Is the U.S. ceding global influence to China?

Malacañang welcomed good news earlier this week with the confirmation by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Trump administration’s lifting of the freeze on aid to the Philippines, this after President Donald Trump had ordered the freezing of nearly all foreign assistance when he took office on 20 January.

DFA spokesperson Ma. Teresita Daza on Monday said the agency received notification from Washington that it had issued a waiver on “a portion” of the foreign military financing for the Philippines. This jibes with earlier reports from Washington pointing to a list of exemptions from Trump’s foreign aid freeze order and identifying programs to be funded.

The list includes 243 exemptions as of 13 February totaling $5.3 billion, the majority — over $4.1 billion — allotted to programs under the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs which oversees arms sales and military assistance to various countries and groups.

The exemptions included $870 million for security programs in Taiwan, $21.5 million for body armor and armored vehicles for Ukraine’s national police and border guards, and $336 million for modernizing Philippine security forces, which is short of the $500 million pledged by the US government in 2024 under then President Joe Biden, to help finance the modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine Coast Guard.

Meanwhile, among the largest of the limited number of non-security exemptions on the list was $500 million for PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for Aid Relief), the flagship US program against HIV/AIDS.

PEPFAR is one of the biggest and arguably most successful USAID programs that funds healthcare services in some 50 countries, including Africa, and is credited with saving more than 25 million lives since its launch in 2003.

In the Philippines, PEPFAR has provided over P2 billion since 2020 in support of the Philippine HIV response.

Leading Philippine HIV advocacy group, Red Whistle, said PEPFAR had committed P875 million more until 2026 before Trump’s aid freeze order.

“PEPFAR funding has been instrumental in providing treatment and preventive services and a reduction in funding poses challenges for the Philippines in reaching targets and could hinder efforts to curb the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the Asia Pacific region,” said Red Whistle in a statement.

As of the second quarter of 2024, the Philippines was recording as many as 58 new HIV cases daily, according to a report by the Department of Health’s epidemiology bureau released in October 2024. The report forecast that by the end of 2024, there would be 215,400 people living with AIDS in the country.

Trump’s drastic moves, from the dismantling of such agencies as the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has long played an effective crucial role in propagating American “soft power” across the world, and the mass firing of federal workers, including those doing highly technical specialized work involving defense and security, are raising concerns among experts and lawmakers about whether the US is ceding its global influence to its rivals, particularly at a time when Washington is fretting over Beijing’s growing clout at the cost of American interests.

“China doesn’t even need to fight for their influence around the world now, because of our own effort,” said Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey.

Former US security officials, including those who served in Trump’s first term, have also expressed alarm after the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds science research, fired 170 people in response to President Trump’s order to reduce the federal workforce

Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other former US national security officials have warned that China is outpacing the US in critical technology fields and urged the US Congress to increase funding for federal scientific research.

The NSF is reportedly eyeing laying off hundreds more and slashing the agency’s budget by billions.

A letter addressed by the former officials to Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and House Speaker Mike Johnson urged Congress to provide at least $16 billion to the NSF this year.

They singled out support for the NSF’s Technology Innovation and Partnerships Directorate established in 2022 which they said is crucial to transforming research into practical applications vital to US military capabilities and economic strength.

Signatories to the letter, including Chris Miller, who was acting defense secretary during Trump’s first term, and Doug Fears, Trump’s former homeland security adviser, pointed out that between 2003 and 2007, China had led the world in just three of 64 critical technologies. Today, China leads in 57 of those technologies.

“The Chinese are making significant strategic investments in basic and applied research and positioning China to outpace us in critical areas that could determine the outcome of future conflicts,” warned the officials.

“This is a race that we simply cannot afford to lose,” they stressed.