Remarks by Under Secretary William Kimmitt at the Trade Over Aid Launch Event

April 27, 2026

New York, New York

As Delivered

It's a privilege to be here with so many distinguished foreign officials, business leaders, and industry representatives. The Trade Over Aid Initiative advances a practical and needed vision for economic development.

This initiative rests on a simple but powerful idea: Lasting prosperity is not built on permanent dependency.

It's built through domestic development, innovation, production, investment, and the capacity of sovereign nations to create prosperity for their own people.

For too long, too much of the international development conversation has prioritized aid over the development of the real capabilities that aid was meant to support: productive capacity; modern infrastructure; private enterprise; and self-sustaining growth.

Aid can serve a purpose, but no nation ever became prosperous because it was permanently dependent on aid. Nations become prosperous when they produce, trade, build, invest, innovate, and compete. That's the foundation of this initiative.

But I want to be clear about what we're NOT saying.

When we say Trade Over Aid, we aren't grounding that idea in the faulty assumption that simply expanding global access to the U.S. market and consumer will allow the invisible hand of Adam Smith to do the rest. That has proven to be insufficient and ill-advised.

Too many of our trading partners have distorted global markets through subsidies, state direction, forced technology transfer, weak regulatory enforcement, non-market behavior, and other practices that prevent true free, fair, and reciprocal trade.

And those distortions have not only harmed the United States and American workers. They have also stunted the development of trading partners that could otherwise build more productive industries, attract investment, and rise through fair competition.

Free market principles are the right foundation. But they aren't self-executing. They work when nations demonstrate their commitment to those principles through action, build institutions to sustain them, and choose partners committed to the same rules of fair and reciprocal trade and investment.

So the message of Trade Over Aid is not that a country should simply declare itself open for business, affirm abstract principles, and then hope growth follows. And it's not that the United States can simply open its market and produce prosperity abroad by itself.

The message is that sovereign nations should build the conditions for enterprise, investment, and production-and that the United States is ready to work with partners who are serious about making those commitments and delivering real outcomes.

Under President Trump, our policy is unquestionably America First. Every decision we make must begin with the interests of American workers, American companies, American communities, and American citizens.

But America First does not mean America only. It doesn't mean America exclusively.

It means the United States enters the world with clarity about our interests, confidence in our values, and a determination to build partnerships that are strong, fair, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial.

We understand that America is stronger when our friends and partners are stronger. We're stronger when other nations modernize along free-market lines. We're stronger when our allies have resilient infrastructure, reliable energy, secure supply chains, and growing private sectors. We're stronger when countries choose American technology, American equipment, American engineering, American finance, and American standards as they build their own future.

At the Department of Commerce, this is the work we do every day. Our teams around the world help American companies compete and win in foreign markets. We work with governments that want to modernize their infrastructure, expand their industrial base, improve and secure their technology sectors, strengthen their energy systems, and grow their economies.

Last year, Commerce's Advocacy Center helped secure a record shattering $244 billion in commercial contracts for American companies in foreign markets. These are not abstract ambitions. These are real projects, with real partners, in countries that want to build, modernize, and grow. Those projects support American exports. They support American workers. And they support American technology and manufacturing.

But they also help partner countries build the infrastructure, aerospace systems, energy networks,
digital platforms, and industrial capacity they need for their own development.

That is Trade Over Aid in action. It's not dependency. It's commerce. It's not a one-way transfer. It's mutual benefit.

One example area where there's immense opportunity is in critical minerals-minerals that will be needed for industrial modernization, data center build-outs, advanced technologies, energy systems, defense platforms, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and the infrastructure of the future.

Many countries represented here have enormous mineral wealth. But the opportunity isn't limited solely to what's in the ground. A mine by itself is not a strategy. A country also needs roads, rail, ports, power, water, processing, refining, separation, storage, logistics, and trusted commercial partners.

The United States wants to work with countries that are serious about building these full value chains. We want to work with countries that want investment, not dependency. And we want to do it in a way that benefits American companies and workers while also helping partner countries capture more value from their own resources.

We also meet at a moment when technological modernization is becoming more important than ever.

Artificial intelligence is not a distant concept. It's already reshaping manufacturing, logistics, health care, agriculture, finance, energy, education, and government services.

Countries that adopt AI effectively will be able to improve productivity, strengthen public services, and compete in the industries of the future. Countries that fall behind risk being locked out of the next generation of growth.

President Trump has put forward an ambitious American AI Action Plan. He has also directed the creation of an AI Export Program to help bring American AI technology to partners and allies around the world.

For developing countries, this is a historic opportunity. AI can help farmers increase yields. It can help ports reduce congestion. It can help manufacturers improve quality. It can help governments detect fraud. It can help hospitals expand access. It can help students access world-class tools. It can help entrepreneurs reach customers around the globe.

But again, this will not happen automatically. It will require infrastructure; energy; data centers; trusted vendors; training; and legal and regulatory frameworks that encourage innovation while protecting security.

The United States is ready to work with partners who want to move in that direction. And the right model is not aid-focused. The right model focuses on trade, investment, and partnership.

Nearby in Trenton, New Jersey, there's a famous bridge that reads: "Trenton Makes - The World Takes." That phrase reflected the industrial power of Trenton and of New Jersey at a time when American cities were proud of what they made. They made steel, machinery, wire, and countless other products that powered the American economy and supplied the world.

But over time, through decades of wrongheaded and short-sighted policy, too much of that industrial strength eroded. Too many factories closed. Too many communities were hollowed out. Too many policymakers accepted the idea that production doesn't matter, that trade deficits don't matter, that supply chains don't matter, and that it was acceptable for America to consume what others produced.

President Trump rejected that view. Under his leadership, the United States is rebuilding, reinvesting, and restoring its industrial strength. We're reversing decades of policy that weakened American manufacturing, undermined our workers, and left critical supply chains exposed.

My former boss, Bob Lighthizer, wrote in his book about that Trenton bridge that no bridge would ever boast of a city or country that does the opposite and takes rather than makes.

A nation that only takes becomes dependent on the production, technology, capital, and decisions of others. But a nation that makes has ownership over its future.

That principle is at the heart of Trade Over Aid. No country wants to be known simply as a taker. No nation wants to be permanently defined as a recipient of someone else's prosperity, someone else's production, someone else's technology, or someone else's decisions.

Every sovereign nation wants the dignity of building. Every country wants the opportunity to produce. All citizens want the chance to shape their country's own future.

That's why this initiative matters. The United States doesn't want a world divided between permanent donors and permanent recipients.

We want a world of sovereign nations that trade, invest, build, and prosper together. Of course, we will pursue that vision in a way that serves American interests. We want American companies to win. We want American workers to benefit. We want American technology to lead. We want American investment to be welcomed. We want projects that support our own economic and national security.

But that doesn't make this a zero-sum vision. When developing economies become more prosperous, they become better customers, better investors, better partners, and better allies. This is how shared prosperity is created-not through dependency, but through production and exchange.

The ultimate responsibility must rest with sovereign nations themselves. Each country must chart its own path. Each country must make the choices required to create a pro-growth environment. And for those countries that choose that free market, pro-growth path, the United States wants to partner with you.

Trade Over Aid is not just a slogan. It's an invitation. It's an invitation to governments, businesses, investors, and institutions to rethink the development model around what actually works. Commerce works. Investment works. Production works. Entrepreneurship works. Free markets work when nations take the actions necessary to make them fair, open, reciprocal, and productive.

That's the vision we're launching today. A world where sovereign nations own their development. A world where our partners grow stronger, and America grows stronger with them.

That is Trade Over Aid. And the United States is ready to work with countries who agree.

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