Trump wants to be original, determined to reject everything that others have done by claiming to do better than them using a very simple method: shake the tree so violently that all the rotten fruit falls and too bad if the good fruit falls too. That's more or less the title of an article by Jean-Yves Landry published in the heat of the moment after the announcement: “Team Trump topples USAID. What big lies are disappearing with this agency?”

Landry begins by denouncing the biggest lie of all: USAID was not intended to solve people's problems but to make them dependent on the United States. “USAID's primary function was to make the USA look good. The BBC was a recipient of USAID funds for pro-US propaganda. Other publications also received money for the same purpose.” More seriously: “USAID, by providing free products (e.g. rice), is creating unfair competition for local producers, who are unable to compete with zero-dollar prices. This leads to the collapse of local markets and dependence on external aid”. As a result, “we could see famine problems in certain countries.” There was a conflict of interest here too: “Buying rice from North American farmers perpetuates this system. In fact, food aid was often a disguised way of subsidising” agriculture in the USA, while USAID ignored proposals “to support local producers (e.g. financing seeds or infrastructure)”.

USAID's free aid for certain diseases, such as HIV, has also led to dependency in the health sector, and health organisations now risk finding themselves in crisis. 

No surprise, then, that voices are being raised to applaud Trump's decision both inside and outside the country. In the United States, the Internet has been invaded by public and private statements denouncing USAID for its wastefulness and squandering of public assets in an extravagant and embarrassing profligacy that gives a false idea of opulence abroad while leaving the country's poor to grow in number and suffering. One video illustrates this by amplifying the ‘largesse’ given to homosexual groups - Mom sues school board - and to certain minorities to the detriment of others, for eccentric research, for aberrant projects where partisan ideology takes precedence.

USAID is also applauded outside the USA, even in Africa where, over the years, people have challenged the image projected by USAID: the sometimes insulting luxury of structures that are renewed unnecessarily, opulent salaries that are scandalous for the environment, even for the families of the staff, and a wealth of resources that is revolting compared to the results. USAID has even been accused of having financed terrorism, and Mali is calling for legal proceedings - Le Mali demande des poursuites judiciaires -. What a great success, whether true or false, Trump's declaration to suspend visas for corrupt African heads of state and politicians and to bar their sons from US schools!

The figures are in the spotlight. In 2024, the North American government allocated $63.1 billion for foreign aid, including $42.8 billion through USAID. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Central African Republic in 2023 was estimated at 2.56 billion dollars and that of Ghana, one of the best off countries in Africa, at around 80.7 billion dollars. Trump is therefore positioning himself as the saviour of North American contributors - Save taxpayer dollars -. The DOGE - Department of Government Efficiency - which he set up on the very day of his installation as President on 20 January 2025, provides propagandistic financial information. However, it is sometimes biased: it denounces bills of 16.5 billion dollars justified by an 8-million-dollar contract presented as 8 billion dollars; it denounces a 50-million-dollar contract for ‘condoms for Hamas’ without noticing that it includes also a hospital project built in Gaza; it calculates savings on cancelled contracts which in reality have already been paid for; it does not consider that the costs of cancelling these contracts could be more expensive than carrying them out.

That said, the analyses of the consequences of USAID's demise are alarming. The first warning: U.S. Aid Cuts Make Famine More Likely and Easier to Hide. “For decades, the United States has been a driving force of global efforts to battle food insecurity and famine, but now the second Donald Trump administration has put that legacy in jeopardy.” “The cuts’ effects are already visible. The front-line response to famine in Sudan has been devastated.”

“The Trump administration cancelled almost 10,000 of 13,000 previously awarded USAID and State Department contracts and by 21 February more than 6,000 USAID employees were terminated or placed on administrative leave with aid agencies and NGOs drastically cutting, or completely suspending, programming and staff contracts.”

“The dismantling of USAID represents more than just a retreat in foreign assistance. It threatens infrastructure built over decades that, among other things, has served as a means of mitigating the most brutal effects of conflict.”

“It is too easy to imagine a world in which the U.S. and other wealthy countries dangle food assistance before governments of poorer countries in exchange for concessions like access to mineral wealth or tighter restrictions on migration. Adversaries, or simply the insufficiently aligned, could be left out in the cold, while civilians suffer famine and other preventable tragedies.”

“Such a vacuum could too easily accelerate a grim trend: the deliberate use of starvation as a tool of war, with diminishing international ability to document, prevent or respond effectively. More broadly, the net result of losing capacity to detect and respond to famine could well be a bleak revisiting of the past.”

The organisations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EEA-CA) - Les organisations d'Europe de l'Est et d'Asie centrale (EEE-AC) tirent la sonnette d’alarme - are sounding the alarm that years of work in key areas, from providing healthcare to defending human rights and strengthening democracy, could collapse. In many EEA-CA countries, foreign aid - much of it from USAID - is now essential to the functioning of civil society, NGOs and other groups. The sector most affected is the fight against HIV/AIDS. According to a UN report published in 2024, only half of the 2.1 million people living with HIV in the EEA-CA region have access to treatment, only 42% have achieved a reduction in viral load and 140,000 new cases of HIV were reported in 2023. UNAIDS also benefits from these funds for its community-based HIV prevention programmes, the supply of antiretroviral therapy (ART), the development of laboratory and diagnostic infrastructures, and the training of healthcare workers.   

The reduction in funding will also have a negative impact on “the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular on reducing the spread of HIV, improving the quality of life of people living with HIV, gender equality and the protection of human rights.”

The stigma attached to the associations that receive and manage North American funds as a result of this decision is also worrying. The rhetoric of the Trump administration portrays, perhaps unwittingly, civil society organisations as threats to national security: a dangerous stigma that fosters hostility, repression and even violence against individuals and groups committed to the defence of legitimate development, human rights and democratic governance. This exposes these organisations and their staff to the risk of harassment, intimidation and even physical violence, particularly in countries where they are already under threat. It comes as no surprise that the USAID dismantling decision has been welcomed by authoritarian rulers who were already cracking down on NGOs and other entities critical of their regimes. In these countries, international funding, including USAID, is essential to the survival of independent media that criticise abuses, hold regimes to account and report on repressive realities. While in many countries the United States invests in dozens of programmes aimed at strengthening freedom and free expression, democratic institutions and public resistance to disinformation - as in Georgia, where this aid amounts to 373 million dollars - the media in these countries and those in exile that address audiences such as Russia and Belarus will be particularly vulnerable until they disappear.

USAID's ineffectiveness will also affect organisations working on gender equality, LGBTIQ issues, reproductive rights, the fight against gender-based violence, support for displaced communities and education for marginalised groups. Indirectly, other civil society institutions, such as small and medium-sized enterprises, not-for-profit organisations, universities, religious groups and even scientific research institutes dependent on North American funding will find themselves unable to meet their obligations.

Conclusions.

The first is undoubtedly about money. The consequences of cutting USAID are particularly severe in countries where North American aid supports essential initiatives in healthcare, education, peacebuilding and the protection of human rights, as well as efforts to promote democracy, good governance and the rule of law, democratic values and social justice. The decision may have been intended to ensure greater efficiency and transparency, to correct the disregard for due process and political and ideological partisanship. However, it risks causing lasting damage to civil society, amplifying the overlook for human rights and making international humanitarian aid problematic.

The second is moral. Since its creation on 3^rd of November 1961 by decree of President John F. Kennedy, USAID, which was founded to coordinate US development aid abroad, has performed great services for humanity, while at the same time creating the major problem of dependence. All humanitarian aid needs to ask itself the following question: do we have the right to create this dependency and then suddenly abandon the humanitarian aid that created it? Do we have the right to set up a system of public, economic, health and educational relations and then suddenly destroy it because it no longer serves certain interests?

Trump is trying to create an image where he is feared around the world. Deaths from lack of medicine or food will not keep him awake at night until his personal vendetta is satisfied. However, as Le Monde puts it, “Once the stage was set and the revolution – it is said on Mao's revolution - was launched, it took on a life of its own, producing unexpected consequences that even the most brilliant strategists could not have anticipated.”

With Trump, international relations have been turned upside down, with the declining image of the USA encouraging countries to draw closer to China, and others to stand on their own two feet and become less dependent on foreign aid. As misinformation gains ground, it will be amplified to such an extent that many hypocrisies and lies will become unmasked. In this morass that will resize USAID, let's hope for the sake of the future that, once the rotten fruits have fallen, the good ones will find a better place to blossom again, because even with its vengeance the Trump administration will end up producing good effects to some extent.