PEPFAR is accelerating progress toward controlling the AIDS epidemic. The program has strengthened the ability of countries with sizable HIV/AIDS burdens to swiftly address other outbreaks, such as Ebola, avian flu, and cholera, ultimately enhancing global health security and protecting America’s borders.

City diplomacy luminary and Attorney Michael Shuman, a leader of the former Center for Innovative Diplomacy, reminds us that local government participation in foreign affairs is enumerated in and protected by the Constitution. Thus, when American local governments responded to the threat of nuclear annihilation vis-à-vis the U.S. arms race with the Soviet Union, to the federal government’s inadequate response to Apartheid, and to other problems from the federal-level, the resultant municipal activism was not only legal, it was defining of American federalism.

One would not expect the secretary of defense routinely to inspect the sentries and walk point on patrols, but, in effect, that is what the secretary of state has to do. He is the chief executive of a department numbering in the tens of thousands, and a budget in the tens of billions; but he is also the country’s chief diplomat, charged with conducting negotiations and doing much of the detailed work of American foreign policy. 

The Trump administration has proposed cuts in FY18 of 28 percent to the State Department, with much deeper cuts likely to the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs, and a significant narrowing of the types of exchange programs our country supports. If enacted into law, these combined changes would greatly harm our nation’s public diplomacy efforts and, ultimately, our national security and economy. 

President Donald Trump faces his most critical week of statesmanship so far -- and it will reflect sharp changes of direction he has already wrought in US foreign policy. Trump will hold his most important meeting with a world leader yet when he welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday, after putting Beijing on notice that if it does not do more to rein in its ally North Korea over its nuclear program, the US will take tough action.

Out of this era came three key programs tasked with training a new generation of American students to begin to repair relationships with the peacefully-growing Muslim world, and ameliorate the severe lack of US linguistic capability plaguing both the government and global economic competitiveness. The first, Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study, or YES Abroad, was created in the wake of 9/11 to dispel myths about both America and the Muslim world. 

Glamorous, popular and passionate about fighting AIDS, Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan is Beijing’s diplomatic not-so-secret weapon spreading Chinese soft power around the world. A former singing star in the People’s Liberation Army, “Mother Peng”, as she is affectionately known in China, will be at President Xi Jinping’s side as he meets US President Donald Trump in Florida next week.