Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
‘Let them eat aid’: The error of a ‘Marshall Plan for Africa’
‘Let them eat aid’: The error of a ‘Marshall Plan for Africa’
Apr 26, 2025 12:36 AM

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani has called for Europe to provide an ambitious “Marshall Plan for Africa,” something they have debatedfor more than a decade. The proposed $47 billion aid package would emulate the U.S. plan that purportedly saved much of Europe from embracing Marxism after World War II – but Religion & Liberty Transatlanticauthor Ángel Carmona warns that historical and economic reality may put a damper on the e.

The efficacy and operation of the Marshall Plan, implemented under President Truman in 1948, has long been misunderstood by students on both sides of the Atlantic. Tyler Cowen found that economies that received the greatest amount of U.S. foreign aid had the lowest economic growth from 1947 to 1955. Jeffrey Tucker of FEEhas explainedthe aid did little to benefit indigenous industries:

[T]he aid was used for purchases at distorted prices by American tax dollars in the hands of European governments. … The aid was also used to directly subsidize particular firms in recipient countries, whether or not there were viable markets for their products. Instead, the firms received money because their continued existence would artificially support “full employment” policies. And since American labor union groups were intimately involved in choosing who got the money, the lion’s share went panies with closed union shops, paradoxically restricting the ability of labor markets to readjust to new economic realities. … The result was the largest peacetime transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to corporations until that point in U.S. history.

Clearly, European leaders should not look to this as a blueprint for building an enduring African economy. Government aid of itself cannot lift people out of poverty.

It should also concern people of faith than at least one prominent Europhile leader would like to link the ing “Marshall Plan” to Africa’s “demographic transition.” The lure of foreign funds may be too strong for African leaders to resist pulsory population control.

Instead, Europe should look to reduce economic intervention – in Africa’s economies and its own, writes Carmona in a new essay atR&LT titled “‘A Marshall Plan for Africa’ won’t help Africans; free trade will”:

Deeper,laissez-faireeconomic reforms are the only road to prosperity. At the same time, corruption must be fought efficiently. Botswana is a model, asone of the richestcountries in Africa, theleast corruptAfrican nation, and one of the 34freest economieson the globe (Africa’s second freest).

The most effective way for Europe to help others, Carmona argues, is for its leaders to open its markets to more Africans exports, which are currently locked out of the continent by EU policies.

This kind of change will involve capital – political capital – from EU politicians. It’s easy to ask for money for another government program (especially from those who do not pay taxes). It’s harder to ask Europeans to give up the protective cocoon of policies that regulate their markets, in the process forcing Europeans to pay higher prices for food and forcing African farmers out of a nearby and lucrative market.

After citing abundant economic data to buttress his position, Carmona says that those who support the free market must understand that arguing about efficiency is not enough:

In a hypothetical campaign for agrarian market liberalization, politicians and supporters of libertymust not focus only on GDP statistics and other macroeconomic data. They must reinforce that Europeans would be able to buy cheaper products, since they are currently charged for costly regulations and subsidies, and they can exchange with a wider variety of non-European countries.

Most importantly, from a moral standpoint, as in real life, it’s easy to understand trade is a way to benefit oneself and one’s neighbor. Lower prices free up more capital for other family priorities. At the same time, Africans can begin to expand their export market and purchase more of the necessities of life. Everyone benefits. Trade is a way of giving life to others. On the other mercial boycotts are a way to protest views that we wish to stamp out.

My fellow Europeans e to see trade liberalization as a way to express solidarity with Third World farmers, to lift African people out of property, and to benefit their own families through lower prices. They must see it is a good and moral choice. When morality is engaged, human flourishing will follow.

Read the full essay here.

Estonian Presidency. This photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Is Work a Curse?
Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Humanity was created by God to cultivate and keep God’s creation, which included developing it and protecting it. You see, we were created to be stewards of...
How to Steal a Bike in New York City
Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which...
Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican
Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...
Integral Human Development
The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. (Caritas in Veritate 17) There is a delicate balance between the material and the...
Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Threat to Freedom
Over at the Liberty Law Blog, there is an excellent post titled “Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dialogue of Liberty” by Alan Snyder. Snyder delves into the influence Chambers had on Reagan and how their worldviews differed as well. Many conservatives and scholars felt Chambers’ prediction that the West was on the losing side of history in the battle against Marxism collapsed after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. For many, the ideas of Chambers...
How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist
I have a deep and abiding love for liberty—which is why I find myself so often in disagreement with libertarians. Libertarians love liberty too, of course, but they tend to love liberty a bit differently. I love liberty in an earthy, elemental way. I love liberty because I need it—like I need air and food—for human flourishing. In contrast, the libertarians I’ve encountered tend to love liberty primarily as an abstraction. Indeed, the most ideologically consistent libertarians I know seem...
Obamacare’s Religious Rubes
The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states. Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and...
Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian
Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.” As Bebbington writes, “Acton, a towering intellectual of the later 19th century, was at...
Let’s Change Hearts and Minds (and Laws, Too)
Few clichés are so widespread within the evangelical subculture, says Matthew Lee Anderson, as the notion that our witness must be one of “changing hearts and minds.” In careful hands, the idea is at best ambiguous. At worst it reinforces the sort of interior-oriented individualism that allows for and perpetuates a blissful naivete about how institutions and structures shape our dispositions and thoughts. In less than careful hands, the phrase drives a wedge between law and culture by attempting to...
Constitutional Cases and the Four Cardinal Virtues
Should virtue be a consideration in judicial decisionmaking? Indiana Law Professor R. George Wright makes an intriguing argument for why the four cardinal virtues could be useful in interpreting constitutional cases: Judges typically decide constitutional cases by referring to one or more legal precedents, rules, tests, principles, doctrines, or policies. This Article mends supplementing this standard approach with fully legitimate and appropriate attention to what many cultures have long recognized as the four basic cardinal virtues of practical wisdom or...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved