Gutting USAID

DONALD TRUMP campaigned on undoing the work of Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

But with his administration’s abrupt gutting of USAID, he has taken aim not at his immediate predecessors but the legacy of John F Kennedy.

In 1961, Mr Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act into law and created the US Agency for International Development or USAID by executive order. It was later codified by another act in 1998.

The agency exemplifies “soft power.” For decades, it has promoted humanitarian causes, reduced poverty, and increased productivity in developing countries. Its annual budget – less than one per cent of total federal spending – is US$40 billion.

But on February 7, all USAID direct hire personnel were placed on “administrative leave” globally and asked to return to the US within 30 days. “Essential personnel” are to be kept, but this will be just 294 employees out of 10,000 people.

“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out,” Mr Trump said.

The “radical lunatics” have been overseeing programmes aimed at fighting hunger, eradicating HIV/Aids, providing contraceptives, strengthening schools, conserving rainforests, protecting indigenous people, doing medical research, helping disaster-struck regions and supporting democracy.

USAID housed hundreds of thousands in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. It fed millions in war-torn Sudan. It has assisted refugees in Mauritania. It funds projects in 120 countries.

There has been no review of the agency’s operations. There has been no workforce audit. No study of its impact has been undertaken. Nor any considered analysis of how its demise will affect America.

Instead, Elon Musk, Mr Trump’s billionaire patron, called USAID “a ball of worms” and announced on social media: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

With a field office at the US Embassy, Port of Spain, which opened in 2022, the reverberations will be immediate.

Staff in Barbados and Guyana, too, who have for years been overseeing programmes in the region, will be affected.

In shuttering an entity protected by US statute, Mr Trump has bulldozed norms relating to both the separation of powers and US foreign policy.

Considered alongside his sadistic and shocking announcement of a plan to “take over” the Gaza strip, cleanse it of Palestinians and transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” we are witnessing an American foreign policy paradigm that openly rejects the ideals of the post-Kennedy era.

Under the Trump Doctrine, the US intensely protects its sovereign borders from certain immigrants. At the same time, it claims ownership of Greenland, the Panama Canal and Gaza.

The jingoistic agenda deceptively labelled “America First” undermines US and allied interests. This undermining is achieved through cuts to programmes like USAID.