Trashing USAID is a disaster for the southwest Pacific
Scott Hamilton
Author, researcher and policy advisor. Adjunct Associate Professor Monash Uni. Renewable Energy | Climate Change | Water | Renewable Hydrogen | Renewable Ammonia | Renewable Metals | Politics | #bipartisanship
OPINION | The elimination of USAID will weaken American soft power, jeopardise global health programs, and benefit rival nations such as China. By Scott Hamilton & Stuart Kells
In the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the flow of executive orders and policy announcements from the White House has been extraordinary and dazzling, so much so that getting a clear fix on the decisions – and their rationale and impact — has been difficult. What is real and what is just for show? What decisions will be flashes in the pan, and which ones will have a lasting impact?
Some of the most striking and notable decisions have been related to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Executive Order 14169, ‘Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid’, is an example.
Established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to bring several US foreign assistance organisations and programs into one agency, USAID is responsible for administering foreign aid and assistance to promote economic growth, health, education and democracy worldwide.
USAID has long been in Trump’s sights. The right-wing manifesto Project 2025 called for a ‘freezing of foreign aid pending a review by political appointees’; and undoing ‘the gross misuse of foreign aid by the current administration to promote the radical ideology that is politically divisive at home and harms our global standing’.
Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid. Then he revealed plans to slash the USAID workforce of 10,000 people to fewer than 300. Elon Musk boasted that the new administration was ‘feeding USAID into the wood chipper’.
Trump and Musk are dissolving USAID on the grounds that ‘foreign aid and industry and bureaucracy are not aligned to American interests [and] They serve to destabilise world peace’. Trump has called USAID ‘a bunch of radical lunatics’. Musk labelled it a ‘criminal organisation’.
Superficially, an organisation named ‘USAID’ seems to be all about ‘aid’ — in the sense of doling out money and resources. But the organisation’s scope is much broader than the passive provision of financial and material relief. Around the world, USAID has been — until now — an active participant with a wide and multifaceted toolkit.
Its activities align with and complement those of the US armed forces, the US intelligence services, US trade and economic development bodies, national and transnational health bodies, and the deliverers of myriad other programs. These activities are very much in the interests of America and her allies.
(USAID made a cameo appearance in the 2012 film, Zero Dark Thirty, which dramatised the international hunt for Osama bin Laden. CIA agents find a secretive compound where bin Laden might be living. To confirm this, the agency sends in a USAID-like ‘vaccination program’ team in a failed bid to collect the residents’ DNA.)
Crucially, through USAID, the US has projected soft power — building goodwill and strengthening America’s standing around the world. Ending the agency’s programs will have devastating impacts — including acute impacts on the health of millions of people.
Since its inception in 2003, when George W. Bush was in the White House, the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” (PEPFAR) has invested over US$100 billion in HIV/AIDS prevention and response programs — and has achieved a demonstrable life-saving impact around the world.
Delivered through a whole-of-government approach, PEPFAR is implemented by USAID and other agencies including the Centers for Disease Control, the US Department of Defence, and the Peace Corps. Trump’s USAID freeze puts PEPFAR and other global health programs — including ones targeting malaria, tuberculosis, polio, Ebola, the Marburg virus, and mpox — at risk of collapse.
The impacts of the USAID decision are also acute in our region.
Oceania and the southwest Pacific were pivotal in WWII and the subsequent years of peace. Australia, the US and other allies (such as New Zealand and France) have channelled substantial funding into Pacific Island nations, which are some of the most foreign-aid-dependent countries in the world. Aid for this region has historically represented a large share of the total US budget for international aid and development.
Now, though, US programs such as the US$35 million Pacific American Fund and the US$50 million Pacific Islands Microfinance Partnership are under threat, as are PEPFAR programs delivered in this region. “We’re devasted by the news of a funding pause on USAID programs in PNG,” said Anna Clare, project manager at Businesses for Health PNG — one of several USAID-funded HIV response programs.
The cuts to USAID are likely to be a massive own goal for America. With the stroke of an oversized texta, President Trump is giving up 60 years of American soft power, leaving a vacuum that other global players, including China, may be eager to fill.
We have entered an extremely difficult time for public policy in which data often does not matter, and neither, increasingly, do laws, conventions and basic principles of logic and integrity. In a virtual war on government, respected public institutions are seen as an internal enemy.
The USAID cuts have been justified on the grounds of furthering America’s interests and global standing. But the cuts do not reflect an accurate or holistic description of those interests or that standing. A narrow version of “America First” risks putting America last.
Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells wrote with John Brumby, A Better Australia: Politics, public policy and how to achieve lasting reform.
This article was first published in The Mandarin and in Crikey on 21 February 2025.
Read more: Say hello to your (policy) friend down under