Trump’s Wrecking Ball Comes for Foreign Aid
This goes way beyond reasonable critiques of USAID.
Moral philosophers often use thought experiments to get at our competing ethical priorities. The most famous genre, so-called trolley problems, involve choosing which of two tracks a trolley will go down. Do you flip the track to save the orphan child at the expense of the elderly grandmother?
In its war against the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and foreign aid more broadly, the Trump administration has looked at the delicate trade-offs involved in public policy and chosen a third option—kill granny, kill the orphan, and then while they’re at it, kill a couple of stray puppies just for kicks.
Following Elon Musk’s Monday morning announcement that he was “feeding USAID to the woodchipper,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s wobbly insistence that “This is not about ending the programs that USAID does, per se,” the administration’s vision for USAID has come into (slightly) clearer focus. Insiders report plans to scale staffing back dramatically, from over 10,000 to about 611 employees (although on Friday a federal judge temporarily halted plans to place 2,200 of those workers on paid leave).
It’s too early to say what the Trump administration ultimately has planned for USAID. But their attempt to shutter the agency has done immeasurable damage—and risks doing even more. USAID is an integral part of the global aid system, upon which millions rely. If it effectively shuts down, the human cost will be catastrophic.
Many of the USAID programs under threat are very impactful. For example, the agency’s partner PEPFAR, an anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that pays for antiretroviral medicines and leads efforts to halt the spread of the virus, is estimated to have saved 25 million lives since its inception in 2003. As columnist Nicholas Kristoff memorably put it, “That’s more than all the Jews killed in the Holocaust and all the people killed in the genocides of Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Darfuris and Rohingya; all the confirmed deaths from Covid worldwide; all the deaths of American troops in all wars in the country’s history back to 1776; all the gun deaths in the United States in the last half-century; and all the auto deaths in the United States in the last half-century — combined.”
While Rubio issued a narrowly-tailored waiver exempting lifesaving medicines and medical services from the pause in aid, USAID’s collapse could serve a death sentence for PEPFAR. In a survey of 275 H.I.V. treatment organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa, every single one reported needing to shut down programs or turn away patients.
USAID is also a remarkably small slice of the national budget, making up less than 0.2% of total federal spending. This investment boasts great bang for its buck. Take, for example, the work done by “Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance,” to which the United States contributes approximately $300 million dollars annually. According to a recent paper in the American Economic Journal, the organization’s vaccination program targeting diseases such as malaria and rabies in low- and middle-income countries has saved 1.5 million lives since 1999. Crunching the numbers, this amounts to $1, per American, per year, to save 1.5 million lives.
The impact of dismantling USAID is already coming into view. Humanitarian organizations waiting on U.S. approval have been left unable to distribute $340 million worth of food. USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) has shut down, leaving policymakers in the dark about impending hunger crises—a move that former USAID head Andrews Natsios derided as “sort of like taking the steering wheel off the car.” Doctors of the World Turkey was forced to close 12 field hospitals and fire 300 staff members in Syria’s embattled north. And 30,000 metric tons of food en route to malnourished children in Sudan were left undelivered.
The administration’s war on USAID isn’t just a humanitarian disaster—it also threatens our national security. By tackling poverty, strengthening economies, and promoting good governance, USAID programs chip away at the conditions that allow terrorism and violence to gain a foothold in the first place. No matter how narrowly we construe them, working to stabilize vulnerable regions is in America’s interests.
As the United States steps back, it will be our rivals—China and Russia—who fill the void. This fact used to be common sense. Some of Secretary Rubio’s old colleagues still get it—“USAID is our way of combating [China’s] Belt and Road initiative,” Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker, a Republican, said on Tuesday. Autocrats, on the other hand, are thrilled. “Couldn’t be happier,” gloated Viktor Orbán’s political director, earning a retweet from Musk. At a time when we should be doubling down on soft power, the Trump administration seems determined to undermine America’s influence.
In public policy, as in moral philosophy, there are always trade-offs. There are certainly substantive critiques of foreign aid. Even carefully-administered humanitarian aid can make its way into the hands of warlords and autocrats: In one especially troubling incident, around $9 million in aid was diverted to armed combatants in Syria, including the Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group. Funding to promote cultural and intellectual life can foster a Potemkin elite oriented around the interests of Western NGOs. And, sometimes, foreign aid risks hindering the development of local institutions which would build state capacity and contribute to well-being more effectively in the long term.
But these debates, legitimate as they are, are simply not what’s at stake right now. Maybe there is an alternate world in which the Trump administration pursues a careful rearticulation of its aid policy. In that world, USAID would recommit to its core mission, tightening its belt and putting each of its initiatives under rigorous scrutiny. Working with foreign aid skeptics across the political spectrum, they would identify programs that are counterproductive or wasteful, while retaining effective initiatives like PEPFAR. USAID has the opportunity to cooperate with NGOs and local institutions to enable a smooth transition away from American aid. When the time eventually comes to end some programs, local partners would be well-prepared to execute carefully-crafted transition plans.
This alternate world, whatever its merits, is not ours. The Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to foreign aid, with zero regard to the human consequences. After losing U.S. support almost overnight, aid groups have been left with no time to secure alternative funding or prepare those who rely on them for a dramatic reduction in their capacity. Over the next few weeks, millions will lose access to education, food, and medical treatment.
In his 1961 executive order establishing USAID, President Kennedy wrote that “There is no escaping our obligations: our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor in the interdependent community of free nations; our economic obligations as the wealthiest people in a world of largely poor people.” Forty-two years later, President Bush’s announcement of PEPFAR echoed this sentiment, stating that “seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many.”
We hear nothing like that from the president today. The White House is not trying to respond to serious concerns about the foreign aid system, or balance competing policy priorities. Far from it: the Trump administration brandishes callous indifference as a mark of pride.
Anders Knospe is a Fulbright Scholar and Masters student in Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews.
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Maybe it's time for you to catch up. There is scant sympathy at this juncture for this agency. First, watch a documentary called Poverty Inc to see how aid affects the people it is allegedly helping, Second, it appears a small percentage of the budget of this agency is actually for food for the hungry type programs. As is true for huge insitutions, its mission as expanded exponentially beyond 'aid' into very questionable acitvities some of which appear to be directed against this country. Institutions lose sight of their original purpose and become laser focused on the perpetuation of themselves and benefit to those associated with it. In other words, giant patronage slush funds. Time to dismantle, clean up and put priorities back where they actually serve the purpose intended.
I respectfully disagree. Not with the overarching metaphor of Donald Trump as a wrecking ball, which I think few people would disagree with, including Trump himself.
But the arguments here smuggle in some very partisan assumptions. Start with PEPFAR, a program that has inarguably been life-saving, humanitarian and miraculous. But is it fair to argue those 25 million saved lives over more than two decades is reflective of what PEPFAR is doing now, or in the future as the AIDS crisis continues to diminish and drugs move to the marginal cost of generics? I don't know, but has anyone asked with honesty?
Or take the fact that the USAID takes up on 0.2% of the federal budget. Something like that claim is made for every budget cut, and has been for the decades that our deficit has been mushrooming. Some program here is "only 1% of the budget." Some program somewhere else is just a pittance at 0.5% of the budget.
All of those tiny numbers add up, and each one viewed on its own misses the point of the arithmetic of this thing. The obvious political problem has been (with almost every president and congress in my lifetime) that as long as no one can cut a lot of small anythings because someone somewhere might be hurt (which is cruelly true), we won't, can't and never will cut things dramatically, and the budget deficit will never end.
But as Stein's law says, anything that can't go on forever won't. I have no love for Donald Trump, never voted for him, and found him laughable as a public figure as long ago as the 1980s when Spy Magazine made him one of their prime punching bags. He hasn't changed.
And he does -- always -- go too far. Sometimes further than too far. I have very deep concerns about some of his truly destructive plans (the list is long), as any reasonable citizen does.
But when it comes to the federal budget, someone has to act, and any act will mean somebody doesn't get something they are used to. Again that is a cruel truth. But is it possible that every single thing USAID and the Department of Education and so on is truly justifiable in 2025, and produces the results that it has long purported to? Is the top-line rhetoric always, or even mostly in line with what that money is actually accomplishing? Maybe. But who's been asking, again honestly, lately?
Even if so (and it seems a large majority of Americans tends to agree there are serious questions) what dynamic historically, short of a fully declared war, can force us to realign our expectations, maybe, possibly, do more with less, or even a little less with less?
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not lovable or even for many of us tolerable as human beings. But fiscal responsibility is one of the best parts of the mandate (such as it is) that Trump earned, and it's one I agree with. And on that I wish them well. I honestly doubt that anything short of this dramatic housecleaning would be able to do the trick. What else is there that can overcome the politics of the legions of micro-advocates, who always claim the grannies and orphans the author here invokes? If we can move the conversation in the direction that allows more political freedom in the future to realign, that is fine with me. I am confident the courts will sort out the constitutional and unconstitutional actions Trump and Musk are taking, and there will be some room to move forward with real administrative reform. And who knows, maybe even Congress will be able to do something to clear up the statutes that created all of these good things that might no longer be as good as promised.