• ‘Halting the billions of dollars of assistance that USAID performs has a dramatic impact on the world,’ says Chris Milligan, the agency’s former top foreign service officer
• ‘Irony is that the freeze on foreign assistance has had a very expensive price tag for the American people. They will have to pay more, and at the same time, America will be less safe and less prosperous,’ says Milligan
• ‘Conflict, displacement, economic instability, and climate pressures have been intensifying for years … a reactive strategy of waiting for these problems to arrive on our doorstep will become more costly,’ says international development consultant Dun Grover

WASHINGTON 

Over the past month, President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk have launched a series of broadsides against USAID, accusing the US’s leading international development agency of being engaged in sweeping acts of fraud, corruption, and waste as they impose a crippling pause on billions of dollars in foreign assistance ahead of their avowed dismantling of the agency.

Their actions have upended the international humanitarian community, of which USAID is the largest actor and contributor, with severe consequences being felt at home and abroad.

Thousands of federal workers are now scrambling to avoid financial ruin, forced into limbo with the future of their jobs in jeopardy, prompting many with decades of hard-won expertise in vital fields to question whether they will stay on with the agency if and when they are retained.

Meanwhile, furloughs and firings have eviscerated many of the non-profit grantees and private-sector contractors with which USAID has spent decades developing relationships.

Should the agency ultimately be eliminated the effects could be dire, not just for the international community, but for Trump’s agenda.  

Impacting millions

USAID carries out a broad array of humanitarian work worldwide, from global health and disease monitoring to economic development and conflict prevention. Its mandate has been broadly supported by presidents of both the Republican and Democratic parties for decades, in part, because it is pivotal to mitigating global instability.

That is increasingly critical in a world that is seeing a growing number of conflicts and pandemics, worsening climate change-induced crises, and dwindling resources.

Chris Milligan, who served under six presidents at USAID until his retirement in 2021, including as the highest-ranking foreign service officer during Trump’s first term, warned that in the absence of the agency there will be “more conflict, pandemics, less prosperity, more poverty, authoritarianism.”

“Halting the billions of dollars of assistance that USAID performs has a dramatic impact on the world,” Milligan told Anadolu.

That includes the agency’s work on the frontlines of pandemic prevention. Already, Trump’s freeze on foreign assistance has halted work on urgent programs to tackle the ongoing bird flu outbreak, HIV, polio, and mpox among other severe outbreaks.

“I saw firsthand how USAID worked with others to address the pneumonic plague outbreak in Madagascar, and we all know about the examples of USAID helping to contain Ebola outbreaks in West Africa,” said Milligan. “So, if you think COVID was bad, wait for Ebola or pneumonic plague.”  

Economic growth at home and abroad

While many see USAID as an externally-operating agency, much of its work could not be carried out without billions of dollars in commodities purchased from American producers. That includes over $1 billion worth of pharmaceutical goods annually, and more than $2 billion in agricultural goods.

A Feb. 10 report from USAID Inspector General Paul Martin said Trump’s hastily-implemented aid freeze made it difficult to respond to any potential misuse of the roughly $8.2 billion in undisbursed US taxpayer-funded aid, and has left $489 million of food assistance produced by American farmers at risk of spoilage. Martin was fired the day after his report was published.

Generations of farmers have relied on USAID to buy billions of dollars in their goods since the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy began the Food for Peace program.

The dire effects of USAID’s potential elimination for America’s farmers could be further compounded by the fact that the agency works to recruit many of the foreign seasonal workers farmers need for their annual harvests.

“USAID helps the State Department run temporary worker programs in most of Central America. These programs actively work on recruiting workers that come and work for six months legally in the US, and then return back home,” Dun Grover, an international development consultant who worked on programs in Latin America for six years, told Anadolu.

“Studies have directly linked temporary work programs to reductions in irregular migration.”

Without the short-term visa program, it is unclear how the US agricultural sector would be able to cope with what could be a financially devastating loss, or curtailment, of seasonal farmworkers.

A 2010 report from the US Chamber of Commerce found that many US employers engaged in seasonal industries – agriculture chief among them – would have to downsize or shutter their doors altogether if the H-2 workers were not available.

The State Department said in a 2024 report to Congress that it forecasted between 300,000 to 350,000 H-2 visa applications for each fiscal year running from 2024-2026.

The program carries major economic benefits on both sides of the US border.

Grover estimated that for every three to four H-2 visa workers who returns home with savings, one new job is created in their community through businesses they start, helping to reduce pressures to migrate.

“There’s immense reciprocal value being generated through foreign assistance, USAID, and due to the breadth of it, it’s often times hard to articulate, but I think it’s critically important that the American people understand this,” he said.  

Tightening migration pressures

Trump has sought to dramatically clamp down on migration to the US, both legal and irregular, under his America First agenda, but doing away with USAID altogether is likely to complicate his efforts.

That is particularly true within Latin America, including in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, where 44% of respondents in a 2023 World Justice Project survey said they wanted to leave their home country.

At its core, economic development seeks to alleviate the pressures that drive people to migrate in the first place, which has become increasingly important as the international community grapples with progressively worse crises in a world where over 1 billion people face acute poverty, according to the UN Development Program.

“There are resource scarcity issues pushing people out of rural areas where they’ve been working and farming to crowded cities where there are no jobs, no capacity to absorb these workers, high levels of crime and insecurity, state institutions struggling to provide basic services. That is causing people to seek opportunities elsewhere,” said Grover.

“So, what you get is this pressure cooker that is resulting in growing instability, crisis, and conflict. That broad pattern is part of why international development, using proven methods to alleviate this pressure, is more relevant than ever.”

There are more conflicts in the world now that at any point in history since World War II, a fact being driven by increasing resource scarcity and a youth boom in multiple regions facing unemployment and economic marginalization.

The UN’s International Labor Organization found that a staggering one-in-five young people were neither working, nor in school, in 2023.

Moreover, more than three-quarters of all land on Earth has become drier over the three decades that led up to 2020 compared to the previous 30-year period, and drylands now account for over 40% of global land.

“Trends have not been moving in the right direction for some time now. Conflict, displacement, economic instability, and climate pressures have been intensifying for years … a reactive strategy of waiting for these problems to arrive on our doorstep will become more costly,” warned Grover.  

Negative drivers for inflation

Trump’s America First policies are largely driven by a crass nativism that refuses to acknowledge any tangible benefits of foreign assistance for the American people.

However, beyond potentially exacerbating immigration flows, one of the most direct effects of the elimination of USAID might be increased negative drivers for inflation.

That bodes poorly for a president that has met little success in driving down prices for American consumers – a key campaign pledge that prompted many to lend him their support – during his first month in office.

“I encourage you, when you go to the grocery store, to see where your produce came from. Many companies have partnerships with USAID, and are working with small farmers abroad to increase productivity, keep supply chains stable, and source products like coffee and off-season produce that can’t be grown in the US,” said Grover.

“So, I also wouldn’t be surprised if grocery prices continue to rise. These are things that will affect all of us.”

The US imports roughly 60% of its fresh fruit, and about 40% of its fresh vegetables from foreign countries, according to a 2023 study from the University of California, Davis. Latin America accounts for the largest source region, totaling roughly $60 billion, or 40% of all US farm imports.

- Restarting programs costlier for taxpayers

Trump has signaled a desire to eventually resume some fraction of foreign assistance programs he determines to be beneficial, but doing so is likely to carry significant costs for an administration apparently focused on combatting waste.

Milligan, the former senior USAID official who served under Trump, said the process of restarting any of the programs is likely to incur “significant startup costs,” particularly because many of the private development companies with which the agency works have furloughed and brought home many staffers who were serving abroad.

Foreign offices would also have to be reopened, and local staff would have to be rehired.

“This will be costly. The US government will have to spend millions of dollars to turn these programs back on. So, the irony is that the freeze on foreign assistance has had a very expensive price tag for the American people. They will have to pay more, and at the same time, America will be less safe and less prosperous,” he said.

All of that assumes that partner organizations will want to resume work with USAID, or any successor agency, if and when the Trump administration decides it wants to resume operations.

“This has eroded trust. When you ask people to serve in the most dangerous conditions around the world, and to do so at a cost, they do it because it’s a partnership, because they can rely on you, and now that that partnership has been weakened,” said Milligan.

Those sentiments were echoed in multiple conversations with individuals who work in the international development community, several of whom did not want to speak on the record out of fear of reprisal.

- Wither waste?

Trump, Musk, and other senior administration officials have sought to frame their efforts to dismantle USAID as part of the push to eliminate government waste, corruption and fraud, but have consistently failed to produce any evidence of widespread malfeasance.

Instead, they have highlighted several programs with which they are at odds ideologically, particularly efforts to bolster global diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

“They said the intent was to avoid waste and corruption, but they also said the intent was to align USAID with the president’s policy. USAID should be aligned with any administration’s policy. I’ve served under six political administrations. Generally, USAID programs don’t change much from administration to administration. Why? Because our national security goals generally remain the same,” said Milligan.

“There are some changes at the margin, and there’s some process for changing those things. It doesn’t involve gutting an entire agency. So, I question, if the intent is to align the projects, why wasn’t that done? Why are we gutting and shutting down projects, the very same projects that were supporting Trump’s initiatives in his first administration,” he added.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy advisor, may have offered a more direct explanation for why the president is seeking to abolish the agency during a January interview with CNN.

“There’s 2 million employees in the federal government. Overwhelmingly, the career federal service in this country is far left, left wing,” he said.

“We looked at USAID, as an example, (and) 98% of the workforce either donated to Kamala Harris or another left-wing candidate.”