USAID Funded Aid Programs Abroad, But Mainly Was a Jobs Program for Progressives

Although the original DOGE program by all measures failed to cut government spending in any significant way, its influence was strongly felt by one agency: the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The Donald Trump administration slashed the agency’s budget and laid off most of its workers in both the US and abroad. At the same time, the agency also stopped payment to numerous non-profits whose employees worked with USAID employees to promote and establish programs.

Whether the evisceration of USAID was good or bad depended upon one’s viewpoint, ideological leanings, and what one is willing to believe in support of “the cause.” For example, the Harvard University School of Public Health put out a release last December that claimed that the USAID reduction “has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition” in poor countries. Not to be outdone, National Public Radio claimed in the medical journal, the Lancet, that 30 million people will die in the next four years because of Trump’s action against USAID.

There is no way to verify these numbers. It is true that many people in poor countries depend, to a certain extent, upon US foreign aid, although much of it consists of military aid to countries like Israel and Ukraine. We also know that the US government uses foreign aid to leverage its influence over other countries. According to the blog “Offshoot”:

For over six decades, U.S. foreign aid—in the form of food, economic, and military aid—has been a strategic tool to advance American interests in the Majority World, under the guise of humanitarian assistance. In 2024, the U.S. alone contributed over 43% of global aid, wielding unparalleled influence over global development. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been at the heart of this effort, shaping food systems, economic policies, and health programmes across the Majority World.

The blog continues:

As part of its program to “end world hunger”, each year, USAID shipped millions of tons of surplus U.S. grain at highly subsidised rates to food-insecure regions. But this wasn’t charity—it was strategy. Economic warfare dressed up in sacks of wheat and flour.

Most of this aid was “program food aid”—grain exported in exchange for political and economic concessions. In return, recipient countries were pushed to deregulate agriculture, restructure their economies, and sign trade deals that opened their markets to U.S. agribusiness.

Even “project food aid” — food donated “free of cost” — came with its own strings attached. Cheap U.S. imported grains drove Majority World food prices down, crippling local food systems and economies and forcing them to purchase food from Minority World countries and corporations to feed their populations.

The USAID playbook for collapsing local food systems looks something like this:

First, flood local markets with cheap food until farmers can’t compete. Then, push governments to deregulate agriculture and import instead of investing in local production.

As a result, formerly self-sufficient communities are turned into buyers—not growers—of their own food, locking Majority World countries into dependence—and securing total market control.

The consequences have been devastating.

The blog then looks at the fate of farmers in Third World countries, pointing out that US food aid also devastated the markets for local growers from Haiti to Jordan. However, the New York Times recently took a different approach, looking at the effect that cutting funds to USAID has had on people who once worked for the agency or for non-profits funded by USAID.

The article by Elisabeth Bumiller and Eileen Sullivan looks at how a number of people working in USAID capacity are faring after a year of being laid off from their jobs, and it is clear they are not faring well. They write:

She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk and left with three days of health insurance and no severance pay. She had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development or related groups for more than two decades. She made $175,000 a year.

That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps, Medicaid and a supplemental nutrition program for women and children that helps with their now 19-month-old daughter.

The mortgage on their home in Washington was until recently in forbearance, meaning they negotiated to pay less than they owed each month. But the bank has now cut them off and suggested they apply for a low-income mortgage program. “We don’t know if we’ll qualify,” Ms. Uccello said. She and her husband have applied for more than 100 jobs with no luck. Most of their friends don’t have jobs either.

The article continues:

When the Trump administration dismantled the sprawling global aid agency last year, it wiped out virtually an entire industry—international development—that had been based in Washington since U.S.A.I.D.’s creation in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy. Nearly all of the agency’s 16,000 employees were laid off. An estimated 280,000 contractors, partners and local hires worldwide lost their jobs as well.

A year later, people have plowed through savings, cashed out retirement funds and moved in with friends and relatives. Former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have done informal surveys estimate that less than half have found full-time work, with many making less than before. An estimated third are unemployed. Others are in part-time work. The District of Columbia currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 6.7 percent, in large part because of major reductions in the federal work force, including U.S.A.I.D., and cuts to government grants and contracts.

The fate of one former non-profit worker, Sheryl Cowan, is especially instructive:

Sheryl Cowan, 57, was making $272,000 a year as a senior vice president at a U.S.A.I.D.-funded nonprofit when she was let go at the end of March 2025. Last month she had an online interview for a $19-an-hour job managing a Penzeys Spices store near her home in Falls Church, Va.

In fact, all the employees interviewed were making six-figure salaries in their jobs, yet few of them were qualified for positions paying even close to those numbers after the layoffs. With a free market, one’s pay is tied to what one produces, but in the world of government and government-funded non-profits, opportunity costs seem to be irrelevant.

For someone like Cowan, there was no market demand for the services her non-profit employer provided, and certainly no market demand for her job. Whatever skills her job required apparently were not highly prized outside of the organization where she worked. Likewise, we can say the same for other USAID or non-profit workers that have lost their jobs and are having a hard time finding work with anything close to comparable pay. This is not to denigrate their job skills or make light of their current hardships, but the hard fact is that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the main purpose of USAID was not to feed hungry people or provide medical care to poor people with no alternative care, but rather to serve as a slush fund for well-connected Democrats, enabling them to live comfortable upper-middle class lives.

Perhaps we should not be surprised to read so-called studies that claim a massive death toll if the USAID programs are not immediately reinstated. Those who have been employed in the government aid chain know that the only way to fund these programs and provide grants to associated non-profit organizations is by dunning taxpayers, which makes them essentially political outfits. And the only way to convince politicians and taxpayers to continue to fund these agencies is to paint a dire picture of what would happen if the aid monies no longer existed. 

While it is clear that at least some destitute people are helped by US aid programs, it also is clear that politically-based programs are first and foremost political and exist to serve people whose livelihoods are tied to program funding. Like so many other things that might have had beginnings rooted in good intentions, USAID six decades after its founding became something that is quite familiar in Washington: a racket.