Trump Administration Orders Halt on US Foreign Aid
Ryleigh Johnson | February 18, 2024
In an executive order issued on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump called for a 90-day pause on international aid provided via the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an aid organization that provides funding and on-the-ground support to 130 countries worldwide. This decision, while currently being disputed in court, has serious implications for aid organizations, USAID staffers, global public health and international relations.
“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” read the executive order. “They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
In addition to halting funding, the executive order called for department and agency heads to review all foreign assistance programs and decide whether they will continue, face modification or be shut down entirely. Thousands of USAID employees have been placed on administrative leave, in accordance with governmental plans to reduce the agency’s nearly 13,000 total employees and contractors to less than 300. While the impacts of this downsizing will be dispersed and unlikely to have a serious impact on the U.S. economy, the consequences of removing government money from the international development sector will likely be noticeable.
“If you're in development work, that's going to be a problem, because I think that industry is going to contract massively…” Jack Igelman, instructor of economics at Warren Wilson College (WWC), said. “How bad it's going to be will be hard to say, but it's going to impact more than 13,000 and then, if you're in development work, it's not going to be good for the next four years. There's going to be much less work.”
USAID employees and individuals who work in programs funded through USAID face much uncertainty. Foreign service workers directly employed by USAID but stationed in foreign countries were ordered to return to the United States within 30 days via a message posted on the now-defunct USAID website on Feb. 4, 2025. All initiatives funded by USAID have been halted, as aid workers and their community partners fear that any money spent will have to be repaid to the U.S. government.
“All of our projects have been halted,” Maya Cobb, a PeaceCorps volunteer stationed in The Gambia, said. “I know someone who literally just got all the paperwork in for a grant and was told…‘It’s good to go.’ Then the freeze happened on USAID and it's a USAID grant, so she's not sure if she's going to ever see that money. When you tell your community, ‘We're gonna get the money, I'm gonna be able to do this for you’ and then you can't, because of circumstances outside of your control, it puts volunteers in a really awful spot.”
Cobb also highlighted the effect ending USAID funding will have on organizations working to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in other parts of Africa.
“I know for countries where they have volunteers who are specifically there for HIV, for education and prevention, they aren't allowed to do preventative measures anymore,” Cobb said. “Their funding is completely reliant upon PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which is part of USAID…Those volunteers don't know if they're gonna have a job at the end of the freeze.”
The Trump Administration has stated that it will provide waivers so that essential services provided by USAID can continue during the freeze. Some HIV/AIDS programs under PEPFAR were allowed to continue with the waivers, though only $500 million of their budget has been restored as compared to PEPFAR’s 2023 budget of $6.9 billion. Additionally, the State Department issued a memo on Feb. 6 that limited the use of that funding to pregnant and breastfeeding women, excluding other high-risk groups like gay men, sex workers, drug users, and women aged 15-24.
The U.S. government provides 70% of global funding for HIV/AIDS reduction, treatment and prevention. The disappearance of that funding has the potential to increase the global death toll of HIV/AIDS by millions.
Halting foreign aid also has the potential to worsen international relations, creating vacuums that could be filled by other major world powers, like China and Russia. USAID and its associated programs have long been a tool of U.S. “soft power,” the country’s ability to endear itself to other nations and create allies through fostering goodwill with efforts like humanitarian aid.
“U.S. soft power throughout the world is to change hearts and minds by doing good work, by saying we're good Americans…” Igelman said. “Some people could look at this in a negative light, and I think that's fair, but we want to be in these places, building roads and helping with health care… It's soft power, and the point of cutting it is that soft power is completely out and hard power, I guess, is what Trump is interested in.”
Speaking to Politico, Andrew Nastios, a former director of USAID under Pres. George W. Bush also expressed concerns over the potential implications of ending USAID on international relations.
“It [USAID] builds goodwill and political influence and economic influence,” Nastios said. “It promotes American business. It protects us in terms of disease threats around the world. It is in our national interest to run these programs.”
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols’ Feb. 13 order blocked the implementation of Trump’s call for USAID Foreign Service staffers to return home, thus extending staffers' international residencies for an additional week. The decision continued the pause Nichols had ordered on Feb. 7 after two unions representing USAID workers testified that the administration had failed to keep USAID staffers safe in the wake of Trump’s order.
On Feb. 14, a federal judge ordered that the Trump Administration must temporarily cease the pause on USAID funding after two healthcare organizations which are supported by USAID, the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, sued. Despite the order, aid organizations might still be unable to restart programs or access funding due to confusion and uncertainty around whether or not USAID will continue, along with the effects of layoffs and employee relocation. The judge has given the administration until Feb. 18 to show their compliance with the order.