U.S. foreign aid was seldom discussed during President Donald Trump’s election campaign, except for a few references related to Ukraine and the Middle East. And the gale-strength winds of change sweeping through Washington since his electoral victory largely bypassed the foreign development and humanitarian assistance community for much of the transition. The Trump landing team at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) came quietly on board, there was silence regarding candidates for USAID administrator, and the choice of Marco Rubio for secretary of state — a longtime advocate in the U.S. Senate for development aid, especially in Latin America — seemed a reassuring sign that pragmatism would be the order of the day.
That calm was shattered on Inauguration Day, as Trump issued an executive order freezing all new foreign development assistance for 90 days. Stating that “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy…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,” Trump directed that a review to determine “whether to continue, modify, or cease each foreign assistance program.” In separate actions, Trump effectively halted climate and health cooperation by ordering the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization, and readopted the so-called “global gag rule” (also known as the Mexico City Policy for where it was first announced) that prohibits any organization receiving U.S. government funding from providing abortion services or counseling, even with other funding.
And the first week ended with Secretary Rubio doubling down on Trump’s executive order on foreign aid in his own message to all U.S. diplomatic missions, which help oversee U.S. foreign aid implementation on the ground, with language so uninformative and opaque as to be ominous. Rubio’s message gave the new State Department director of policy planning, Michael Anton, the lead on the policy review.
Taken together, these actions are damaging, destructive, punitive, and likely unconstitutional. The actions raise five principal concerns: (a) the sheer magnitude of the human damage that will be inflicted, especially on the world’s most vulnerable; (b) the breakdown of the bipartisan consensus that has supported foreign aid as an instrument of U.S. national security, alongside diplomacy and defense; (c) the overreach of executive authority relative to Congress and other governmental and non-governmental development partners; (d) the sidelining of development professionals at USAID and other executive agencies (the latest news last night on USAID was that “nearly every career staffer who holds a top leadership role at the agency, at least in Washington,” has been placed on administrative leave); and (e) the willingness of Rubio to push back on White House decisions he knows are improper.
Elections Have Consequences
Let’s be clear. There’s nothing improper about a new administration, especially one that won voters with promises of a deep ideological change, launching a critical review of the programs and priorities of its predecessor. And it’s not uncommon to pause – and ultimately reverse or cancel after a review — efforts likely to be at odds with new directions. With respect to foreign assistance, I’ve been on both sides of such reviews. As State Department deputy director for policy planning under President George W. Bush’s administration, I worked on a review in 2001. This process revealed some serious challenges relating to overlapping authorities and lack of coordination and led to the creation of the State/USAID Joint Policy Council. Later, as USAID deputy administrator under President Barack Obama, I partnered with Policy Planning Director Anne-Marie Slaughter to finalize a similar review in 2010, the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.
In both cases, State and USAID career staff sought relief when our deliberations were holding up vital funding decisions, and there were clear guidelines for seeking relief. We sought to cause minimum disruption. For Trump, the tagline seems to be “Do as much harm as possible.”
The Human and Strategic Costs
This action will starve thousands of people worldwide of non-controversial programs to advance and improve health, education, water and sanitation, infrastructure, housing, and food security. Projects that have no immediate financial backup will fail, and years of progress will be sacrificed. People living with HIV/AIDS will lose access to life-saving medicines under PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, established by President Bush); former USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health Atul Gawande reports that this “stops direct services for 6.5 million orphans, vulnerable children, and their caregivers affected by HIV in 23 countries.” Farmers will miss planting seasons due to the lack of seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation. Humanitarian deminers will cease their removal of landmines throughout the world and leave these hidden killers in the ground for children to discover.
America’s hard-earned reputation as a reliable partner will be tarnished, an outcome certain to be exploited by China and other global rivals, as Michael Schiffer outlined at Just Security yesterday. The broad-brush ban will even harm assistance priorities that conservatives have long prioritized, such as support for international religious freedom and initiatives to end human trafficking and drug trafficking.
Abandoning America’s Development Consensus
The new administration is pulling back on programs in many areas that I personally support, including climate change, human rights, empowering marginalized populations, and reproductive freedom, though I acknowledge, again, that elections have consequences. But Trump and Rubio’s actions this week threaten America’s longstanding commitment to global development, stability, and prosperity via programs that have enjoyed broad bipartisan support since the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II, to the great benefit of the United States economically, politically, and otherwise.
Is this the proper interpretation of the American electorate’s 49.9 percent plurality for Trump? Armed with a much greater mandate from the 2009 elections, Obama, with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Raj Shah, recognized the importance of continuity and the intrinsic value of development programs already in place under a Republican administration before them. While launching new initiatives such as Power Africa to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa and USAID Forward to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the agency, they embraced and enlarged PEPFAR, expanded the mandate of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which supports the poorest countries that are committed to just and democratic governance, economic freedom and investing in their populations”), and built on the Bush administration’s response to skyrocketing global food prices in 2007 and 2008 by creating the Feed the Future initiative.
Secretary Rubio’s Jan. 24 memo also calls into question civilian assistance that supports key U.S. security and defense interests. The language in Rubio’s Jan. 24 memo to all diplomatic missions specifically exempting foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt from the 90-day freeze suggests that such funding in other regions is not exempt. Did he really mean to freeze such funding in East Asia (think Taiwan), the Middle East (Jordan), Eastern Europe, and Latin America?
The Danger of Executive Overreach
Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress holds the purse strings. Congress has not been shy about exercising its authority and prerogatives. The vast majority of U.S. development assistance is appropriated by Congress for specific programs and projects, and legislative language is often quite detailed. When the administration unilaterally pulls those strings closed, it is inviting a constitutional crisis that America can ill-afford at this critical moment, as the courts may end up relitigating the Impoundment Act of 1974, which limits the executive branch’s prerogative to withhold funding that Congress has appropriated.
Further, the United States has built up an impressive network of partners and “force multipliers” for its development work in the form of private companies, non-governmental organizations, faith-based groups, universities, foundations, other donor nations, and international institutions. The high-handed approach reflected in the unilateral foreign aid freeze calls into question the willingness of those partners to join with the United States in the future, given its apparent unreliability.
The administration seems to believe it can threaten and punish such partners into abandoning their own agenda and fully embrace that of Trump. Will the administration meet its obligations to international assistance programs and global funds through the United Nations, the World Bank, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and other institutions? The decision to give notice that the United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization and yesterday’s follow-on order that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stop cooperating with the WHO would seem to be clear signals. If the U.S. government fails to honor its obligations, this is a prescription for isolationist gridlock.
And where will the Trump agenda come from? In my experience, the 90 days allotted to the State Department is insufficient for a comprehensive review of the questions raised by Trump, especially if it is to be based on informed input from stakeholders. By contrast, 90 days is about the time it takes to draft implementation guidelines for a pre-cooked policy. It seems clear, given the pattern of the administration’s actions since the election and the links between incoming State Department appointees and the Heritage Foundation’s extreme Project 2025, that the chapters on State and USAID in that plan for the Trump administration is the actual playbook.
What Now for USAID?
By this point in the Biden transition in 2021, former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power had been named as USAID administrator as part of the first round of presidential appointments. President Biden had committed that USAID would have a full seat on the National Security Council, a signal of the importance Biden placed on development as an equal partner to diplomacy and defense.
By contrast, there are barely rumors even now of a front-runner for the role in this new administration. The names of the key foreign aid implementing agencies — USAID, the MCC, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and other key U.S. agencies in the development arena – aren’t even mentioned in either Trump’s executive order or in Rubio’s memo. Combined with the freeze on new assistance, this sends the message that the new administration discounts the foreign aid work of these agencies. By law, USAID is an autonomous agency whose administrator reports to the secretary of state. This structure ensures that USAID pursues objectives set by the president and the secretary of state, but also that USAID has an empowered advisory and implementing role. In his first term, Trump properly respected that structure under the leadership of Administrator Mark Green, and U.S. foreign assistance was better for it. By contrast, it is quite unlikely that the new administrator, assuming there will be one, will have been confirmed by the time the policy on foreign assistance will be carved in stone. Put bluntly, the actions of the first week represent an existential threat to USAID.
Standing Up for Policy and Professionals
How Secretary Rubio addresses these issues over the coming weeks will set the tone for his tenure as steward of American foreign policy and advocate for the professionals who carry it out. During 35 years of federal service at the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, USAID, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, I have been proud to devote my professional skills to administrations from both parties with loyalty and non-partisan commitment. At State, I worked for great leaders, from Cyrus Vance to George Shultz to Colin Powell to Hillary Clinton. They used their positions to speak truth to power in defense of American global interests and in defense of Civil Service and Foreign Service professionals. Even after last week’s backsliding, I hold out hope that Secretary Rubio’s career-long appreciation for the role of foreign assistance and his own proud record of public service mean that he will follow this tradition.
– Amb. Donald Steinberg (ret.) is executive director of Mobilizing Allies for Women, Peace and Security. From 2021 to 2024, he served as expert advisor to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. His previous U.S. government service included Deputy Administrator at USAID and roles at the White House, the National Security Council and the State Department. His non-governmental service included president and CEO of the international nonprofit World Learning from 2013 to 2017. Published courtesy of Just Security.
