The Dismantling Of Usaid A Major
Although Elon Musk joked about feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into the woodchipper back in February, it was not until this month that Secretary Rubio completed the shredding by formally dismantling USAID and absorbing the remnants into the State Department. And Congress has now approved President Trump’s request to rescind $8 billion in previously approved foreign assistance funding. This dismantling of foreign assistance does next-to-nothing to reduce the budget deficit, but will lead to suffering and death in many countries and cedes critical U.S. prestige and influence to Russia and China.
Secretary Rubio marked the dismantlement of USAID with a July 1 blog post asserting that USAID failed to advance U.S. interests with its “near-infinite taxpayer budget.” He was wrong.
In 2024 USAID spent $21.7 billion, about 0.3% of federal spending, “burdening” each taxpayer with a whopping $64 donation that year. Other U.S. agencies have provided foreign assistance and together made the United States the largest single provider of development assistance in absolute terms. However, in terms of the share of its national income devoted to such assistance, the United States ranked near the bottom among the leading donor countries. The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, a group of 32 leading donor countries, has established a target of 0.7% of gross national income for its members’ international development assistance. Counting all forms of development assistance, the United States ranks a sad 25th at a mere 0.22% of our gross national income and less than a third of the target.
Secretary Rubio ’s latest critique of U.S. foreign assistance is in stark contrast to the positions he staked out as a Senator, when he argued that foreign assistance is “in our national interest” and that “it is going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism and anti-American terrorism if the United States of America is the reason one is even alive today.” Indeed, a recent peer-reviewed study in the British medical journal The Lancet concluded that between 2001 and 2021, USAID humanitarian aid, including food and medical assistance, had saved the lives of nearly 92 million people worldwide. The study projected that eliminating USAID could lead to over 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
According to the State Department, since its inception in 2003 President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR initiative alone saved an estimated 25 million lives at risk from AIDS. President Trump’s rescission request called for cutting PEPFAR funding. The Senate voted to restore that money after the Administration’s claim that some of it would support abortions in Russia was shown to be false. Nonetheless, PEPFAR programs have been disrupted and lives have already been lost. The Administration’s claim that “life-saving and humanitarian assistance” were exempted cannot be taken at face value.
To support his policy turn-around, Secretary Rubio now cites the fact that countries of Sub-Saharan Africa – major beneficiaries of USAID assistance – voted with the United States only 29% of the time on “essential” UN resolutions. This is a meaningless statistic that inflates the value of unnamed UN resolutions and devalues the lives saved. Unlike Russia and China, the United States provides humanitarian assistance primarily to meet human needs rather than to bribe governments, and by its very visible presence around the world providing aid “From the American People,” USAID has had a much deeper influence. Eliminating USAID and gutting foreign assistance will squander this hard-earned reputation.
In particular, USAID served U.S. interests by promoting health and fighting infectious disease. We learned from the COVID pandemic how easily those diseases can cross national boundaries.
By responding to outbreaks of diseases like Ebola, supporting public health systems, and monitoring for the emergence of new viral strains, USAID’s global health assistance helps contain the spread of potentially deadly new diseases to our own shores. Containing outbreaks help prevent diseases from becoming established in the local population and creating a reservoir from which more virulent strains could emerge and spread.
Treating people infected with more common diseases also saves lives abroad and at home. Treatment of AIDS in Africa has greatly reduced the potential for transmission of the HIV virus. The abrupt cutoff of assistance to treat and prevent AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases worldwide will lead to increases both at home and abroad.
Global vaccination campaigns are a proven method of controlling diseases that once killed millions every year. USAID helped lead the campaign that eradicated smallpox worldwide. Similar campaigns came close to doing the same for polio, and its near eradication has eliminated the need for polio vaccination in the United States. But that could change if global vaccination efforts falter.
In short, U.S. foreign assistance has been a relatively cheap and effective way of saving lives, helping desperate victims of war, famine, and natural disasters , responding to problems that know no boundaries, and building relationships that support U.S. interests. We can afford to do more and can ill afford to do less.
Mark Goodman is a senior scientist who retired from the State Department after a thirty-year career in nuclear policy. He has extensive experience in multilateral nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament issues. Dr. Goodman is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 300 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.