For the second week now, the suspension of the activities of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been causing serious unrest both in the United States and around the world. As of midnight on February 7/8, 2025, Eastern American time (7 a.m. on February 8 Bulgarian time), 95% of the agency's 10,000 employees have been on leave, and the department's website is now completely inaccessible, after for days only information about the employees being put on leave was visible there. But the reactions are abundant. And it can't be otherwise when we are talking about several tens of billions of dollars a year and over 100 interested countries.
First of all, two very important details need to be clarified, which seem to be lost in the general fuss on the subject. First, American aid has not been terminated, but frozen - for 90 days, in order to clarify which of its programs should be permanently stopped and which can continue. And second, the aid in question includes only state funds allocated by a state agency - private foundations operating with private funds can safely carry out similar activities.
The suggestions about the possible closure of USAID actually come from Elon Musk, while US President Donald Trump has not yet confirmed such intentions. Moreover, this discrepancy illustrates the different views between the technocrats with whom Trump has recently surrounded himself, on the one hand, and the authentic MAGA movement, on the other.
A pragmatic businessman like Elon Musk can easily write off a structure that seemingly only spends money, without any visible return. And since some of the money is spent on nonsense, it is even easier to come to a radical solution.
However, Donald Trump probably realizes that USAID does not simply help other countries and the people in them, but that this activity is also a diplomatic tool through which the United States has exercised "soft power" for decades. And with an optimization of spending and, above all, of the recipients of this aid, America can be great again. So why destroy the infrastructure? It is enough just to change the priorities...
And indeed, the vast majority of the USAID budget is spent on reasonable causes - humanitarian projects, healthcare, education, environmental protection, etc. But under this surface there were also scandals, some of which were announced on the White House website, namely:
- support for terrorist organizations, including those affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban
- funding of a research agency working together with the Wuhan laboratory responsible for the "leak" of COVID-19
- operations for "gender change", "transgender opera", "transgender comics" and all sorts of other LGBT+ initiatives for "diversity, equality and inclusion"
But it's not just that. Revelations about where and what USAID spends American taxpayers' money on have also begun to emerge from the affected countries. For example, the organization "Reporters Without Borders" announced that the Donald Trump administration had frozen over 268 million US dollars intended for media and organizations in over 30 countries. And who were "Reporters Without Borders"? Yes, exactly the ones with the absurd annual press freedom rankings.
And more: it turned out that 8% of the budget of the British public media BBC comes from... USAID. So, the public radio and television of Great Britain, which are financed with budget funds from the United Kingdom in order not to be dependent on advertisers and private sponsors, turn out to be partially dependent on another country! The public media of Great Britain, "The Empire on which the sun never sets", not of some US semi-colony in Central America! A greater disgrace than the BBC relying on American grants to form 8% of its budget could only be the BBC relying on grants to form an even larger share of its budget.
In this case, it should be clarified that the disgrace is mainly for the BBC, but from Trump's point of view, the situation is "feed a dog to bark at you". Or at least it was like that before the last presidential election.
In general, the Joe Biden administration has had a rather avant-garde vision regarding American aid to the world - to support LGBT+ activism in Serbia and media in the UK. Wouldn't the opposite be more logical from the point of view of public attitudes in both host countries?
And speaking of local public opinion, the large-scale American aid (according to UN data, USAID provides about 40% of global humanitarian aid) should strengthen sympathy for the United States around the world. Especially in the countries that receive the American aid in question. Is this really happening?
We come to the second important detail - Trump's order does not affect private foundations that finance projects abroad. Such as "America for Bulgaria", "Open Society" (by George Soros) should not experience any shocks. Unless it turns out that they have also redistributed funds from USAID - as allegations have already appeared. Whether this is the case will become clear very soon - will there be a change in their funding rates.
But let's get back to USAID. The revision it is undergoing will have to answer the question of whether this agency has a future. And if it is finally closed, this does not automatically mean that the United States is ending the policy of providing aid to the world - it is simply that this function can be taken over by other performers. And under different rules.
"Buying influence" is unlikely to stop, but it certainly will not continue in the way that the Democrats have been doing it in recent years. In place of "exporting liberal values", we should not expect "exporting conservative/MAGA values". Rather, the United States will continue to finance projects in other countries, albeit on a very limited scale, in order to fill holes in the federal budget. Thus, the distribution of grants will be done much more pragmatically, without the ideological elements that we have seen in recent years. But with the obligatory calculation of American interests.