EDITORIAL: After abruptly freezing through an executive order all foreign assistance under the US Agency for International Development (USAID), President Donald Trump’s administration has now reinstated at least six of the cancelled foreign aid programmes for emergency food assistance.
According to media reports, Acting Deputy Administrator of the Agency, Jeremy Lewin, asked staff in an internal email circulated on Tuesday to restore awards to the World Food Programme in Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Jordan, Iraq and Ecuador.
Also resumed were four awards to the International Organisation for Migration in the Pacific region. These were a few programmes, he explained, that were cut in other countries that were not meant to be cut that have been rolled back.
Media reports, nonetheless, suggest pressure from people inside the administration and Congress led to restoration of these programmes. They better understand and appreciate the significance of USAID.
This foreign assistance agency employing thousands of people, two-thirds of them overseas, has been doing a lot of good work in more than 60 countries in a wide range of fields, including skill training, education, water sanitation, agriculture and disease prevention.
US’ transactional president, who likes to see tangible returns for his administration’s policies and actions, deems funding for these projects as waste of America’s resources. His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, handed charge of the agency, announced that many of the functions it carried out would continue but that spending “has to be in alignment with the national interest.” That goes without saying.
He has also felt it necessary to aver, “every dollar we spend, every programme we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” These are basic, commonsensical considerations for any leader.
To give the issue some context, it surely was not for some altruistic reasons that President John F Kennedy created USAID via the Congress Foreign Assistance Act in 1961; it’s been an effective instrument for gaining influence and leverage, which is why the administration insiders sought at least partial restoration of the humanitarian assistance programme.
Even if he wanted President Trump cannot dismantle USAID via an executive order since it is an executive agency under US law.
The attempt to do so already faces challenges in courts and in Congress. In a recent letter to Secretary Rubio, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have questioned plans to restructure the State Department, including by folding in USAID, which they maintained was “unconstitutional, illegal, unjustified, damaging, and inefficient”.
The administration may yet withhold funding for project it dislikes for whatever reason, creating chaos and confusion for the time being.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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