What do Trump’s proposed foreign aid cuts mean?
U.S. foreign aid plays a critical role in tackling poverty, hunger, and inequality worldwide, which is why the Trump administration’s recent cuts to foreign development assistance were met with public outrage and pushback from development and humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam.
Despite widespread public support for U.S.-funded foreign aid, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut more than 80 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs, which provide humanitarian and development assistance worldwide to people in some of the worst global crises. The effect of these cuts on people is dire: At least 23 million children stand to lose access to education, and as many as 95 million people would lose access to basic healthcare, potentially leading to more than 3 million preventable deaths per year.
Oxfam has responded to the attacks on USAID by joining other humanitarian groups in a lawsuit to defend USAID and U.S. foreign assistance, which is ongoing.
So what does the Trump administration’s decision to eliminate so much foreign aid mean, what impact could it have around the world, and why is it critical for the government to reverse this decision? Oxfam answers all of these questions and more.
What is USAID and what does it do?
Foreign aid programs help people around the world in various ways, providing food, healthcare, education, economic development, and disaster relief. It’s a key part of U.S. foreign policy and has proven to be an important factor in reducing global poverty. This type of assistance—from the United States as well as other governments and international institutions—has saved millions of lives.
In particular, USAID, which facilitates much of the foreign humanitarian and development assistance of the U.S. government, was established in 1961 as an independent agency to foster prosperity and save lives around the globe. USAID works on a wide range of issues, and it has brought lifesaving medicines, food, clean water, assistance for farmers, kept women and girls safe, promoted peace, and so much more over decades, all for less than one percent of our federal budget.
“There is not a single area of development and humanitarian assistance USAID has not been involved in,” said Oxfam America’s President and CEO Abby Maxman, who has been working in international development for 30 years. “People at USAID have been thought leaders implementing ideas at scale, in wide ranging areas — I don’t think there is a major area of the development system in which USAID did not bring its technical know-how, research, and evidence.”
How much aid does the U.S. give to foreign countries?
The United States typically spends around one percent of the federal budget on foreign development assistance, which includes both humanitarian assistance and development programs. The agency overseeing much of U.S. foreign aid is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) which had a budget of $63 billion in fiscal year 2023. Within the broad definition of foreign aid, the exact amount of poverty-focused development aid carried out by USAID varies from year to year, but recently it has been around 0.49 percent of the federal budget, which works out to about $105 per U.S. citizen per year.
