue sources that Congress appropriates annually through the United States budget process. It is dispersed through "over 20 U.S. government agencies that manage foreign assistance programs,"^[4] although about half of all economic assistance is channeled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The primary recipients of American foreign aid are developing countries, countries of strategic importance to the United States, and countries recovering from war. While the United States has given aid to other countries since 1812, government-sponsored foreign aid was expanded during World War II, with the current aid system implemented in 1961.^[5] The largest aid programs of the post-war period were the Marshall Plan of 1948 and the Mutual Security Act of 1951-61.

Quantitatively, the United States spends the most on foreign aid of any country; however, as a percent of GDP, American foreign aid spending ranks near the bottom compared to other developed countries.^[5] Foreign aid typically receives bipartisan support in Congress^[6] as it is seen to promote global economic development and in turn, American national security.^[5] However, foreign aid remains unpopular with the American public,^[7] possibly due to overestimations of the scale of aid spending by the federal government.^[8]