The Atlantic

'America First' Is Straining Bill Gates's Optimism

The philanthropist still thinks the world is getting better. But he says pulling foreign aid from global-health measures would reverse that trend.
Source: Reuters

Bill Gates isn’t a big fan of “America First.” In a recent episode of The Atlantic Interview, he told Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, “the long-term benefit of [nations] trusting each other, even beyond one or two terms of office, is a pretty gigantic thing.”

That’s not to say Gates is pessimistic about the future. His and Melinda Gates’s Tuesday, is otherwise sunny in its global outlook. Even after 2017, when 59 percent of Americans the APA they were currently living through the lowest point in the nation’s history, the couple wrote that “we see a world that’s getting better.”

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
The Americans Who Need Chaos
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why peop
The Atlantic4 min read
KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago
My KitchenAid stand mixer is older than I am. My dad bought the white-enameled machine 35 years ago, during a brief first marriage. The bits of batter crusted into its cracks could be from the pasta I made yesterday or from the bread he made then. I

Related Books & Audiobooks