US pauses foreign aid…

The BBQ Pit
1

COVID cost the global economy $15 trillion.. The foreign aid America supplies to 174 countries gives it local health information, soft power and influence, helps prevent pandemics, benefits American companies, and fulfills humanitarian needs and religious advocacy. No doubt some moneys are poorly spent, but an audit could occur before suspending important work.

China will presumably pick up some of the slack since they understand the value of soft power. And this influence comes very cheaply. Hopefully, not too many people are radicalized and not too many other governments use the same excuses as the United States and further endanger the world. Foreign aid accounts for 0.18% of American GDP.

(Limited NYT gift link below.)
Excerpt:

Lifesaving health initiatives and medical research projects have shut down around the world in response to the Trump administration’s 90-day pause on foreign aid and stop-work orders…

…Medical supplies, including drugs to stop hemorrhages in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, cannot reach villages in Zambia because the trucking companies transporting them were paid through a suspended supply project of the United States Agency for International Development, U.S.A.I.D.

Dozens of clinical trials in South Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. Thousands of people enrolled in the studies have drugs, vaccines and medical devices in their bodies but no longer have access to continuing treatment or to the researchers who were supervising their care.

In interviews, more than 20 researchers and program managers described the upheaval in health systems in countries across the developing world. Most agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their names not be published, fearing that speaking to a reporter would jeopardize any possibility that their projects might be able to reopen. Many of those interviewed broke down in tears as they described the rapid destruction of decades of work.

The programs that have frozen or folded over the past six days supported frontline care for infectious disease, providing treatments and preventive measures that help avert millions of deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. They also presented a compassionate, generous image of the United States in countries where China has increasingly competed for influence. The State Department and U.S.A.I.D. did not respond to requests for comment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/health/trump-aid-malaria-tuberculosis-hiv.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t04.qtxX.gWK_-asPkkBP&smid=url-share**strong text**

2

The only question I have left now for anything he does is: What will the body count be before he leaves office?

3

More like how many digits will it take to express the number.

4

If we’re running a pool, I bet on 8.

5

Democratic lawmakers and aid workers have been gripped since Friday by reports that President Trump was planning to issue an executive order dismantling the aid agency and moving its work to the State Department. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the scope of American foreign aid, arguing that sending taxpayer dollars overseas runs counter to his America first agenda.

By Saturday, lawmakers had received word that at least some of the U.S.A.I.D. signs at the agency’s headquarters in downtown Washington had come down, and rumors were circling that mission directors around the world were being called back to the United States. Those reports could not be independently verified.

Two U.S.A.I.D. employees, who work in the Washington headquarters and spoke on condition of anonymity because of an order barring employees from discussing any changes to the agency, said that they were working under an atmosphere of fear and chaos, and that half of the agency’s work force had been eliminated in the last week.

People familiar with the changes said that Pete Marocco, a State Department official who held multiple roles in the first Trump administration, appeared to be overseeing the gutting of the U.S.A.I.D. program. Three other U.S.A.I.D. workers, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Gemini, an A.I. program, had been installed on their email accounts, leading to fears that deputies of Elon Musk, whom Mr. Trump tasked to run a new cost-cutting group known as the Department of Government Efficiency, were trying to surveil their activities.

State Department officials did not answer inquiries seeking to clarify the purpose of the moves, which lawmakers and aid workers said could be anything from a restructuring to an effort to significantly downsize, if not eliminate, most U.S. foreign aid programs. But Democratic lawmakers said they feared a potentially bleak endgame for the aid agency.

“All the signals of how the senior staff have been put on administrative leave, many of the field staff and headquarters staff have been put on a gag order,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, who sits on the Senate panels on foreign relations and appropriations, said Saturday afternoon in an interview. “It seems more like the early stages of shutting down than it does of reviewing it or merely retitling it,” he added.

6

Why hasn’t Congress collectively evolved into a vertebrate to stop this nonsense?

Yes, I do know this is a rhetorical question.

I’ve already lost count of how many of Felon47’s actions since winning/grifting re-election are illegal, IMHO. It’s already past time to impeach him for the third time.

7

It is amazing how many stable geniuses exist in the same administration. (Gift and normal link to same article.)

Excerpt:

On Sunday, Musk repeatedly attacked USAID on X, calling the long-standing government agency “evil” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

“USAID is a criminal organization,” he added. “Time for it to die.”

By Sunday afternoon, USAID’s X account had been taken down, with a message saying the account “doesn’t exist.”

https://wapo.st/4jI7On5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/02/usaid-trump-musk/

8

Eh, not so much lately.

Which is not to say that either U.S. cancellation of foreign aid or aggressive Chinese diplomacy are good things. It kinda ends up putting the global south behind the eight ball.

9

My wife and I are aid workers. Virtually all our friends are being laid off. Programs are coming to a dead stop; for example, wells that were being dug are just holes in the ground and will never be completed; people aren’t getting assistance that the US pledged. The damage to America’s status is permanent and catastrophic.

10

As I’m sure most Dopers are aware, for a while it looked like fascism and iusolationism was the direction American government would go in. Then, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The US joined the war and the Nazis made fascism and isolation look very bad.

That lesson has obviously been forgotten.

11

Although retired now, I spent my life working in international development, and quite often USAID was the funder. Yes, we have friends who are scrambling too. We were just told that people who work for USAID and/or USAID projects have been given three days to return to the US.

Of course, the biggest tragedy is all the good work that will be abandoned and the suffering that will result. But on a visceral level, I have been brought to tears thinking about the personal disruption to individuals who wanted nothing more than to shape a career making the world a better place. How the HELL are they supposed to return to the US in 3 days? What about spouse’s jobs, kids in school, belongings that need to be packed and shipped?

And where can they go on such short notice? Even if you own a home stateside, chances are that if you are living abroad, you’ve got it rented out.

It’s just insane and chaotic.

12

Ask your cousin.

13

Well, the latest is that women in late stages of pregnancy will not be forced to fly. Gosh, how merciful.

Of course, some of us are more generous with our mercy than others.

14

The philosophy of the administration with regard to international relations is that the way to make America Great is to make everyone else worse.

15

While there was quite often friction between DOS employees and USAID employees, they do good work. I had some clashes with local AID honchos who were unreasonable in their requests, but basically they were there to do a job. That’s not to say that it isn’t a bloated entity like most all government agencies and could use some paring down. But this wholesale dismissal everywhere is going to result in utter chaos. Then the finger-pointing will start and more chaos will come from that until the entire government comes to a standstill. At that point, we’ll be easy pickings for whoever wants to take a shot at the title.

16

How, even if you’re outright evil, can you look at a world where your biggest rival is increasingly the choice for international partnerships because of its soft power efforts, and think the best response is to just burn all your own work in that area to the ground?

17

You can if you are IMMENSELY stupid.

18

Remember the T-shirts during the Iraq War(s):

Why is their land sitting on our oil??

Yeah. Good times…

19

Yeah, this seems to be the answer. We’re just handing off all of our influence to China.