Trump will expose the fragility of the Gates Foundation
As it turns out, asking the global poor to depend on an unaccountable billionaire for things like public health is a really bad idea
Trump’s re-election signals a further collapse of democracy in favor of lawlessness, selfishness and white supremacy. His incoming administration presents a potential existential threat to humanity, and we should organize ourselves to challenge his administration’s dangerous policies and abuses of power.
Notably, however, Trump may also threaten some of the world’s most important, and most undemocratic, power brokers, including the Gates Foundation. If so, this might be a very thin silver lining in the very, very, very dark clouds approaching with Trump’s second term.
In the same way that liberals have long investigated and criticized right-wing billionaires——a favorite target being the Koch brothers——the ascendant political right now has its bullseye trained on Gates, the revered icon of elite liberalism, who gave at least $50 million to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
A new book by the president of the Heritage Foundation, the architect of “Project 2025” (a kind of conservative visioning document for Trump’s presidency), calls for the dismantling of the Gates Foundation. RFK Jr., who is widely expected to have a place in Trump’s administration (possibly head of Health & Human Services), is one of Gates’s fiercest public critics and even wrote a best-selling book subtitled, “Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” And Vice-President J.D. Vance has called the Gates Foundation, and other liberal-leaning philanthropies, “cancers on American society.”
This rancor, perhaps, is surprising given that Bill Gates has a very long history of working with both Democrats and Republicans, including donating money to candidates from both parties, and even working closely with the federal government during the first Trump administration on Covid. As the pandemic wore on, however, and liberal-leaning institutions worshiped Gates as pandemic expert—-he found a platform for his public health advice everywhere from the New England Journal of Medicine to New York Times to PBS NewsHour to Washington Post—the political right pushed back. At times this took the form of conspiracy theories, other times very reasonable criticism: How was it that a billionaire with no medical training, who holds no political position, was playing such an influential role in a global public health crisis? And why were so many outlets and organizations legitimizing Gates’s influence rather than questioning it?1
The enmity toward Gates from Trump’s political base now animates his incoming administration, which will put the Gates Foundation—and the billions of people touched by its work, including for things like public health—in an extremely precarious position. As one insider at the foundation told me, “Bill Gates’s worst nightmare has finally materialized—Donald J. Trump.”
In the weeks and months ahead, we should expect Bill Gates, following the lead of other tech billionaires, like Jeff Bezos, to look for ways to cravenly kiss the ring and curry favor with Trump, just as Gates has long done with other authoritarian leaders. (Earlier this week, the Gates Foundation announced a philanthropic partnership with Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman, normalizing “Mister Bone Saw” as a humanitarian partner.)
From an accountability perspective, seeing elected leaders assume an antagonistic posture toward Gates is a very good thing. For decades, Gates has sidestepped checks and balances, even as his philanthropic crusades have both subverted democracy and caused enormous harm. This includes a data surveillance effort that potentially jeopardized the privacy of children in public schools, a failed agricultural effort which has presided over growing hunger across many African nations, and a grossly inappropriate role in the pandemic that obstructed access to Covid vaccines.
Gates’s serial, wrong-headed philanthropic interventions carry both social costs and financial costs to taxpayers—in the tens of billions of dollars. This includes money we spend cleaning up Gates’s messes, and also money governments spend subsidizing his foundation’s projects.
Much of the work the Gates Foundation does is not actually funded by Bill Gates’s personal wealth; it’s funded by public wealth—-by us, the taxpayers. Tens of billions of dollars from governments around the world flow into Gates’s charitable empire, including, for example, at least $7 billion in pledges from the United States government to Gavi, a vaccine procurement mechanism founded by Gates—-and whose board of directors include the Gates Foundation and pharmaceutical giant Merck. Gavi has positioned itself as a central figure in the public health of poor nations, but it’s not a public institution. It’s a private body, which is deeply unaccountable and non-transparent—even as its budget, overwhelmingly, comes from taxpayers.
These kinds of Gates-led organizations have become enormously powerful on the global stage not because they are the best and most efficient way to solve problems, like vaccine access. Rather, they thrive because Bill Gates, his foundation, and his partners aggressively pressure government leaders to financially subsidize and politically support them. It’s worth repeating: the Gates Foundation is not a philanthropy. It is an unregulated political actor, shaping government spending and priorities both at home and abroad.
There are better and worse ways to challenge this power. If Trump were to dismantle the Gates Foundation overnight—-or suddenly de-fund the organizations the foundation directs, like Gavi—-this would likely cause an enormous amount of damage because so many people today depend on the foundation’s largesse. If the foundation collapsed tomorrow, this would have serious effects on the ability of many poor nations to access pharmaceuticals (including vaccines and contraceptives). It would significantly hurt the research infrastructure of many universities. American schools would be impacted because so many educational initiatives have been carefully organized around Gates’s money.
The fact that so many organizations and institutions and people have become dependent on Gates, however, is not a rationalization to maintain the status quo and perpetuate the foundation’s undemocratic control; it’s a clear signal that we must change directions. Many actors, scholars and writers on the political left, and many non-partisan experts, have long challenged Gates’s charitable model. As one of many examples, Olusoji Adeyi, president of Resilient Health Systems (and formerly an executive with the World Bank), has called for Gavi to sunset out of existence by 2030, ending the culture of dependency in which poor nations organize their public health around “narcissistic charity.”
While liberal-centrists continue to champion and exalt Bill Gates as a force of good, the reality is that many, if not most, people outside that shrinking bubble—-on the left and the right—-see him as a money-in-politics problem, if not an example of oligarchy. Liberals will spend the next four years mocking and ridiculing Trump, but they should be focusing this energy on creating a viable alternative to challenge him—a political platform that is actually progressive, that, for example, is willing to aggressively re-organize our economy to end extreme wealth. This, necessarily, means challenging Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.
In a sober, rational world, Congress would have, long ago, worked in a bipartisan manner to limit and regulate the Gates Foundation, to prevent it from becoming so large and powerful—-if for no other reason than because of how fragile the foundation’s influence is, and how much liability it presents. Just as a practical matter, isn’t it obvious that it’s a bad idea to allow a billionaire, who has no constituents or mandate, who is subject to virtually no checks and balances, to have so much influence? What happens when this billionaire changes his mind? Or if he suddenly dies? What happens when the political tides radically change—-when a disrupter like Trump is elected?
We’re about to find out.
The last time our federal government seriously challenged philanthropy—-more than 50 years ago—-the champion of this reform movement was right-winger Wright Patman, described by the Urban Institute as a “fiery populist” and “committed isolationist and racist,” who “opposed liberal foundations for their work promoting internationalism and civil rights.”
Sound familiar? Isn’t that the political personality, more or less, driving the Trump administration’s animus toward the Gates Foundation?
“For all Patman’s theatrics,” reports the Urban Institute (which, it’s worth noting, has received at least $78 million from the Gates Foundation), “the investigations that he initiated through the select committee that he chaired did uncover substantial abuse among foundations. These revelations…fueled a desire among legislators to pursue a more aggressive regulatory stance toward foundations.”
The years ahead will show whether the Trump administration can get out of its own way and lead successful reforms like Patman did decades ago. There is ample reason to doubt Trump’s competency and motivation, and to worry that his actions will be aimed at causing harm rather than bringing new checks and balances. And, of course, we should never be deluded into believing that Trump is a force of good, a champion of democracy, or someone who is interested in taking on the billionaire class.
But we must also bring this same skepticism to the Gates Foundation, which, working its army of paid allies, will make sky-is-falling claims that any effort to regulate its power will translate into lives being lost. We must move beyond the self-rationalizing pablum that some ’greater good’ is served by having undemocratic billionaires like Bill Gates roaming the Earth, directing public policy. We must move beyond juvenile justifications of the Gates Foundation’s grotesque flaws—-the perfect being the enemy of the good, etc.—-and honestly confront the great harm Bill Gates is causing, and the great threat that he, and all billionaires, present to democracy.
If the Trump administration wants to bring some level of accountability to the Gates Foundation, or if the Democrats ever find the mettle to step up to the plate and challenge the myth of the ‘good billionaire,’ there are endless avenues to do so. Here are seven (of many) areas that deserve attention, taken from my book, “The Bill Gates Problem.”
—Donald Trump’s private foundation shuttered in 2018 as the New York State attorney general accused it of “functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.” Similar questions have long haunted Bill Gates’s charitable work. Many writers, scholars and activists over the years have raised questions about how Microsoft (where Gates is a founder, advisor and investor) may benefit from the Gates Foundation’s work, for example. Other questions have been raised around the foundation’s extensive financial dealings with Big Pharma. We need a full investigation into Gates’s finances—-examining the non-public details of Gates’s privately held wealth, the Gates Foundation’s endowment, and the Gates’s charitable spending—- to understand how extensively the money overlaps. Any evidence of financial conflicts of interest should generate sanctions, penalties or a (careful) dismantling of the foundation.
—The Gates Foundation, though it is a non-profit, tax-privileged philanthropy, exercises far-reaching influence over private markets, including in areas like pharmaceutical development. Sources close to the foundation I’ve interviewed say this influence is not just inappropriate but, in practice, it is anti-competitive. Just as the federal government investigated the destructive market influence of Microsoft under Bill Gates in the 1990s, it should now investigate similar allegations the Gates Foundation faces. Likewise, clear lines must be delineated between philanthropy and private commerce.
—Many practitioners, experts, scholars and activists are challenging the effectiveness and appropriateness of the public-private partnerships at the heart of the Gates Foundation, like Gavi. We should either radically re-organize—and democratize— these bodies, or carefully, deliberately transition public funding away from them, pivoting toward public-oriented efforts built on transparency and accountability.
—Philanthropies are supposedly barred from engaging in politics, like lobbying or campaign contributions, but the Gates Foundation’s expansive interaction with government officials and elected leaders (including Donald Trump during his first presidential administration) clearly signals a need for new rules, or a new era of rule enforcement.
—Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation benefit from billions of dollars in taxpayer support—tax breaks given to Bill Gates for his charitable gifts; taxpayer co-funding of Gates’s initiatives like Gavi; and virtually tax-free investment income for the Gates Foundation’s $75 billion endowment. All of these tax benefits should be ended immediately. Less helpfully, Congress could give new funding to the IRS (or another government body) to regulate the activities of philanthropy, making sure they are deserving of tax free status, that they are actually delivering public goods.
—The Gates Foundation trades in billions of dollars in dark money, making it impossible for the public to fully follow the money or see the full scope of its political influence. New rules need to be put in place (and enforced) to bring transparency to the Gates Foundation and other philanthropies.
—We can’t have strong democracies without strong journalism, and the Gates Foundation has powerfully weakened the ability of journalists to do their jobs. By broadly funding the news media—hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, at times in a non-transparent manner—Gates has created widespread financial conflicts of interest that diminish the independence of journalists. At the very least, the Gates Foundation should be required to transparently disclose the specific details of all its financial engagements with the news media—something it has historically refused to do.
Not only did the political right come to distrust and detest Gates, but they also raised questions about the vaccines that Gates was helping develop, distribute, and promote. If the liberal-centrist news media had done its job—-challenging Gates’s undemocratic influence over the pandemic, instead of legitimizing him as an expert—this would have created a more rational discourse around Gates, and the pandemic, itself. And it would have, to some degree, helped limit vaccine skepticism, and the conspiracy theories that come with it.