Dozens of senior officials were put on leave. Thousands of contractors were laid off. A freeze put on billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to other countries.
Over the last two weeks, President Donald Trump’s administration has made significant changes to the U.S. agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas, which has left aid organizations agonizing over whether they can continue with programs such as nutritional assistance for malnourished infants and children.
Then-President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development, known as USAID, during the Cold War. In the decades since Republicans and Democrats have fought over the agency and its funding.
Kennedy created USAID at the height of the United States’ Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. He wanted a more efficient way to counter Soviet influence abroad through foreign assistance and saw the State Department as frustratingly bureaucratic at doing that.
Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act and Kennedy set up USAID as an independent agency in 1961.
On his first day in office Jan. 20, Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance. Four days later, Peter Marocco — a returning political appointee from Trump’s first term — drafted a tougher-than-expected interpretation of that order, a move that shut down thousands of programs around the world and forced furloughs and layoffs.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since moved to keep more kinds of strictly life-saving emergency programs going during the freeze. But confusion over what programs are exempted from the Trump administration’s stop-work orders — and fear of losing U.S. aid permanently — is still freezing aid and development work globally.
It’s part of a Trump administration crackdown that’s hitting across the federal government and its programs. But USAID and foreign aid are among those hit the hardest.
Rubio said the administration’s aim was a program-by-program review of which projects make “America safer, stronger or more prosperous.”
The decision to shut down U.S.-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the U.S. was “getting a lot more cooperation” from recipients of humanitarian, development, and security assistance, Rubio said.
Republicans typically push to give the State Department — which provides overall foreign policy guidance to USAID — more control of its policy and funds. Democrats typically promote USAID autonomy and authority.
Funding for United Nations agencies, including peacekeeping, human rights, and refugee agencies, have been traditional targets for Republican administrations to cut. The first Trump administration moved to reduce foreign aid spending, suspending payments to various U.N. agencies, including the U.N. Population Fund and funding to the Palestinian Authority.
In Trump’s first term, the U.S. pulled out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and its financial obligations to that body. The U.S. is also barred from funding the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, under a bill signed by then-President Joe Biden last March.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, has launched a sweeping effort empowered by Trump to fire government workers and cut trillions in government spending. USAID is one of his prime targets. Musk alleges USAID funding has been used to launch deadly programs and called it a “criminal organization.”
Sub-Saharan Africa could suffer more than any other region during the aid pause. The U.S. gave the region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance last year. HIV patients in Africa arriving at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped rein in the global AIDS epidemic of the 1980s found locked doors.
As a clear sign of America’s moral leadership around the globe, the U.S. has historically been and remains the leading donor of humanitarian assistance to the region. In response to the Horn of Africa drought and subsequent famine in the summer of 2011, for example, U.S. emergency food aid programs provided $740 million to Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan (according to the U.S. State Department). It is fully consistent with American values to continue to respond vigorously and generously to emergencies in the region.
Continued terrorist activities in Somalia, the recent insurgency in Mali, and the potential threat of Boko Haram on Nigeria—the U.S.’s largest trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa emphasize that the U.S. has important national security interests in the region. Development assistance from the State Department addresses U.S. national security concerns by funding counterterrorism partnerships between the U.S. and African militaries as well as training for African soldiers to conduct peacekeeping missions in countries like Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia.
Sub-Saharan Africa is a region of great economic promise. From 2001-2010, six of the fastest-growing economies in the world were in the region. In fact, in 2011, foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa amounted to more than global bilateral official development assistance in 2011. Other countries, including China, are recognizing and acting on the increasing commercial opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. A recent GAO report found that China’s total trade in goods over the past decade increased faster than and surpassed U.S. trade in the region in 2009.
There are also already ramifications in Latin America. In Mexico, a busy shelter for migrants in southern Mexico has been left without a doctor. A program to provide mental health support for LGBTQ+ youth fleeing Venezuela was disbanded.
In Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala, so-called “Safe Mobility Offices” where migrants can apply to enter the U.S. legally have shuttered.
The aid community is struggling to get the full picture—how many thousands of programs have shut down and how many thousands of workers were furloughed and laid off under the freeze?
In all, the U.S. spent about roughly $40 billion in foreign aid in the 2023 fiscal year, according to a report published last month by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
The U.S. is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance globally, although some other countries spend a bigger share of their budget on it. Foreign assistance overall amounts to less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget.
Africa remains heavily dependent on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and donor agencies for survival, sparking global debates on why the continent struggles with self-sufficiency.
Ironically, the health sector—one of the most donor-funded areas—is supposed to be the government’s top priority. However, many African leaders have left this critical responsibility in the hands of foreign aid donors.
Several African nations have begun to feel the impact across critical sectors such as health, agriculture, and education.
NGOs working in these areas have reportedly shut down due to the abrupt funding halt from USAID.
