The Trump administration’s sudden dismantling of nearly all foreign aid, including the work carried out by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has upended the government agency’s longtime strategic role in implementing American foreign policy.
USAID is a government agency that, for more than 63 years, has led the United States’ foreign aid work on disaster recovery, poverty reduction and democratic reforms in many developing and middle-income countries. USAID’s budget has always been small—but USAID’s projects have had an outsized effect on the world.