Trump’s decision to suspend funding of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) provoked the ire of many liberals. Trump took the decision for all the wrong reasons; he is not very intelligent nor is he analytical and is incapable of understanding the big picture. And the liberals who were horrified and criticised his actions also did so for all the wrong reasons.
They came out in defence of the agency stating that all the dictators in the world will be happy,[1] ignoring that USAID has throughout its history financed projects for dictatorial or authoritarian regimes. They even went as far as the stupidity of saying that Elon Musk wanted this as vengeance against USAID for its role in defeating Apartheid.[2] Nothing could be further from the truth. What little role it played in the country was to ensure that capitalism would be safe, but it did not bring an end to Apartheid. The US government and all its agencies supported the racist regime, just like they supported the new “black” capitalism an integral part of the usual “white” capitalism, as capitalism really doesn’t have a colour.
So, what is the agency? And what role does it play in the world? These are questions that have prefabricated answers from those who have remained silent in the face of many of the US’ barbarities. There are exceptions of course. Mehdi Hasan is a journalist who is now famous worldwide for his positions on the genocide in Gaza, but in general, all those who answer those two questions positively, in general, answer questions on the role of the US positively, even in the case of Palestine.
Firstly, we should be clear about how the agency defines itself and how it has been seen by successive US governments. In 2002, George Bush described foreign aid as the third pillar of US national security, along with defence and diplomacy.[3] The same document Foreign Aid in the National Interest explains various lines of work of the agency such as financing the “development” of agriculture etc. They demand changes and reforms in the countries they “help”, just like the World Bank. When they clash with governments that are not given to implement the reforms they seek, they bluntly state that they will give funds to functionaries, ministers and others in the country to promote their agenda for change, even if at that precise moment the beneficiaries of the programmes have no political power to implement such changes.[4] They play the long game. They openly state that they have to finance NGOs that promote “democracy”.[5] This is what is nowadays called Colour Revolutions i.e. where through an NGO a situation of instability is generated in a country against a government or regime, whether it be democratic or authoritarian. What is important is whether its economic and foreign policy coincide with Washington’s interests or not. Colombia, for example, has always been a recipient of USAID’s programmes despite the murders of journalists, social leaders, opposition politicians, such as the Patriotic Union, trade unionists etc. Not in the worst years of the bloodbath was it proposed to limit the aid or even pressure the government to introduce democratic reforms. Colombia has always served US interests.
In the case of Colombia, the negative impacts of the supposed North American aid can be clearly seen. In 1961, Kennedy announced a new programme for Latin America, the Alliance for Progress and he also set up USAID. As part of that programme wheat was donated to certain countries, amongst them Colombia, but it was no favour. In 1961 there were 160,000 hectares of wheat in the country with a crop of 142,100 tonnes. The following year the area sown, fell to 150,000 hectares and so it went every year and in 2023 there were barely 3,000 hectares of wheat with a crop of 9,354 tonnes. They collapsed the production of a basic crop in the Colombian diet. In reality, USAID is prohibited by law from financing crops and other economic activities that compete with US companies. They were always going to collapse wheat production.
They did similar things in other parts of the world, collapsing local markets, though they always say that it is not their intention. Biden and Harris announced a new USAID pilot programme to supply emergency food and it consisted of sending one billion in food to 18 countries, all of them in Africa with the exceptions of Haití, Yemen and Bangladesh and amongst the products to be exported were “wheat, rice, sorghum, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, vegetable oil, cornmeal, navy beans, pinto beans and kidney beans – commodities that align with traditional USAID international food assistance programming.” [6] It is nothing more than a subsidy to the cereal sector in the US dominated by just four large companies (Cargill, Cenex Harvest States, Archer Daniels Midland ([ADM] and General Mills), who get rid of their surpluses this way.
Looking at the list one sees that it includes countries with high levels of food insecurity, but they are not the worst in the world. Five of them are amongst the top ten countries with people suffering food insecurity in terms of absolute numbers of people suffering food insecurity. In terms of percentages, just three of them are in the top ten countries with a percentage in excess of 30%. Afghanistan was not selected by the North Americans as they are no longer interested in the country, despite 46% of the population suffering from food insecurity, i.e. 19.9 million people. Neither did they select Syria with 55% where they were only interested in replacing the Ba’athist regime with ISIS, which they achieved this year.
The causes of this insecurity are varied. In twelve countries it was due to weather extremes, affecting 56.8 million people and in another 27 countries economic shocks affecting 83.9 million people. And lastly 117.1 million people affected by conflicts in 19 countries. It is worth pointing out that two of those countries were Syria and Ukraine, both of them conflicts in which the USA and Europe play a deciding role, not just in the start of the conflict but also in its course and duration.[7] In the case of Ukraine the war had a dramatic effect on the price and supply of cereals in many parts.
USAID’s initial work consisted of economic aid programmes that included promoting US companies and so-called free enterprise. Later in the 2000s it allied itself more closely with US companies, giving them contracts to benefit themselves and not the countries. Dupont, one of the companies that most pollutes water in the US, won a contract to supply drinking water to Ethiopia! The jokes write themselves. An opportunity is never lost for multinational capital. Before the war with Iraq had even begun, USAID was signing contracts for the reconstruction of the country once the war that hadn’t even begun was over. One of the beneficiaries was Bechtel a company that drummed up public support for the war and obtained one billion in contracts after the war.[8]USAID is an arm of the US government and its policies and contacts always favour their interests and never anyone else’s.
As for the threat that this represents to freedom of the press and expression etc. the mainstream press has raised an outcry. It is true that for the moment the USA will have to look to another agency to help foment discontent and carry out the so-called Colour Revolutions and other coup d’etat. The CIA will have to finance those organisations directly and not through USAID as they have done up till now. It has to be said that many of the regimes overthrown were not a bit progressive, but neither were those who replaced them. The US supported them because they were useful to their interests, and nothing more. Assad in Syria was replaced by Jolani from ISIS, and in the ex-soviet republics all of those governments have dubious human rights records. USAID never financed opposition groups, nor alternative press in Colombia despite its human rights record. It never financed those that sought to overthrow the dictator Pinochet in Chile nor in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, nor currently in Milei’s Argentina.
Now, various NGOs around the world, including Colombia, weep. They are organisations that are only interested in their own slice of the cake. We lose nothing with them. The sooner the better they go bankrupt. They will say that there are good projects that USAID finances and they are right. Of course there are. The soft power of a country cannot be 100% Machiavellian, not everything is absolute greed and power. In order for the US soft power to work there must be modicum of projects that are good in and of themselves or at least not as evidently criticisable. That is what it is about. These projects serve to generate an atmosphere conducive to US activities and give it the right to opine on internal policies and present itself as a friend of the government or the people when it wants to carry out a coup d’etat.
Neither Trump nor Musk understand this. They are not intelligent people; their abilities have always been to take advantage of what others build. Thus, they have no ability to think about what soft power means as a tool of real domination in other countries, nor as a means to justify the hard power of a coup or colour revolution. The closure of USAID is an own goal of imperialism. Elon Musk stated in Twitter that the agency was a nest of anti—American Marxist vipers. The Indian Marxist Vijay Prashad replied that Marxists such as him detested USAID as it was a nest of liberal imperialists. Prashad is right, so the answer to the headline question of this article is clear. USAID is the foe, and no one on the left should mourn its passing. Good riddance. And those who mourn it, run to get your thirty pieces of silver whilst they are still signing cheques.
References
[1] The Guardian (06/02/2025) Authoritarian regimes around the world cheer dismantling of USAid. Joseph Gedeon.
[1] The Guardian (06/02/2025) Authoritarian regimes around the world cheer dismantling of USAid. Joseph Gedeon.
[2] The Ink (03/02/2025) USAID fought Apartheid. Musk is killing it.
[3] USAID (2002) Foreign Aid in the National Interest. USAID. Washington D.C. pIV
[4] Ibíd., P.51
[5] Ibíd., P.44
[6] USDA (18/04/2024) USDA, USAID Deploy $1 Billion for Emergency Food Assistance.
[7] Statistics taken from Global Report on Food Crises 2023,
[8] Current Affairs (10/03/2021) Aid for Profit: The Dark History of USAID. Saheli Khastagir.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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