Alwaght- Among Trump's controversial executive orders after comeback to the White House, the order to freeze international aid system in recent days has triggered a backlash.
With the new Trump order, over $60 billion in US foreign aids were frozen for 90 days, pending government review.
Meanwhile, even the US Secretary of State Mark Rubio said that the administration may dissolve the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) agency.
Last week, the top American diplomat wrote to lawmakers that USAID’s “conflicting, overlapping, and duplicative” activities have led to “discord in US foreign policy and foreign relations.”
Trump in a X post on Friday addressed Rubio: “Shut it down.”
Earlier Monday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a “special agent of the government” at the White House, said the plan was to shut down USAID. “You have to basically get rid of the whole thing,” he said. “It’s not fixable.” “We’re shutting it down.”
The billionaire Trump appointed to run the “Department of Government Efficiency” said he had spoken to the president at length about USAID, and “he agreed we should shut it down.”
“I actually checked with him a couple of times [and] I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And Trump said, ‘Yes.’”
But the Trump administration’s move did not go unnoticed, and on Friday, a federal judge blocked the administration’s decision, which would have temporarily laid off about 2,700 employees who were deployed overseas.
Critics say the Trump administration’s decision to cut or eliminate foreign economic assistance would have significant implications for US's global influence and soft power. Foreign aid has long been a key instrument of US diplomacy, playing a critical role in advancing its strategic interests.
President Harry Truman signed the first US foreign aid package since World War II to combat the spread of communism in Europe. A decade later, John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act, establishing the USAID.
Foreign aid has since been widely considered a cornerstone of soft power, a term popularized in the 1980s by US political scientist Joseph Nye to describe the ability to influence others to deliver desired outcomes.
Nye has said he thought Trump “didn’t understand soft power.”
“Power is the ability to get other people to do what you want, and you can do it in three ways: You can do it by coercion. You can do it by paying. You can do it by charm, which is known as the carrot-and-stick policy — and Trump doesn’t understand honey," he says.
“I think it’s a sad moment,” he said of the sweeping changes and uncertainty over the continued existence of the US foreign aid program. “Based on a misunderstanding of all elements of power.”
Some former administration officials have also said that the sudden changes will undermine US foreign policy and national security.
On Wednesday, former USAID adviser Chris Milligan lashed out at Trump’s order to halt aid. “Every minute that aid is stopped weakens America, diminishes our security, and costs us jobs,” he said.
The Trump administration is reportedly considering cutting aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as a way to apply pressure to control immigration, the measure backfired, as economic conditions worsened, and as a result, the root causes of immigration intensified, leading to a larger wave of refugees heading to the US.
Which countries affected the most?
The US has been the largest donor by volume since the 1960s, but it has not been a generous donor relative to its income, according to the Center for Global Development. According to UN reports, the American foreign aid accounted for less than 1 percent of the congressional budget in fiscal year 2023.
That works out to taxpayers, on average, about $210 a year, while the government spends more than $2,800 a year on military spending. That money goes to arms companies that profit from instability and war around the world, especially in poor African countries that need foreign aid.
Of the 26 countries at the top of the list of the world’s poorest, the Center for Global Development identified eight countries that receive more than a fifth of their foreign aid from USAID—namely South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia.
The economies of these eight low-income countries are so small that aid accounts for an average of 11 percent of their total income (based on available GNI data for the seven countries).
Now, given that US aid accounts for 30 percent of annual foreign aid to these countries, this suspension could create a deficit equivalent to more than 3 percent of GDP, a potentially large economic shock to these countries.
This is despite the fact that low-income countries grew by just 3 percent in 2023 and are projected to grow by 3.6 percent in 2024. Eight of these countries will face a shock hit of at least 3 percent: South Sudan (9 percent), Somalia (9 percent), Afghanistan (7 percent), Liberia (4 percent), Syria (5 percent), Central African Republic (4 percent), Yemen (4 percent), and the Federated States of Micronesia (3 percent).
The defining feature of the US foreign aid system has always been its focus on the poorest countries. But in recent years, the top recipient has been not a poor African or Asian country but Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia for almost three years.
Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on European allies to immediately increase their defense spending to bolster their security, while the Trump administration has called on NATO members to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense.
Opportunity for China to enhance international position
As the US has scaled down it foreign aid, China has increased its investments in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Many countries that previously relied on American support have turned to China, increasing their economic and political dependence on Beijing.
China pledged last fall to increase its support for Africa by more than $50 billion over three years, and has also increased the proportion of grants over loans.
Even Washington’s Western partners are warning the White House about the consequences.
“Donald Trump’s plans to dramatically cut US international aid could be a ‘major strategic mistake,’ allowing China to step in and increase its global influence,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary David lammy said recently during a visit to Ukraine. “We have spent years discovering this strategic mistake. Development remains a very important tool of soft power. And in the absence of development... I would be very concerned that China and others would step into that gap.”
Countries that have relied on American financial aid, including some NATO allies in Eastern Europe and strategic partners in Africa and Asia, feel abandoned, and this has led some of these countries to seek alternative alliances.
Also, with the US aid cutoff, such organization as the UN, World Health Organization, and the World Bank will suffer under financing, and in many cases, this gap is filled by China or other countries with different strategic aims.
Also, it should not be forgotten that many of the foreign aid programs help yjr American companies to compete in emerging markets. Scaling down these programs caused American companies not to manage to compete in key industries and other countries, especially China, take an upper hand.
All in all, foreign aid has always been an instrument for Washington to form alliances, enhance stability, and promote policies serving its interests. Therefore, while Trump describes the cut in foreign aid as a saving way in spending and executing the "America first" policy, its long-term effects can impair the US influence and boost the emerging rivals like China.
