Many are celebrating how the Trump administration sent the “Department of Government Efficiency” grim reaper after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Some believe it is a blow to US meddling and regime change efforts that frequently lead to instability and conflict across the globe. Others are doing a happy dance because they say USAID was wasteful spending on a whole range of items, including liberal-DEI projects around the world.
Could they both end up being disappointed? As Lambert pointed out in his Monday post, “USAID is an agency established by Congress; Elon can’t just abolish it.” And it looks like the Trump team doesn’t intend to abolish it but rather rehouse and rebrand it.
Let’s first take a look at what’s going on with USAID before turning to any potential larger implications for US foreign policy.
President John F. Kennedy created USAID using an executive order in 1961, and Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, codifying USAID as an independent agency. According to Politico, it has more than 9,000 people on staff serving in more than 100 countries, and “the secretary [of state] technically has authority over USAID’s funding, and the two institutions are lumped together in congressional appropriations. But generally, USAID operates without much micro-managing from the State Department…”
In defense of USAID many point to the funds that USAID provides for global programs like vaccination efforts, but we also know that even those are sometimes used as cover for other clandestine activities, such as the CIA effort to track down Osama bin Laden using USAID and Save the Children hepatitis B vaccination campaign in Pakistan. The blowback from the CIA involvement set back vaccination efforts across Pakistan and West Asia and likely led to polio outbreaks across the region. Lee Fang also details how the agency provides backdoor ways for the American government to finance propaganda against American citizens.
The fact is we don’t how often the CIA is using USAID programs to further whatever schemes it has cooked up, but it is clear that whatever USAID’s original intentions and whatever good work it might do in the world, it is also a vehicle for the empire to control, subvert, and orchestrate color revolutions against foreign governments. Here’s a quick breakdown on USAID’s recent role in spreading US influence (and chaos and death) in Eastern Europe:
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is has an annual budget of over $27 billion. Its stated mission is to “provide economic, development, and humanitarian assistance worldwide.” However, in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states, USAID’s activities… pic.twitter.com/yJF1SD0mtA
— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) February 3, 2025
The agency has therefore helped contribute to countless deaths from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to Latin America and Southeast Asia. I think we can conclude that USAID, while it may offer some worthwhile programs that actually help people, is also a front for the intelligence community’s destabilization efforts which are a scourge on the planet, and it would be the world’s gain to see it dismantled.
Naturally, the Democrats are opposed. They finally roused themselves after Musk said President Trump had agreed to shut USAID down. We haven’t heard a peep about the assault on the National Labor Relations Board, but Democrats are choosing the USAID hill to fight on:
Senator @ChrisMurphyCT‘s arguments against cuts to USAID:– USAID “supports freedom fighters everywhere in this world”– “USAID chases China around the world”– “USAID fights terrorist groups all across this world” pic.twitter.com/JusT1vn2uP
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) February 3, 2025
Will they be able to find the time to defend USAID while also staying on their other messages like war with Iran:
House Dem leader Hakeem Jeffries:
“Sinwar is gone. Sinwar is gone. And Hamas is on the run… and Iran is at one of its weakest points in decades.
“We can’t take our foot off the gas pedal until Iran is brought to its knees — for the good of the world.“ pic.twitter.com/MvvfwQrn2u
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) February 2, 2025
And defending the “good” billionaires:
Democratic Party’s newly elected Chair, Ken Martin: “There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money. But we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.”pic.twitter.com/oNdCet0NNB
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) February 1, 2025
While some legal experts saying an act of Congress is needed to “dismantle” USAID because it was codified as an independent agency by the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, dismantling USAID isn’t exactly what the Trump administration is doing. From Politico:
Two incoming Trump administration officials familiar with the matter said the president’s team is exploring subsuming the agency into the State Department…One current and one former USAID official said the agency is deliberating on whether to fully transfer its financial management system for all its awards, known as the Phoenix program, under the State Department to better streamline the two agencies’ parallel work on foreign aid…
“This idea has been floated by nearly every administration since USAID was established by Congress in 1998,” said Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I’m supportive of efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves U.S. national security interests and will look for ways to do just that.”
That’s neocon Risch who’s fond of the “Russia is a gas station masquerading as country” line and whose donors include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, so good to know he and his benefactors are on board.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that he is acting administrator of the USAID, which might signify that the State Department is going to be taking a more hands-on approach to the agency. Rubio added in a letter to lawmakers that he is delegating authority to Pete Marocco, a Trump appointee who served at USAID in the president’s first term. More from CNN:
Rubio, in a letter to the heads of Congress’ committees on foreign affairs and appropriations Monday, said he had authorized Marocco “to begin the process of engaging in a review and potential reorganization of USAID’s activities to maximize efficiency and align operations with the national interest.”
“The Department of State and other pertinent entities will be consulting with Congress and the appropriate committees to reorganize and absorb certain bureaus, offices, and missions of USAID,” he wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNN.
“USAID may move, reorganize, and integrate certain missions, bureaus, and offices into the Department of State, and the remainder of the Agency may be abolished consistent with applicable law,” he wrote.
What will it look like bureaucratically when the legal dust settles? Project 2025 offers one possible outcome, as Politico describes:
There are multiple ways to let the State Department exert greater control over USAID without necessarily formally dismantling the latter.
One option the administration could pursue is having the USAID administrator also serve as the State Department’s director of foreign assistance. The person who holds the latter role has traditionally worked closely with USAID, and the idea of merging or dual-hatting the positions is suggested in Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation vision authored by many who now work for Trump.
Why Is Trump Going After USAID and Does It Herald a Change in US Foreign Policy?
Mark Ames provides maybe the simplest and most plausible explanation, especially when we consider the above rumblings about folding USAID into the State Department:
Trump’s takedown of USAID, like much of his 2nd term, motivated by vengeance for the Russiagate hoax. The left-liberal-center spectrum that drove Russiagate for 4 years has since forgotten about it, but for MAGA Russiagate is red hot live & a great mobilizer. Reap what you sow. https://t.co/HdWKQGqytq
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) February 2, 2025
Many believe that the changes to USAID herald a new day in US foreign policy. For example, Arnaud Bertrand wrote the following:
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that we’re looking at a seismic shift in the US’s relationship with the world, between:
1) The US dismantling its foreign interference apparatuses (like USAID 👇)2) Marco Rubio stating that we’re now in a multipolar world with “multi-great… https://t.co/C0z7JwIIif
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) February 2, 2025
While all that would certainly be welcome, here are some reasons to be doubtful.
First, look at what they’re saying. From CNN describing what amounts to a rebranding:
Speaking to the press in El Salvador, Rubio said the “functions of USAID” must align with US foreign policy and that it is “a completely unresponsive agency.”
When asked about the arguments that USAID’s work is vital to national security and promoting US interests, Rubio said, “There are things that USAID, that we do through USAID, that we should continue to do, and we will continue to do.”
“This is not about ending the programs that USAID does, per se,” he said.
This looks more like an attempt to bring under control rogue agencies that were hostile to Trump during his first term in office.
Simultaneously, it could signify a change in recipients of US aid. Here’s Trump on Monday:
“We just want to do the right thing. It’s something that should have been done a long time ago. Went crazy during the Biden administration. They went totally crazy what they were doing and the money they were giving to people that shouldn’t be getting,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
…Pressed about his support for USAID during his first term in office, Trump said he loved the “concept” but not the execution of the agency’s mission.
“They turn out to be radical left lunatics. And the concept of it is good, but it’s all about the people,” he said.
So aid is likely to continue to new recipients abroad once the bureaucracy at home is sorted. I wrote the following back in November and think it still stands:
To be clear, the following is not an argument that Trump represents a unique threat. If anything, his warranted quest for revenge against certain neocon factions and Blob outfits could produce net positives. On the other hand, he is the product of our plutocrat-controlled capitalist system just as Biden, Trump I, and Obama before him. And so short of overhauling the system, the question becomes how will it make use of the Trump administration at this time?
Let’s remember that it was mere months ago that Silicon Valley was largely aligned with the Biden Administration. How quickly things can change.
Tech, finance, government, and Israel are set to be aligned again under Trump, as they are with most every administration. Maybe one difference between Biden and Trump is that we switch out the extreme identity politics for the more old-fashioned religious fanatics:
And, sure enough, Hegseth has 2 Crusader tattoos: a Jerusalem Cross, the symbol of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem on his chest, & “Deus Vult” the Crusaders’ theological cri de coeur (“God wills it”) on his bicep.
“Deus Vult” means God mandated Crusaders’ violence. 13/ pic.twitter.com/kAGwqjToyE
— Matthew D. Taylor (@TaylorMatthewD) November 13, 2024
So in Europe, for example, rather than a Biden administration chummy with Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, and Emmanuel Macron we get a Trump administration reorienting all levers of foreign policy towards the likes of Giorgia Meloni, the Alternative for Germany, and other putative nationalists who will be loyal to Trump and are able to rebrand Europe’s vassalage and neoliberalism as some sort of victory against the grating virtue signalling of the Davos cabal while continuing to assist the US oligarchs in the plundering of Europe.
The objective is still American primacy and expansion for American capital.
Any change in marketing is more likely an indication that the plutocrats and their think tanks believe the “woke” empire reached its sell-by-date, and it’s time to rebrand.
More than an acceptance of multipolarity, this is probably more a reflection of disappointment with some of the returns from the Biden administration — especially on the Russia collapse bet. So while the plutocrats might be forced to accept that running an unwinnable proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is stupid strategy, which it is (as well as a human tragedy), and Trump is tasked with getting out of the mess, that doesn’t herald a seachange in how US plutocrats view the world.
Indeed, the Trump administration’s argument seems to be that it has a better way to increase American oligarchs’ returns: pick fights you can win, control shipping lanes, increase plunder of vassals, and perhaps target those members of BRICS that are weaker than Russia and China.
Second, it would be quite the shock if Elon “we will coup whoever we want” Musk is suddenly the champion of the US imperialism victims. And the talking points are bogus historical revisionism:
I wish. Actually USAID is the agent of CIA soft power. https://t.co/9tMLQFzgdL
— Margaret Kimberley (@freedomrideblog) February 2, 2025
In reality the agency was about spreading freedom for American capital to plunder other nations and took aim at any Marxists trying to prevent such pillaging. And millions of Communists were killed by CIA-backed regimes during Cold War conflicts across the world.
Whatever programs USAID continues with under its new State Department guidance, it’s probably a safe bet it’ll still be working for the likes of Musk and his pals and will continue to try and help coup (almost) everyone they want.
I guess we’ll see. I would love to be wrong.