USAID manages international projects that deal with food aid, disaster relief and health programs in over 100 countries.

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In 1962, President Kennedy said to the staff of USAID, “The people who are opposed to aid should realize that this is a very powerful source of strength for us. As we do not want to send American troops to a great many areas where freedom may be under attack, we send you.” He also said that foreign aid was essential to America’s role as a global leader. “There will not be farewell parades to you as you leave or parades when you come back.” In other words, the reward was the work itself and the larger cause of freedom it served. Pulling back on foreign aid, President Kennedy said, “would be disastrous and, in the long run, more expensive. Our own security would be endangered and our prosperity imperiled.”

 

He was so right.

 

USAID is not a perfect agency. And, sure, all our federal agencies have waste issues that we need to address. We covered this on p. 346 of Getting Back to Great. But we need USAID. Desperately.

 

First, let’s get our facts straight. The United States spends less than 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid. We spent almost $65 billion on foreign aid in 2023, and in terms of dollars, that was more than any other country in the world. However, as a percentage of our economy, the United States spent less than Japan, Britain, France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands on foreign aid. Not to mention that billions of those dollars come right back into the American economy. USAID funds many American researchers, and American farms supply around 41 percent of the food aid that the agency sends around the world every year. Now, however, $340 million worth of purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid have been stopped, thanks to the Trump administration’s funding freeze.

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Next, we need to dispel the lies and false information that have been spread about USAID. First came an X post claiming USAID had paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie and several other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine to film a video clip for a cable network. Even though this was false – and posted on an account named Matryoshka, a company with links to the Kremlin known to spread misinformation –Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. reposted it anyway.

 

That Elon Musk reposted this propaganda was certainly no surprise because he has called USAID a “criminal organization,” a “radical-left political psy op,” and a “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” He took great pride in posting that he and his team had been busy “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

 

Then there was the time the White House press secretary announced, from the podium, that the administration had uncovered a USAID plan to spend $50 million to give condoms to Hamas (the money was actually for operating two field hospitals in Gaza that provided surgical care and emergency maternal and newborn care), and the time she said USAID had given the media company Politico $8 million (the number was actually $44,000, which was paid for media subscriptions).

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Meanwhile, almost immediately after Elon Musk “fed USAID into the wood chipper,” at least 11,500 Americans and 54,575 foreigners lost their jobs, around $1 billion in payments for work that had already been completed had been frozen; and $500 million in food was sitting in ports, ships and warehouses.

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… and it’s just going to get so much worse. Many of the people of Sudan will die as the country succumbs to famine. Even if they live, they will now be more susceptible to diseases like tuberculosis and H.I.V. as clinics and programs close their doors. Countries throughout Africa have run out of ready-to-use therapeutic food for severely malnourished children. The people in Burkina Faso – whose government’s war against Islamist insurgents has intensified, leading to more deaths and mass displacement – now have no support.

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Because USAID is one of the largest providers of health care to Indonesia, H.I.V., tuberculosis and malaria will likely explode. Women who are being mistreated and/or trafficked in Cambodia and Guatemala are now unguarded. Colombia will probably become destabilized again. The one-half of Haitians who rely on humanitarian aid will again face, at best, malnutrition and, at worst, starvation. The hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Syria who live in camps will soon have no food, fuel or water, and the over 1.6 million Ukrainian children at risk of forced deportation, indoctrination, and militarization under Russian occupation are now unprotected. Dangerous pathogens have been left unsecured at labs across Africa. Airport and checkpoint inspections for mpox, Ebola, and other infectious diseases have been reduced or stopped altogether – meaning millions of unscreened animals and people are freely crossing borders.

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This puts Americans directly at risk because diseases – like Ebola in Uganda, the Marburg virus in Tanzania, the mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Lassa in Nigeria – can travel quickly. Remember when the coronavirus made its way to America, all the way from China?