Trump and Musk's USAID 'Shut Down' Threat Opens Door for China
financialpost.com(Bloomberg) — Charities, diplomats and foreign officials around the world are frantically trying to figure out what will happen to the US agency that doles out over $40 billion in aid for everything from life-saving HIV programs in Africa to funding for Ukraine amid the Trump administration’s assault on a cornerstone of the country’s global influence.
The US Agency for International Development, an organization that dates to President John F. Kennedy’s attempts to fight Soviet influence in the developing world, is on the brink of collapse. Over the weekend, while the world was distracted by President Donald Trump’s trade war against Canada and Mexico, the body’s website quietly went dark.
“We’re shutting it down,” billionaire Elon Musk, a key Trump ally, said during an X Spaces session after midnight, as aid workers from Nairobi to Dhaka raced to determine the future of maternal health programs in rural Africa, cholera treatment in Bangladesh and migrant services in Latin America. On Sunday, USAID employees received an email saying the agency’s headquarters in Washington would be closed to staff on Monday, pending “further guidance.”
The US is the world’s largest donor and spent about $68 billion on foreign assistance in 2023 — within a week of taking office, the administration froze it all before partially reversing itself with a waiver that the humanitarian, development and diplomatic worlds are still struggling to interpret.
The move has ground one of the engines of the country’s geopolitical influence to a halt and created an opening for rivals like China, which Washington has long presented as an unreliable and predatory partner for the developing world.
“Trump’s actions are weakening American global leadership
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