The Death of USAID: How Elon Musk and Donald Trump Ended America's Foreign Aid Agency

Abstract

USAID served for decades as a vehicle for both US soft power and foreign aid. Within the first days of the Trump administration, the agency was effectively closed, its staff told to go home and its funding frozen. It is impossible to understand the demise of USAID without understanding the broader contours of American governance during the early days of the second Trump administration. The agency was the victim of online conspiracy theories and suspicion of state institutions that shape Trump's populist movement, falsely accused of criminality and corruption. Its elimination violated traditional understandings of the separation of powers, testing an expansive novel theory of presidential authority. It was underpinned not just by spending changes, but by the mass purging of government officials by a entity led by Elon Musk. The end result is both to weaken US administrative capacity and its credibility on the international stage, as well leading to thousands and potentially millions of the world's most vulnerable people to face disease, disaster, and death.