On his first day in office, President Trump placed a 90-day freeze on all U.S. foreign aid. He then put all employees of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, on leave last week. A federal judge has temporarily paused the mass layoffs, but the freeze on aid remains — meaning many programs providing food assistance, health care services have had to cease operations.
Suparna Chaudhry is an assistant professor of international affairs at Lewis & Clark College. She joins us to talk about how these changes could impact humanitarian aid across the globe.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. On his first day in office, President Trump placed a 90-day freeze on all U.S. foreign aid. Last week, he put all employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, on leave. A federal judge has temporarily paused those mass layoffs, but the freeze on aid remains, meaning many programs providing food assistance, healthcare or other urgent services around the world have been shut down. Suparna Chaudhry is an assistant professor of International Affairs at Lewis and Clark College. She studies human rights and development, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Suparna Chaudhry: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Why was USAID first established?
Chaudhry: Yeah, the USAID was first established in 1961 under the Kennedy administration. And the main idea was, let’s provide food aid and humanitarian assistance around the world. Obviously, this would be good for countries, especially countries that were just emerging from World War II. But also, the idea was, let’s generate some goodwill and support for the U.S., and this will be an excellent opportunity to counter the influence of the Soviet Union.
Miller: So it was two aims that were both preeminent … I mean, helping people, but also this is, I was gonna say, certainly right around the height of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis right around the corner. And soft power and seeming like the good guys was chief among the reasons?
Chaudhry: It’s not just helping other countries, it’s that these programs will ultimately serve U.S. national interests. Because as you said, it’s the use of soft power. It’s like trying to get other countries around the world and our allies to do things for us because of all these services that we are providing, instead of using economic or military threats to cause them to do stuff.
Miller: Can you give us just a broad sense for the kinds of services currently, or until recent weeks, that USAID money has been providing?
Chaudhry: USAID assistance broadly falls into humanitarian assistance and development assistance. So humanitarian assistance is aid given for countries that have just experienced some form of natural disasters or are in conflict zones. What does rebuilding infrastructure look like? And development assistance includes aid given to improve a country’s economic and social policies. So a lot of it consists of things like food aid, health clinics and stuff like that.
Miller: How significant is the U.S. globally, in terms of the total aid that is being given out?
Chaudhry: Overall, the U.S. gives around $70 billion of foreign aid every year and the budget of USAID is around $40 billion. It’s really one of the biggest players as far as humanitarian assistance goes. Out of every $10 that is spent on boards and rebuilding infrastructure in other countries, $4 of those come from USAID.
It’s also the largest provider of food assistance. So for instance, there’s a famine going on in Sudan right now and USAID is the biggest provider of food assistance. Much of this food is food that the government buys from farmers in the U.S. and it’s then selling abroad.
Miller: And it has an impact on NGOs as well. In Portland-based Mercy Corps, something close to 40% of their money comes directly from USAID. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars for this NGO alone.
So you talked about tens of billions of dollars the U.S. spends. How significant is that for the U.S. economy, for U.S. spending as a whole?
Chaudhry: It’s a tiny percent of the federal budget. Last year, in 2023, it was 0.7% of the federal budget. And overall, foreign assistance is around 1% of the federal budget. I think this is really key because there have been polls that show that people vastly overestimate the amount of U.S. foreign assistance to other countries. They’ve thought that it’s sometimes like 35% or some others have shown a more conservative estimate of 25%. But it’s not even 1%.
Miller: How politically contentious has funding for USAID been in this country in the past?
Chaudhry: Typically, it’s been a bipartisan project. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations there has been bipartisan support for USAID. So what we’re seeing unfold right now is very surprising, both from the perspective of even the first Trump administration, but even in what is written in Project 2025. There’s an entire chapter on USAID, so it’s surprising from both perspectives.
During the first Trump administration they tried to cut down the budget by a third and there was pushback from both Republican and Democratic senators on that. It never ended up happening. And the reductions that we ended up seeing were on expected areas, like providing aid to health clinics that also provide abortion services, reducing support for human rights and refugee services.
But right now, even if we look at the chapter on the agency in Project 2025, which is largely guiding a lot of the administration’s other decisions, there is no mention of cutting down the programs to this extent or even shutting the agency. In fact, the chapter was written by an official in USAID under the first Trump administration. He talks about how this could be a vehicle to counter growing Chinese influence, that China has its own foreign aid programs. So the U.S. foreign aid programs need to continue as a way to counter it. It talks about how the program should increase in countries where China is also trying to set up more infrastructure.
Miller: Can you describe China’s plan right now?
Chaudhry: China’s foreign aid program is under its broad umbrella of its Belt and Road Initiative. So it’s expanding fast in many countries in Asia and Africa. With the suspension of a lot of programs right now, temporarily, in those countries, there’s concern that many of those NGOs and contractors and governments are instead going to turn to China to say, “You have more reliable aid. We are going to continue getting aid from you.” Because at the end of the day, people receiving critical medicines every day, they’ve had stoppage in those provisions.
Miller: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is now the acting head of USAID, has said that if a program, quote, “Is providing food, or medicine, or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, it’s not included in the freeze.” But reporting by CNN last week found that that wasn’t the case. Almost all USAID humanitarian assistance programs had been stopped. That was before a federal judge on Friday ordered a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staff off of their jobs. What have you heard about what’s actually happening on the ground now?
Chaudhry: As you mentioned, there was an exception given to these life saving provisions. But many providers on the ground are talking about, because they haven’t been able to get funds from the U.S., they haven’t been able to continue providing these services. So for instance, the Norwegian Refugee Council said that it typically provides services to over 50,000 displaced Ukrainians during the winter. Their funds have been run out and they are not continuing to get reimbursed by USAID. They also provide clean drinking water to wartorn villages in Sudan. They haven’t been able to do that.
More locally, I was talking to Andrea Johnson, who is executive director of Green Empowerment, which is an international development organization based out of the area. Even though they do not directly get USAID funds, she was describing how many of their partners haven’t been able to get those funds, which is affecting their programs as well. So for instance, Green Empowerment works to electrify health facilities in Uganda. But because of this stop work order, it means that the recent Ebola outbreak in Ugandan health facilities has been spreading more, as the number of contract traces have dropped, as the number of people who are testing departing passengers has dropped. So it’s affecting the work of organizations in the area, even those who do not directly receive USAID funding.
Miller: Let’s say that somebody is not swayed by humanitarian arguments for foreign aid. What will it mean for the U.S. and its image in the global community?
Chaudhry: As I mentioned at the outset, this sort of aid isn’t just to do good in other places. It’s also there to protect U.S. national and security interests. So if you’re not swayed by arguments about humanitarian interests, it’s also worth noting that the idea of protecting national interests and generating support for the U.S. is borne out by research. So we have a lot of research that shows us that in countries where USAID is present, it is increasing support for the U.S. to some degree.
I can think of an example of research that looks at the impact of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief …
Miller: This is George W. Bush’s effort
Chaudhry: Yes. George W. Bush’s effort – started in 2003. And the idea was to provide life saving treatment to those around the world who are suffering from AIDS. This program has been tremendously successful and a lot of funds from this program go to other countries, based on HIV prevalence, not on preexisting relations with the U.S. And what they found is that as such funds to these countries in which HIV prevalence have gone up, U.S. support has increased by 20%. Similarly, the U.S. funds a bunch of health clinics in Bangladesh called Smiling Sun clinics. Those have also increased support for the U.S.
And now we are finding similar results with the impact of Chinese aid, where support for China is increasing in certain African countries once their development projects increase. So even if you’re not particularly swayed by humanitarian interests, you should think about these interests actually increasing U.S. popularity abroad. And some of these projects are also directly related to U.S. national security interests. So for instance, I can think of an example of a provider who works to support the families of those who were initially recruited into ISIS. There are these providers and villages who are saying we can no longer continue our jobs, so these people are prone to ISIS recruitment again.
It’s not just humanitarian work. It’s also making sure that you stop the spread of influence of actors like ISIS, like narco traffickers in Colombia – that would be another example that comes to mind.
Miller: Suparna Chaudhry, thanks very much.
Chaudhry: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Suparna Chaudhry is an assistant professor of international affairs at Lewis & Clark College.
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