'Implications of U.S. Foreign Aid Cuts and Reciprocal Tariffs for African Countries - A View from the Global South' - Prof Olabisi D Akinkugbe, University of Dalhousie

Lecture summary: President Trump’s decisive attack on foreign aid and USAID, leading to the restructuring of the latter and the closure of ongoing and future development aid work across the world, has left many vulnerable regions of the world in potential crisis. With some of the funds hitherto allocated to development aid in vulnerable Global South countries reallocated to national economic projects or redirected to support programs that deepen U.S. foreign policy objectives of America First abroad, one thing is clear: economic nationalism, power-based relations, and opposition to the rules-based order is back.

Calculated, unfair, and transactional politics is the name of the game for President Trump’s return to office so far. Whether it is in relation to a developed, developing, or least-developed country, the Trump administration has unapologetically proven that it does not care whose ox is gored. Despite the US Supreme Court ruling, the “Reciprocal Tariff Policy” has disrupted and entrenched the uncertainty in the multilateral trading system that was already confronted with crisis about its own existence, especially the World Trade Organization, and the resulting fragmentation in international trade has further exacerbated the socio-economic and fragile status of developing countries.

Olabisi Delebayo Akinkugbe is the Purdy Crawford Chair in Business Law and Associate Professor at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. Prof Akinkugbe obtained a Ph.D. in law from the University of Ottawa, an LL.M. from the University of Toronto, and an LL.B. from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He previously served as the Viscount Bennett Professor of Law at the Schulich School of Law and was convenor of the annual Viscount Bennett Roundtable on International Economic Law.

In 2024, he was the recipient of the Hannah and Harold Barnett Excellence in Teaching Award.

In this paper, I analyse the multiple implications for developing countries in the African continent.

Chair: Prof Lorand Bartels

This lecture was delivered on 1 May 2026 and is part of the Friday Lunchtime Lecture series.