The End of American Foreign Aid?

Part V of a Series

Jun 20, 2025

USAID The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was created in 1961 by John F. Kennedy to provide humanitarian and development assistance globally, and its record is impressive. Assistance takes the form of programs that address poverty, provide critical healthcare, safe drinking water and nutrition, promote democracy and civil society, foster entrepreneurship, strengthen education, and address environmental issues. In regions affected by war, USAID helps deal with refugee crises. As an international development agency, USAID is focused not only disaster relief but on long-term solutions that address root causes of the problems it addresses.

USAID’S annual budget is small: it is, on average, about 1% of the total federal budget. With an annual allocation of about $40 billion, USAID leverages its resources by partnering with the private sector, nonprofits, respected universities and research institutions, and local governments. USAID has programs operating in 130 countries; it rigorously monitors and evaluates all of its programs and partners. USAID strives to work with partners who “effectively deliver needs-based assistance with impartiality, humanity, neutrality, and independence.” ^[1]

Congress codified USAID in 1998 as part of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act and defined it as an independent agency outside of the Department of State. By this law, the Administrator of USAID reports to and is under the direct authority and foreign policy guidance of the Secretary of State. ^[2] Since then, Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for foreign assistance directly through USAID, to support global health, development, disaster relief, and democracy-strengthening. Other foreign aid initiatives are funded through the State Department.

A bird flying in the sky

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — ‘Hesed’ Detail from “Sephirot” © Kathryn Kerr

USAID-Managed Program Funding, by Sector and Region: FY2024 Obligations Estimate

A screenshot of a graph

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: ForeignAssistance.gov and CRS calculations ^[3]

On January 20, 2025, Trump announced a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid; this was followed by a series of other executive orders and the abrupt closure of all USAID missions and programs worldwide. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stopped funds for foreign assistance from flowing to any USAID partners for existing grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts. Foreign aid funded through the State Department was also halted. ^[4] In February, Samantha Power, the USAID Administrator, was fired and USAID was purportedly absorbed into the State Department, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio now nominally in charge.

Let’s pause and consider Samantha Power, the remarkable person who was confirmed by the US Senate to head USAID in 2021. Power holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School; she started as journalist, reporting from conflict-ridden regions such as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author, she served on the National Security Council staff (2009-2013) and later as the 28^th US Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2013-2017). She is credited with leading the initiative to combat the Ebola epidemic, ratify the Paris climate agreement, and develop new international law to disable ISIS’s financial networks. She was named by Forbes one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women”, among other accolades. She is Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. ^[5] I guarantee you, the majority who worked at USAID also had stellar credentials—but that apparently counts for nothing nowadays.

As DOGE seized the internal workings of USAID, more than 4,200 agency employees were put on leave with an additional 1,600 fired. ^[6] A judge later issued a restraining order, but no one knows what will ultimately happen as the restraining order is being ignored. Meanwhile, thousands of USAID contractors went unpaid, causing a tidal wave of layoffs and furloughs as more lawsuits were filed. Elon Musk used his social media platform X to spew baseless, outrageous charges against USAID, claiming among other things that USAID started the Covid-19 pandemic and declaring the agency “… a criminal organization.” This is nuts.

The Trump administration froze almost $60 billion in foreign aid but claimed that programs which prevented immediate death would continue to operate. These critical programs included field hospitals in Gaza, refugee food programs, health clinics that combat Ebola in Uganda, HIV drug programs in Africa, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). A month later, about 10,000 USAID programs were eliminated, including those that had been granted waivers. ^[7]

Background The attacks on USAID did not come out of the blue, and this massive campaign of destruction has a prologue. Peter Marocco is a key figure (beside Elon Musk) who avidly undertook the dismantling of USAID. According to ProPublica, “In 2018, during the first Trump administration, Marocco was a senior political appointee tasked with promoting stability in areas with armed conflict.” ^[8] The Balkans are haunted by the horrors of the Bosnian war, a 1990s conflict between the region’s ethno-religious groups that caused the deaths of about 100,000 people, including thousands of Muslim civilians who were massacred by Serb forces. ^[9] Despite the fragile political situation, Marocco defied and undermined the carefully crafted strategy being followed by the State Department; he secretly met with a notorious Bosnian Serb Christian nationalist leader, Milorad Dodik, who was under US sanctions. ^[10] After that fiasco, Marocco was posted to USAID, where he caused upheavals as he attempted to delay or curtail many programs, while promoting his own agenda, described as “overtly militaristic and Christian nationalist.”^[11] At the time, Marocco’s work to undermine the mission of USAID was generally thwarted, but he caused enormous problems. Under the new Trump administration, as director for foreign assistance at the State Department and as Deputy Administrator of USAID, Marocco is finally empowered to bulldoze the agency he apparently detests.

Impacts The damage inflicted by the destruction of USAID is incalculable; here are some examples:

A critical environmental project in Vietnam to clean up a chemical spill at the Bien Hoa air base, one of the toxic legacies of the US war in Vietnam, was halted by DOGE, and then re-started after national and international outrage. This site has open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, a lethal byproduct of Agent Orange which the US military sprayed over vast areas of Vietnam; the deadly chemicals threaten the water and food supplies of many communities. When DOGE cancelled the project, the contractor laid off workers for weeks; when funding was restarted, only half the workers were rehired. According to ProPublica, “Hundreds of thousands of people live around the Bien Hoa air base, and some of their homes abut the site’s perimeter fence just yards from the contaminated areas. And less than 1,500 feet away is a major river that flows into Ho Chi Minh City, population 9 million.” ^[12]
Food aid has been halted, and “half a billion dollars worth of food grown in America’s heartland—enough to feed more than 30 million people—is rotting in domestic ports and warehouses, unable to reach starving populations abroad.” ^[13] This impacts not only people experiencing famine and food insecurity around the world, but the US farmers who supply the grain and agricultural products.
Medicine and health supplies worth over $478.5 million are stuck in supply chain limbo. Failure to deliver these medical supplies “could potentially lead to as many as 566,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and unmet reproductive health needs, including 215,000 pediatric deaths.” ^[14]

Pending Legal Actions Maybe there’s hope… On February 11, 2025, a lawsuit was filed by eight plaintiffs, including the largest international development companies (Chemonics International and DAI Global), non-governmental organizations such as the Global Health Council, and the American Bar Association. The Defendants: Donald J. Trump in his official capacity as President of the USA, Marco Rubio, in his official capacity as Secretary of State and Acting Administrator of USAID, Peter Marocco, in his official capacity as Acting Deputy Administrator for USAID, Russell Vought, in his official capacity as Director of The Office of Management and Budget, as well as the US Department of State, USAID, and OMB. ^[15]

The road to re-starting US foreign aid for humanitarian assistance will be long, rocky, and full of potholes. It will be fraught with casualties, as people will die, program partners will wither, and people will lose faith and trust in America. The US has been the biggest single provider of humanitarian aid worldwide. For over half a century, American foreign aid has generated good will, burnished America’s image abroad, and strengthened our diplomacy. Are we going to turn our back on the world?