Making Foreign Aid Great Again

Author: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Every public servant has an obligation to American citizens to ensure any programs they fund advance our nation’s interests. During the Trump Administration’s thorough review of thousands of programs, and over $715 billion in inflation-adjusted spending over the decades, it became apparent the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) fell well below this standard.

USAID had decades and a near-infinite taxpayer budget to advance American influence, promote economic development worldwide, and allow billions to stand on their own two feet.

Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War. Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown. On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate. For example, in 2023, sub-Saharan African nations voted with the United States only 29 percent of the time on essential resolutions at the UN despite receiving $165 billion in outlays since 1991. That’s the lowest rate in the world. Over the same period, more than $89 billion invested in the Middle East and North Africa left the U.S. with lower favorability ratings than China in every nation but Morocco. The agency’s expenditure of $9.3 billion in Gaza and the West Bank since 1991, whose beneficiaries included allies of Hamas, has produced grievances rather than gratitude towards the United States. The only ones living well were the executives of the countless NGOs, who often enjoyed five-star lifestyles funded by American taxpayers, while those they purported to help fell further behind.

This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end. Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency.

We will not apologize for recognizing America’s longstanding commitment to life-saving humanitarian aid and promotion of economic development abroad must be in furtherance of an America First foreign policy.

USAID viewed its constituency as the United Nations, multinational NGOs, and the broader global community—not the U.S. taxpayers who funded its budget or the President they elected to represent their interests on the world stage. USAID marketed its programs as a charity, rather than instruments of American foreign policy intended to advance our national interests. Too often, these programs promoted anti-American ideals and groups, from global “DEI,” censorship and regime change operations, to NGOs and international organizations in league with Communist China and other geopolitical adversaries.

That ends today, and where there was once a rainbow of unidentifiable logos on life-saving aid, there will now be one recognizable symbol: the American flag. Recipients deserve to know the assistance provided to them is not a handout from an unknown NGO, but an investment from the American people.

Equally importantly, the charity-based model failed because the leadership of these developing nations developed an addiction. State Department research finds the overwhelming sentiment in countries formerly receiving USAID funding is for trade, not aid. After engaging with nations across Latin America and Africa, we have consistently heard that developing countries want investment that empowers them to sustainably grow—not decades of patronizing UN or USAID managed support. The Department has consistently heard the same from people in these nations: a Zambian man told American diplomats it would be more helpful for his countrymen to learn how to fish than to be supplied with fish by the U.S. Government, an Ethiopian woman said she viewed the mutual benefits of investment as superior to the one-sided nature of aid, and too many other examples to recount.

Americans should not pay taxes to fund failed governments in faraway lands. Moving forward, our assistance will be targeted and time limited. We will favor those nations that have demonstrated both the ability and willingness to help themselves and will target our resources to areas where they can have a multiplier effect and catalyze durable private sector, including American companies, and global investment.

This work is well underway. We are already seeing tremendous progress in making the UN, other allies, and private funds pay a greater share of projects around the world, a process matched by the President’s success in convincing our NATO allies to meet their spending commitments. We are consolidating fragmented appropriations accounts to build more flexible and dynamic pools of funds, eliminating bureaucratic processes to move faster and respond to crises in real time, and implementing new efficiency criteria to measure impact quantitatively. By empowering diplomats on the ground through regional bureaus, we are creating a fast feedback loop to ensure programs align with American interests and the needs of partner nations.

This model will also place us in a stronger position to counter China’s exploitative aid model and further our strategic interests in key regions around the world.

We will do so by prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance. For Americans and many around the world, July 1st will mark the beginning of a new era of global partnership, peace, investment, and prosperity.

Marco Rubio was sworn in as the 72nd secretary of state on January 21, 2025. The secretary is creating a Department of State that puts America First.