The foreign assistance community is reeling from the order to pause new and existing U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days, the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the termination of nearly all current U.S. foreign assistance programs.
This is an existential threat and an escalation of persistent efforts to disrupt U.S. assistance to vulnerable people around the world. The first Trump administration, 2017-2021, had a record of efforts to cut support for essential humanitarian and development programs. Among its proposals were cutting off aid to the countries in Central America’s Northern Triangle over issues of immigration and asylum-seekers, approving U.S. assistance only to countries that voted with the United States at the United Nations, and slashing the budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by nearly a third.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, multiple conservative policy platforms championed many of the same ideas, even proposing an immediate freeze on disbursing resources until after an assessment of the programs, using the lens of their political views, was complete.
This is precisely what the Trump administration has done. Each administration has the right to review its programs, but it should conduct its review without interrupting lifesaving programs, as past administrations have done.
U.S. foreign assistance, dating back to the Marshall Plan following World War II, is designed to serve the U.S. national interest. But it also considers other priorities. One important consideration is that U.S. foreign assistance should represent American values.
Human needs should be the main consideration when it comes to allocating U.S. assistance. The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted globally in 2015, emphasize that objectives such as ending hunger and expanding access to education apply to everyone. They are universal. No one should be left behind as the global economy grows and changes. Countries with the highest levels of hunger, deep poverty, death from preventable causes, or other measures of suffering should be prioritized.
One of the most essential programs, operating since the 1960s, is lifesaving nutrition assistance. In some years, tens of millions of people have received food. The assistance goes mainly to women and children because they are at highest risk of hunger and malnutrition. In 2023, USAID nutrition programs reached more than 39 million women and children globally with critical nutrition assistance, including:
- 28 million children with nutrition services
- 11 million women with micronutrient supplements and counseling on maternal and child nutrition
- 6 million infants and young children, whose families and caregivers are provided with nutrition resources, programs, and education
- 256,000 people with professional training in nutrition and skills development programs to equip them to deliver nutrition services
The stop-work order threatens global health. Disease does not respect borders. Even a brief pause in disease prevention and control programs can lead to a spike in infections like malaria and HIV, and Americans will be affected.
One major U.S. health initiative, launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, was the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Every day, more than 222,000 people received medication to keep HIV in check. At the time of the stop-work order, PEPFAR was providing HIV treatments to nearly 680,000 pregnant women living with HIV. Because this treatment prevents transmission of the virus during childbirth, the 90-day “pause” that was been ordered was projected to lead to the birth of nearly 136,000 HIV-positive babies.
Humanitarian and development assistance often contributes to and reinforces other U.S. foreign policy goals. Feed the Future, the flagship global food security initiative of the United States, was a whole-of-government initiative that brought together a range of U.S. federal agencies and other stakeholders to work toward ending hunger, poverty, and malnutrition.
Feed the Future also benefitted the U.S. economy. In the first decade of its operations, Feed the Future enabled the development of agricultural markets in its focus countries. U.S. agriculture and food exports to Feed the Future countries increased by $1.4 billion.
For decades, the American people have, in solidarity, provided aid to their neighbors in need. Foreign assistance, while strategic for our national interest, is about living up to American values and meeting human needs. We do it because we can. The Bible is clear, reminding us that as we do unto the ‘least of these’ among us, we do as unto Jesus (Matthew 25:40).
Jordan Teague Jacobs is senior international policy advisor with Bread for the World Institute.
