Executive Director, The New Foreign Assistance. Ex-USAID foreign service. Suburban Dad. Native plant yard. @Backcountry_H_A
Cheverly, MD
Joined September 2015
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Daniel Handel retweeted
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
Of course conservatives should be against the death penalty. As the indominable @GeorgeWill noted long ago, the death penalty is a government program. Of course it's implemented poorly.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
Daniel Handel retweeted
Why is Switzerland 🇨🇭 so rich?
Its GDP per person was about 27% higher than America’s in 2025 (measured in US dollars).
Switzerland has a president, but the job comes with far less power than the title suggests.
Its national government is run by seven members of the Federal Council, each responsible for a department. One serves as president for a year, but does not become the boss of the other six.
And much of the power stays closer to home.
The country has 26 cantons (think of them as states), each with its own constitution, parliament and courts. Within the national constitution, they have substantial authority over things like schools and policing, and set their own tax rates.
So people and businesses can compare what different cantons offer. They can move to another canton without leaving Switzerland. That gives officials a reason to care about whether taxes and public services are worth what people pay.
It also lets cantons try different approaches and learn from each other, instead of making the whole country wait for one national plan.
Citizens can challenge federal laws through referendums, too. Winning an election does not give politicians the final word on everything.
Switzerland has ranked near the top for economic freedom year after year. It placed 4th worldwide in @FraserInstitute’s latest report (2025, using 2023 data), after placing 3rd in both the 2023 and 2024 editions.
There is a lesson here for Africa.
We spend so much time hoping the next leader will save us.
It would be far healthier to have systems where people have more choices, and fewer decisions about their future depend on whoever holds the highest office.
The three green transition drivers:
1. Fracking displacing coal.
2. Germany subsidies driving Chinese firms quickly down their solar production cost curves
3. Trump Admin deregulating nuclear
Fair or no?
Daniel Handel retweeted
"But waking up does not imply despairing, or proposing the overthrow of the System, if the System is in fact over the long run enriching the poor, or at any rate enriching the poor better than those other systems that have been tried from time to time.
Righteous, if inexpensive, indignation inspired by survivor’s guilt about alleged “victims” of something called “capitalism,” and envious anger at the silly consumption by the rich, does not invariably yield betterment for the poor.
Remarks such as “there are still poor people” or “some people have more power than others,” though claiming the ethical high-ground for the speaker, are neither deep nor clever.
Repeating them, or nodding wisely at their repetition, or buying Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century to display on your coffee table, does not make you a good person.
You are a good person if you actually help the poor.
Open a business. Invest in a grocery store in an urban food desert. Invent a new battery. Vote for better schools. Adopt a Pakistani orphan. Volunteer to feed people at Grace Church on Saturday mornings.
The offering of counterproductive policies, or the making of indignant declarations to your husband after finishing an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, does not help the poor."
Daniel Handel retweeted
It’s quite simple: One side longs for peace, the other wants annihilation.
Same questions. Tel Aviv and the West Bank.
Zach asked Palestinians, then Israelis, the exact same thing: can there be peace?
#zachsagefox #israel #palestine #streetinterview
Daniel Handel retweeted
Foreign aid is being slashed across the rich world.
That makes every remaining dollar more precious.
Yet more than a third of development money has been diverted to climate finance.
Instead, let's spend scarce aid where it saves the most lives.
youtube.com/watch?v=oWCXCXjU…
Daniel Handel retweeted
I asked John H. Cochrane the simplest question I could think of. How do you get economic growth? His answer: mind the store, get out of the way, let the innovation happen. When problems show up, regulate on the evidence. Then he adds the part that stings... nobody ever won an election with that. @JohnHCochrane on Scaling Theory.
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=3wvdfg3R…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/500…
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcas…
Daniel Handel retweeted
I regret to inform Zohran Mamdani and the DSA that the Center-Left has officially found their short-form video content champion.
Emma Camp just might save America. 🇺🇸
If you want evidence that capitalism is a force for good, just visit a grocery store.
My ode to the humble American supermarket, for @WSJFreeEx
Daniel Handel retweeted
Why are so many women sooo angry? They won. They got everything they wanted. Men have never been doing this badly, and women have never been doing this well. They make more, they have the majority of jobs, they are the majority of college graduates, (UCLA undergrad is 60% female), they make more money, have much lower rates of suicide, addiction, and alcoholism, and live longer. They won: they took over all men-only spaces, they took over the Boy Scouts, they ended men’s bathrooms, they can fly fighter planes and be in combat. Marriage is optional, divorce is no-fault, they win 99% of the custody battles, they can control fertility at will, and they can’t get drafted. We are all living in the female future they promised.
Democrats Are Failing the Waymo Test - The Atlantic theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…
The worst thing about the AI discourse is the use of the word "compute". Surely the grammatically correct thing to say is, "AI relies on adding a lot of computING POWER" not "AI relies on adding a lot of compute".
Of course AGI superintelligence can clean up the tech bros' grammar soon enough.
Daniel Handel retweeted
Excited to share our new working paper: how much did the US standard of living really rise over the twentieth century — and when? With @bhwittenbrink
Using 5.1 million Sears catalog listings, we build a quality-adjusted price index for consumer goods, 1900–1990. Two headline findings: growth was much larger than official statistics imply, and its peak came before WWII, not after. (1/9)
Daniel Handel retweeted
I wrote about the issue of the Democratic Socialists of America and communism twice this week, but I didn’t fully scratch the itch. So here’s a thread. 1/
thedispatch.com/newsletter/g…
thedispatch.com/article/demo…
I overheard some younger colleagues saying they would never root for “colonizer” France over Morocco.
I was tempted to remind them of the Barbary pirates enslaving 1m Europeans, the Saadi dynasty sacking Timbuktu, and the current day monarchy.
Just noticed the One Medical app has a “manage your family” button.
They should totally market that….
I’m pleased to announce the launch of The New Foreign Assistance.
The @StateDept is rebuilding how America does foreign aid. This creates a rare opportunity to build a system that is less bureaucratic, less top-down, more cost-effective, more focused on economic growth and therefore more capable of producing transformational results.
The New Foreign Assistance is built to meet that moment.
Our goal is straightforward: by the end of this administration, the @StateDept will have a well-functioning assistance apparatus that directs resources toward targeted programs that solve big challenges and help countries grow through private-sector investment.
Success will also mean a shift in the conventional wisdom. “Foreign assistance” will not mean a system that ponderously produces thousands of complex procurements for programs that at best produce marginal improvements for a small number of households. Instead, we will see an approach that works with governments, entrepreneurs, and civil society on ambitious programs capable of changing nations’ trajectories from recipients to self-sufficient partners.
I’m excited to devote myself to this effort alongside an excellent governing board and advisory council that includes: @Parthion, @danielduman, @jwingateburks, @SoniaMCavallo, @danrunde, @dookhony, @TiborPNagyJr, @LantPritchett, @BruceWydick Randall Tift, Joseph Mandelbaum, Christopher Coyne, Richard Anthony Gallenstein, Luke Murry, Nathaniel Soule, and other experienced leaders from government, Congress, economics, development and the private sector.
Learn more and sign up for our newsletter at: thenewforeignassistance.org
