When the Trump administration released its budget blueprint for fiscal year 2018 in March, I was surprised to notice that a host of independent agencies–including the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)–were having their federal funding totally eliminated.  (Congress, of course, will have the final say, and has yet to weigh in.)

Unlike many foreign aid models, OPIC uses a market-based approach by mobilizing private sector capital for public good. It was established in 1971 and helps American businesses expand to emerging markets in Africa, South and Central America, as well as Mexico and the Caribbean.

It works like this:  OPIC provides direct loans and guarantees, in addition to risk insurance, in cases where commercial financial institutions are unwilling or unable to lend. Put another way, OPIC facilitates investments that would not likely happen otherwise.

OPIC has received bipartisan support and pursued its mission on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to American taxpayers for the past 39 years, according to a report in Forbes on March 31 by Willy Foote, founder & CEO of Root Capital. Root has worked with OPIC for the past seven years to connect small coffee growers in Latin America and Africa to global markets.

Last year,  OPIC returned every cent of funding it received from the feds plus $239 million it earned as income. During the Obama administration, OPIC generated $2.6 billion in deficit reduction.  Foote says he can’t understand why Trump wants to cut an agency that makes money for taxpayers.

Foote is not alone in his assessment. “I understand why some Americans watch their tax dollars going overseas and wonder why we’re not spending them at home,” said Bill Gates, in an article in TIME last month. “These projects keep Americans safe. And by promoting health, security and economic opportunity, they stabilize vulnerable parts of the world.”  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has likened support for OPIC as akin to “buying national security insurance.”

Private investors are understandably wary of working with enterprises in fragile or failed states, Foote writes, “but when capital flows to these small businesses and local entrepreneurs, lasting peace becomes more probable.” Foote fears such communities are more likely to backslide into violence if OPIC is eliminated.

For five decades–under both Democratic and Republican administrations–OPIC has shown how a market-based model can responsibly invest in businesses and jumpstart economic development that likely wouldn’t occur otherwise, said Foote, adding that OPIC “achieves this while supporting American enterprises, advancing the country’s foreign policy objectives and providing steady financial returns for taxpayers. This is a model that should be expanded not eliminated.”