USAID aimed for 'soft power' but ended up in DOGE's crosshairs. Here's how.
If you drink coffee, use a cellphone, know a grain farmer or port worker or have avoided monkeypox and Ebola, chances are good your life may have been touched by the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The chances are even higher if you’ve traveled in developing countries.
Though some Americans view the billions spent on foreign assistance in 130 other countries as unnecessary or money that should be directly helping people in the U.S., a closer look at where USAID money goes suggests a different and more complex story.
Since the Kennedy administration, Congress has charged the agency with maintaining foreign goodwill, providing aid to millions in need and helping stem the spread of deadly pandemics to the U.S.
Its mission has often been misunderstood, perhaps because much of the agency’s true purpose is often left unspoken, said Mark Walter, president of Blue Straits, an international law and development firm.
The agency’s operations were intended to help avoid foreign conflicts, maintain good relationships with countries that can be vital trade partners and allies, and smooth the way for expansion of American-owned businesses.
USAID, which managed roughly $40 billion a year in spending – about $1 for every $167 the government doles out – quickly became a target for President Donald Trump, who had promised to rein in spending and slash the federal budget.
“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” stated an executive order the president signed on Inauguration Day to freeze foreign spending for a review. It announced the nation would no longer disburse any foreign assistance that was “not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the United States.”
Within weeks, thousands of USAID employees and contractors were placed on administrative leave. Some learned the news via a message on the organization’s website.
Much of the agency's funding and programs were frozen, some in midstream, stalling shipments of food and millions of dollars of medicines and putting more than 10,000 Americans out of work, according to a briefing by Stand Up for Aid, one of three coalitions that have formed to press for the agency's survival. The coalitions include current and former employees, as well as other agency supporters.
Walter and others who have worked with or in the agency for decades agree it makes sense to review the budget of any federal agency to seek out waste and fraud.
But they argue that USAID’s mission is crucial and that the Trump administration’s actions have caused grave repercussions around the world, harming U.S. citizens, security and economic interests.
Chaos and litigation
Current and former officials describe confusion and mayhem at USAID after employees were locked out of their computers two weeks ago. Those living in far-flung locations, many of them with children enrolled in school and one family with a nursery painted and awaiting delivery of a newborn, were told to return to the U.S., which left them scrambling to figure out what to do when they arrived back on U.S. soil homeless and jobless.
The shuttering of the agency’s operations prompted a ripple effect across the global relief community, international experts said this week.
“This has resulted in consequences in every region in the world, millions of people,” said Nidhi Bouri, former deputy assistant administrator for Global Health at USAID. “The immediate threat to Americans has completely increased.
“With the freeze in place, partner organizations have had to lay off staff and stop procurement orders for essential products. The infrastructure for delivering global health assistance has already crumbled.”
Without fuel provided by USAID, pumps were turned off to a system that provided water to 1.6 million people in Sudan, Stand up for Aid said in a briefing. Health clinics have closed in some locations, and more than 80% of the grassroots groups providing emergency food aid in famine-stricken Sudan have closed, the coalition stated in a situation report last week.
After lawsuits were filed, temporary restraining orders blocked the administration's plans to dismantle the agency, and the wrangling in court continues.
After one of the orders was approved by a judge, some employees were allowed to return to work, but the programs and pay systems still weren't working, according to Stand Up for Aid.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali ruled the administration could not continue its blanket suspension of congressionally appointed foreign aid for contracts existing before the inauguration of the new president and ordered federal officials to immediately cease and take steps to honor the terms of those contracts and grants, including disbursing money.
On Sunday, the Trump administration said on USAID's website that it was placing all direct hire personnel on administrative leave globally, with the exception of staff responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.
The site also announced it would eliminate 1,600 positions personnel with duty stations in the U.S. as part of a reduction in force, and employees expected to continue working would be notified by their leadership before 5 p.m. Sunday.
The Trump administration stood by its cutbacks on Friday, with Anna Kelly, deputy press secretary, saying in a written statement to Paste BN: “President Trump has enjoyed broad support on his plan to ensure that taxpayer-funded programs align with the mandate the American people gave him in November. The spending freeze is already uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse across federal agencies and ensuring better stewardship of taxpayer dollars, including for American farmers and families."
She cited examples such as $1.5 million to "advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces. "Ultimately, President Trump will cut programs that do not serve the interests of the American people and keep programs that put America First, just as 77 million voters elected him to do," Kelly wrote.
Coffee bean diplomacy
Coffee is an example of a two-way street that USAID and other federal agencies “build and pave between the U.S. and our bilateral trading partners around the world," said John Oldfield, CEO of Accelerate Global, a private consulting firm in international development. For example, USAID works with coffee growers in Central America, Ethiopia and Vietnam.
“We have these friendly relationships that bear fruit on the political front, on the economic front, on the fighting-terrorism front, on the China front and in facilitating imports and exports,” Oldfield said. “We’re friends with a lot of countries around the world, or we were at any rate.”
USAID smooths processes over for making introductions and for supporting local economies, and as a result, the U.S. benefits in trade relationships, whether it’s for the best coffee beans or crucial minerals, he said.
“If we help the Democratic Republic of Congo with its efforts to ensure safe drinking water for as many of its people as possible, are we going to be more or less popular with that country's government when it's considering tenders and offers for critical minerals?” Oldfield said.
Decades of support from both sides of the aisle in Congress illustrate the importance of the crucial role USAID has played in foreign relations, Walter said. Part of that is the “unspoken imperative” behind USAID’s Asia programs to specifically counter Chinese investment influence.
In developing countries, USAID worked in concert with other U.S. officials “to use our soft power to help counter these kinds of threats that are coming from countries like China,” Walter said.
This work has always been bipartisan, if not more strongly supported by Republicans, he said. Republican Sen. “Mitch McConnell understands what our (the U.S.) role is. This tiny amount of money – 1% of our budget – has a huge amount of soft power potential.”
These relationships also help the U.S. in its global competition with China, he said.
For example, the lithium batteries used in cellphones and medical devices, weapons systems upgrades and many other technologies the U.S. wants to advance rely heavily on rare minerals from the developing world, minerals China is also trying to acquire, he said. Such minerals are found in some U.S. states, but not enough to meet the demand.
Building relationships with other countries to acquire these important products require trust, Oldfield said, and if countries can’t trust the U.S. to meet its commitments, they’ll turn somewhere else and could try to block the U.S. from coming back.
“They’ll turn to China. They'll turn to Russia,” he said. “They'll turn to violent extremist organizations, all of whom are delighted to fill this gap, this vacuum that’s left by USAID being almost completely, very abruptly dismantled.”
Reviewing the agency’s funding is important and appropriate, Walter said, “but taking it away is really, really pretty dangerous, even in the short term."
A history of financial questions
A number of reports over more than a decade have questioned the agency's spending on specific programs and its ability to keep track of certain expenses.
Though the agency passed its most recent audits, its inspector general's reports in recent years identified areas for improvement and challenges, including difficulties in vetting some international aid organizations and partnering programs.
Agency employees and former employees said that accountability measures are in place and that much of its spending is directed by Congress.
A few fraud cases also have been found. In December for example, the Justice Department indicted a Syrian on charges of defrauding USAID of $9 million intended to feed Syrian refugees.
Does the White House have reason to be concerned about whether all of the roughly $40 billion a year the agency manages is spent wisely and tracked carefully? Absolutely, Oldfield said.
“The president has a right to reform, to look for fraud, waste and abuse," he said. “The president has an obligation to do that on behalf of the U.S. taxpayers who elected him.
But he also has “an obligation to do it right,” Oldfield said. “He’s asking some good questions about USAID, and about all sorts of other federal agencies. He needs to give those agencies the chance to actually respond to his questions rather than just burning the whole thing down."
Support for farmers, shipping
Thanks to Congress, USAID money also supports American farmers and shipping interests, said Jeff Lewis, former chief counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration.
The provision of foreign aid shipments has been important to Congress, Lewis said.
“This is a critical arrow in our soft power quiver, where we promoted goodwill toward the U.S. by giving them this critically needed assistance,” he said. “But it’s also playing a role in maintaining a U.S. flagged fleet and the U.S. maritime jobs that go along with that.”
Regular food shipments through USAID contracts help employ port and shipping industry workers at more than a half-dozen U.S. ports from Chicago to Louisiana.
Federal law requires that any cargo directly or indirectly purchased by the federal government without reimbursement must have a portion of the total tons shipped on U.S.-flagged vessels, he said. Without federal support, the fear is that America’s private shipping fleet could shrink.
“We don’t want to be reliant on Chinese-flagged ships or any other countries in the world,” Lewis said. “If we didn’t have our own ships to carry cargo, then we would have an Achilles' heel.”
While the agency sits in limbo, more than $50 million in food commodities from U.S. farmers are at risk of being wasted, according to the Stand Up for Aid coalition. The food was either scheduled to be loaded or is already on ships headed for international ports to provide relief, but there would be no one to direct the unloading and distribution.
The freeze in spending also affects thousands of U.S. citizens working in pharmaceutical companies, warehouses, farms and other businesses.
USAID's largest U.S. contractor, Chemonics, confirmed it had furloughed more than 600 staff and reduced hours for more than 300 staff members living in 41 states and Washington, D.C.
Preventing the spread of viral disease outbreaks
USAID, working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has historically helped monitor viral disease outbreaks to treat patients and prevent the diseases from spreading to the U.S. Bouri, the former USAID official, pointed to outbreaks of monkeypox and Ebola in far-flung locations around the world.
Efforts to monitor bird flu and its various mutations that USAID was supporting in nearly 50 countries also ended, she said.
“All efforts to support surveillance of mitigating and nipping disease threats in the bud before they can spiral have been stopped,” Bouri said.
Dismantling USAID as the administration has is an invitation for the next pandemic to spread across the globe, she said.
“If this doesn't change, it's not a matter of if, but it's a matter of when an outbreak is coming to the United States,” she said. “And I’m deeply concerned that the continued efforts of this administration are not just undermining and putting communities around the world at further risk, they are really increasing the safety security risk to the United States and to Americans.”
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change, disasters and the environment for Paste BN. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X.