The Trumpian right has long disdained spending on foreign aid as a waste of money, despite the fact that we spend very little on it, a little more than 1% of GDP. But as the self-declared pro-business party, Republicans should understand sales and marketing expenses. Businesses at different phases in their growth arcs have different expectations for sales and marketing expenses. Start ups spend more, mature businesses spend less, maybe 2-10% as a rule of thumb. Democracy US-style is obviously by now a pretty mature business (though it may behoove us to take a cue from Amazon's annual letter and try to adopt a perennial "Day 1" mindset).
If we take the very cynical view that US diplomacy and aid are all about selling and marketing democracy and societies based on rules and principles as opposed to doing good, all of a sudden the equation changes. What we get for our expenses is a halo and greater international interoperability, people who want to come here to live thus lowering our talent acquisition costs -- especially for higher value add functions like innovation. We also get countries who want to buy our debt because they see us as stable and legitimate.
Oh yeah, and we save lives and do the right thing.
But Trump and Vance have instead decided to hand victory to China by saying that international relations are all about deals and raw power, no values. The whole world loses.
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