How U.S. foreign aid cuts put lives and futures at risk

Upon inauguration, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting all foreign aid for a 90-day review. The order claimed that the foreign aid industry is misaligned “with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values”.  Less than six months later the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was officially closed, ending the majority of U.S. aid assistance and international development grants that had been helping save lives for over 60 years. 

The U.S.’s attack on financial international co-operation has continued throughout 2025 as US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr announced that America would no longer be helping fund GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunisations), a collaborative effort to spread life-saving vaccinations to the developing world, funded largely by the Gates Foundation, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States. The latest blow arrived in the form of a spending bill, which passed by only three votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, allowing the administration to cut 9 billion dollars worth of foreign aid, including media funding. Some saw USAID as a cost to the American government and a drain on national resources, but for many others, it was a source of hope, granting opportunity to millions across the world. Its closure threatens to remove access to food, education and healthcare in many developing countries. 

In the modern era, USAID has helped to transform the lives of billions of people across the world. The organisation supported 52 million children and young people through their education programmes. Schools have been built in rural areas of sub-saharan Africa where children may have otherwise gone without a formal education. Global health benefited massively as hospitals had been built in the Middle East, with more in the process of being erected. Africa’s healthcare was also to develop and modernise with USAID funding through not only the building of infrastructure, but also putting in programs to ensure as much value can be extracted from them as possible. 

The basic premise of foreign aid is simple: developing nations, which have suffered from conflicts or natural disasters, often find themselves unable to adequately provide for their citizens through healthcare, education and the provision of other government services – be that for financial or infrastructural reasons. Some of the recipients of U.S. foreign aid have also suffered directly from past decisions of the U.S. government, such as Libya and Iraq, which were both on the receiving end of past U.S. military intervention. Developed nations like the U.S. step in to counterbalance such interventions or fill the gaps in local services, thereby aiming to progress their individual goals of peace, democracy, economic partnerships or global health improvements. 

Similarly, while the original aim of U.S. international development spending may have been to leverage it as soft power and exercise control over developing nations, its vehicles such as USAID had become major proponents of global health and humanitarian assistance. Since USAID was set up in 1961 by then-president John F. Kennedy, the organisation had poured billions into diverse projects and missions, benefiting the lives of all who were involved.

Most concerningly, global aid cuts threaten the lives of those who had relied on institutions such as USAID for healthcare. In a study published by the Lancet Medical Journal in the wake of the cut announcement, upwards of 14 million people could potentially die if the cuts were to go ahead, with the effects being comparable to an erosion of two decades' worth of progress in public health. Immediate effects could be seen in a BBC report at a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya where rations, funded by USAID, were slashed in an effort to cut costs. This has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees, the majority of whom are escaping famine and a brutal civil war in Sudan, slowly starving with no prospect of their situation improving. Additionally, according to GAVI research, 75 million children will be deprived of access to life-saving vaccinations, leading to the deaths of over 1.2 million children from easily preventable diseases. The ripple effects of a rise in cases of these diseases are also not in the interest of Western nations, with global health crises putting citizens of the entire world at risk. Strictly financially speaking, foreign aid is a huge expense. But these recent cuts have shown the impact that accelerated decisions can have in a world built around these aid dynamics; a sustained lack of funding will lead to potentially fatal consequences for millions across the world.

In the wake of a global trend of foreign aid cuts led by the U.S., some nations are bracing for impact and preparing for an era of greater self-reliance – and some are looking to fill the gap. The absence of USAID leaves a vacuum that Russia and China may be looking to fill in; but their motives point beyond providing healthcare and education. Perhaps the clearest example of this is China’s Belt and Road Initiative which may occupy the space left by USAID in the geopolitical world. The project aims to boost China’s prominence on the world stage through the funding of infrastructure projects globally. However, in reality, it has been also labelled as a debt trap designed to keep nations reliant on Chinese money. A report from the Associated Press outlined the international scale of this phenomenon, citing numerous examples of China seizing assets and crippling economies to maximise its financial gain, with the nations most in need losing out. An example of this is the Republic of Ghana which, just a couple of years ago, had to grapple with the threat of losing its control over energy and mineral resources due to being unable to repay its foreign debt.

Whilst still causing a level of economic reliance, the bulk of USAID’s work was awarding grants to other nations or the funding of projects, to ensure that nations wouldn’t build up debt as a result of the organisation's work. Conversely, Chinese loans have been almost exclusively given to low or middle income countries with little transparency on details in the public domain and a tendency to have higher interest rates and shorter repayment times than loans from Western lenders. This has led to significant allegations of predatory behaviour from China and raises concerns regarding the sustainability of the new global aid infrastructure in a post-USAID world.

To conclude, foreign aid spending goes far beyond being a tool to maximise a state's political power; it is a necessity for ensuring an equitable world. In many developing nations, a lack of resources and infrastructure around access to life-saving necessities demands a system such as foreign aid be put in place. USAID served a key role in providing sustenance and healthcare globally; its closure will cost lives and deprive millions of access to commodities we take for granted in the Western world. It’s clear that the aid cuts enacted by the current Trump administration will have lasting effects, rewinding the progress of global healthcare and shifting geopolitical tides.