An expert on global development urged anti-hunger advocates to understand what U.S. foreign aid looked like before and after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Baptists and other evangelicals have spoken out on the effects federal cuts to foreign aid are having on global ministries and their inability to make up for overwhelming needs, exacerbated by abrupt loss of funding.
“There’s a huge amount of hunger in the world, and in today’s political environment, there are lot of things going on that are going to exacerbate global food insecurity and hunger and necessitate that we all take action,” Kate Weaver, advocate board member for Baylor University’s Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, told participants of the collaborative’s annual summit.
Even before the presidential inauguration, acute food insecurity was high, explained Weaver, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, who co-directs innovations for peace and development.
To understand the current situation better, Weaver set the “lay of the land” of U.S. international development aid by asking questions about what U.S. foreign aid looked like before Jan. 20, when the U.S. Agency for International Development became the target of big federal government cuts.
How much aid does the United States give?
- Less than 1 percent of the United States’ total annual budget was spent on all foreign aid—development, humanitarian and military. Foreign aid is not only development aid and humanitarian assistance. Foreign aid also includes military spending, which accounts for about 20 to 30 percent of total foreign aid. Excluding miliary aid, the U.S. spent about $69 billion on development and humanitarian aid, 0.72 percent of foreign aid dollars in 2024. That sounds like a lot, Weaver acknowledged, until viewed alongside the amount spent on defense—more than $900 billion.
- Yet, surveys show the average citizen believes allocation to foreign aid falls between 10 and 25 percent of the federal budget. When they understand such a small piece of the budget is going to alleviate global poverty and underdevelopment—“two factors we know that drive” violence and unrest—individuals often approve of the spending, Weaver said, noting the importance of accurate, contextual messaging.
- Additionally, only about 0.24 percent of gross national income was spent on foreign aid in 2024, even though in the 1970s the U.S. signed a treaty with several other major donor countries who all agreed to spend 0.7 percent of GNI on foreign aid in order to “have any chance” of alleviating international poverty. Few countries ever met or exceeded that goal, Weaver noted, though several Scandinavian countries have, at times, met the threshold.
Who controls aid?
- Congress controls foreign aid allocations.
Who does the United States give aid to?
- The United States has given global aid to countries (over 150); farmers—with about 20 percent of international aid dollars coming back to U.S. farmers for surplus sent to suffering international locations; multilateral organizations—“global institutions that have at least three member states,” such as the World Health Organization; “hundreds of thousands” of nongovernmental aid organizations and nonprofits, which often are religiously affiliated. Prior to recent actions, USAID was at the center of this network, providing 60 percent of the country’s global development spending.
- In 2024, the United States provided 41 percent of all international humanitarian aid and 40 percent of all global health aid. “Think about what happens when you suddenly take away 41 percent of all the global humanitarian aid, and relatively quickly,” Weaver urged.
- Almost all USAID aid went to nongovernmental organizations, so concerns of corrupt governments exploiting the aid largely are unsupported.
A flawed system points back to ‘us’
The United States does not always give without strings attached. In fact, 40 percent of aid is “tied aid,” with conditions attached.
This aid—required to be spent back on goods, such as seeds, contractors and services provided by the donor country—might have stretched further, had recipients been free to identify cheaper goods available locally or to hire local extension agents with local expertise.
“If we want to take a look at waste, corruption and fraud,” Weaver suggested, “let’s take a little look in the mirror.”
She noted aid isn’t perfect. In fact, she said: “Aid is highly, highly flawed. But not all of that waste, fraud or corruption comes from other countries. Sometimes that comes from our own practices. And we need to face that reality, if we’re going to fix the system.”
Additionally, Weaver explained, giving often aligns with national interests, so much of the funding goes to middle-income countries, like Israel or Ukraine, rather than to countries with the highest rates of poverty and the greatest need.
What has happened in the last 70 days?
“What’s happening in the aid world today is a near complete dismantling of the entire system,” Weaver said. “On inauguration day, President Trump surprised everyone by saying that he wasn’t just going to ask for a cut to foreign aid, he was going to try to eliminate it.”
She noted one of his first acts was an executive order placing a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid “and promising a comprehensive review of USAID and the entire aid system.”
“DOGE immediately entered the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. USAID workers were furloughed or fired, and it became clear the intention was not a comprehensive review to create efficiencies, but to demolish USAID,” she said.
It seemed like USAID should be low on the list of problems President Trump would take on, Weaver said. Few Americans had foreign aid as top-of-mind before the executive action.
So in many ways, USAID was “low-hanging fruit” to test the power of executive mandate—“how much an executive can go in and demolish an agency that was created by Congress, that Congress is the only entity that has the power to create a federal agency, and to suspend contracts which means basically using executive authority to overhaul appropriated funds from Congress,” she suggested.
The U.S. Constitution does not give the executive branch that authority. But Trump went ahead, reneging on contracts Congress already had signed, virtually eliminating foreign aid.
“And because Congress didn’t do anything, he got away with it.” Now “the experiment” of how far executive power could be pushed is playing out in the courts.
Between Jan. 20 and April 8, more than 10,000 USAID jobs were eliminated, Weaver noted, through a difficult, erratic process.
The promise was to take 90 days to review foreign aid, but within 24 hours, the cuts to thousands of programs were initiated, not by careful review, but through the use of a 220-word wordlist, eliminating anything with those particular words, like “women,” she explained.
“All women’s health programs were gone with the stroke of a pen.”
Then there was an announcement that USAID would be downsized, moved to the Department of State, and as of a couple of weeks ago, “they pretty much announced that USAID is going away, in everything but name,” Weaver noted.
Key bureaus were eliminated, including everything related to democracy assistance, governance, most health programs and others. The sectors that remain relate to infrastructure, finance and private sector development.
“That’s where we are today” with U.S. aid, Weaver explained.
Unfortunately, she continued, other countries around the world also are facing similar situations at home and are reducing foreign aid, exacerbating the loss of USAID and creating “a shock to the (global aid) system.”
She acknowledged some countries with the capacity to begin providing for some of these needs have become highly dependent on aid. They can take agency and make changes to account for these cuts, but not overnight.
That these changes happened so quickly as the result of a one-and-a-half-page executive action “boggles the mind.”
PEPFAR, established by President George W. Bush to address the AIDS crisis in Africa, has been eliminated, which will lead to many babies being born with HIV who otherwise wouldn’t have been, she said. Many other agencies and initiatives are at risk.
“The ripple effects are huge,” Weaver said.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals related to the distribution of foreign aid in the countries and in Washington, D.C., have lost their jobs, beyond the 10,000 jobs cut from USAID directly.
Data and resources for communicating data used to plan how best to address humanitarian needs have been defunded. Websites formerly used to access the data are locked down. Information and data are disappearing.
Aid organizations have been scrambling to compile and preserve what they can access, but research that has been relied upon to formulate predictions and create efficient plans to address hunger and poverty for more than 40 years is now scarce or inaccessible, Weaver explained.
Food security
Even before the cuts since Jan. 20, global food security already was slipping. Acute food insecurity has remained “very high,” Weaver said, noting the World Health Organization announced in 2024, 1 in 11 people worldwide faced hunger in 2023. In Africa it was 1 in 5. In Austin it’s about 30 percent who face food insecurity.
If these cuts remain in effect, hundreds of thousands of people will starve.
There’s an indelible tie between hunger and poverty and regional instability. Aid was designed to keep the donor nation more secure by helping to prevent regional conflicts that might broaden and pull in the donor country and to build global goodwill, establishing “soft power.”
If these cuts remain in effect, hundreds of thousands of people may starve, and the U.S. might be less secure.
In the “whiplash” of rapidly changing orders, “it’s imperative that we … stay engaged on it,” and work to get Congress to act, Weaver said.