Trump hollows out USAID. Who will miss it most?
| Johannesburg
When Donald Trump took office as president Jan. 20, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was one of the world’s largest aid organizations, with a staff of more than 10,000 people and an annual budget of around $40 billion.
As of this weekend, even its continued existence is uncertain. On Friday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to place nearly the entire USAID staff on administrative leave and recall overseas employees to the United States. But the order is temporary, and the president and his allies have vowed to continue their work to dismantle the agency, which they argue is bloated, inefficient, and out of step with American values.
The administration is “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” boasted Trump adviser Elon Musk in a Feb. 3 post on his social platform, X.
ForeignAssistance.gov
Why We Wrote This
The Trump administration is moving to close down USAID, one of biggest foreign aid organizations in the world. Where does American aid go, how much does it cost, and who benefits from it?
USAID’s rapid evisceration began with an executive order Mr. Trump signed on his first day in office, pausing all American foreign aid for 90 days. Then Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency – which despite its name, is not an actual federal department – moved in.
Meanwhile, around the world, U.S.-funded aid projects ground to halt. A migrant shelter in Mexico fired its doctor, social worker, and child psychologist. A community organization in Zimbabwe stopped an outreach program to keep girls in school and out of child marriages. A helpline for veterans and their families in Ukraine abruptly disconnected. An independent investigative media outlet in Bosnia fired a reporter. Lifesaving medicines were trapped in a Sudanese port, with no way of transporting them to their destinations across the war-stricken country.
A few USAID-funded projects have now received an “emergency humanitarian waiver” to continue operations, though it remains unclear to many whether they qualify. At the same time, a legal challenge to determine if the sudden dismissal of most of the USAID workforce was legal is ongoing.
For his part, Mr. Trump has promised that the upheaval at USAID will not spell a total end to U.S. foreign assistance.
Rather, he says he wants to reform the agency. In that, he may find popular support. Polls have shown a majority of Americans believe the country spends too much on foreign aid (although they also believe it makes up a quarter of the U.S. budget, when in fact it accounts for less than 1%).
Still, many argue American aid isn’t just a bleeding-heart, do-gooder project of “radical left lunatics,” as Mr. Trump recently claimed, but a vital element in maintaining support for the U.S. around the world.
“What I want to just express to the American people is that USAID and the work that they’re doing, it’s not charity,” said Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey in an interview with Slate this week. “This isn’t American altruism. This is something that is so vital to our national security.”
United Nations, ForeignAssistance.gov
