The Washington Post on our work

Adam Taylor covers our challenge to Trump’s foreign policy and the confidential deals the administration is negotiating in place of the health aid it destroyed. We have helped countries stand up and call for better terms. The deals are beginning to change. We do a lot of press, but this article focuses on our recent work and I thought I’d share. – Peter

Washinton Post: Trump administration’s secrecy on health deals alarms experts, governments

A dearth of information has been disclosed about the agreements, fueling speculation that the “America First” approach to foreign aid is exploitative.

April 6, 2026 / Adam Taylor

“…Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, has brought a lawsuit demanding access to some of the administration’s global health agreements, arguing that the State Department’s failure to produce the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request is “unlawful.”

“The agreements’ public disclosure is essential “to understanding the new foreign aid structure” being built by the State Department and what the United States “expects, or extracts, in return,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s access to medicines group.

“… Public Citizen’s Maybarduk said that the strategy seems to be “divide and conquer the partners of the United States.” The Trump administration, he said, “is treating its negotiating partners as hostiles, and treating health aid a bit like conflict, as though every bit of U.S. negotiating advantage must be preserved through secrecy.”

Read Adam’s excellent article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/04/06/trump-global-health-deals/

Resist the Watch List

Business interests lobby the US government to bully developing countries into changing their economic laws and practices so as to favor the commercial interests of multinationals. Unfortunately this can come at the expense of health, education and other sensitive public interests. We are countering the corporations’ analysis and arguing for a more independent US government policymaking that defends global health.

For example, I testified at a recent hearing by the US Trade Representative, criticizing the US Government’s Special 301 “Watch List.” At stake is India’s key role helping facilitate global access to affordable medicines. Read more here.