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Insert here again the Grapes of Wrath quote.
But the Grapes of Wrath quote doesn't even make sense here, right? The US would prefer to give away food to the global South for free. That's one of the things that the US does for soft power. Give food aid to client states to undermine their local agricultural industry (can't compete with free food), make them dependent on your food exports, then make them agree to the conditions of structural adjustment programs.
Am I crazy? Like, the point of USAID was pretty clear, what the hell is going on?
I think its already clear that the majority of the global south is irrelevant now, its the logical conclusion of the end of history people. USAID was a very old initiative from the 60s, its over 60 years old. Trump is ripping off the mask of what was already quite the trend of the last 2 decades imo.
To give a clear example, the Ukraine war issue around Ukrainian grain exports. They tried to claim it was going to poor countries but in reality Ukrainian grain goes to Europe and China and it is Russia who are one of the biggest agricultural exporters e.g grain and fertilizer(biggest in the world even) to the global south. So they completely believed just telling the world it was "Putin's war" as if the global south gives a shit. They maintained the sanctions and did not acknowledge the crisis at all.
If the liberals in charge back then understood soft power, they would have immediately done something to stabilize the global food market. But obviously that is impossible, after all western companies were making huge profits from this inflation too. Maybe they would have understood to e.g not put sanctions on Russian agricultural exports, again though, impossible to imagine. As a result Russia-BRICS and others got a huge amount of free anti-western sentiment because it was clear it was western sanctions to blame.
These people already proved they are not that much smarter than Trump. So IMO the point is the last 1-2 decades of geopolitical conflicts kind of already destroyed US soft power, Trump is only far more blatant about it.
I mean you can even look at Gaza, they could have done a proper theatrics by allowing some form of aid and telling Israel "maybe just keep the genocide to Palestinians only and not the UN staff too, you know the ones we spent decades legitimizing as heroes", but its not like Biden gave a shit either. The concept of USAID soft power is not even effective anymore I'm willing to say probably for years now.