Editor’s note: The Herald’s editorial board requested an update to “Closing USAID damages America’s image, ability to influence,” (Herald, Feb. 8) by Herb Bowman believing it would be of interest to readers.
Three months ago, Elon Musk’s DOGE team pushed its way into United States Agency for International Development headquarters, froze its payment systems, fired or furloughed most of its employees, and destroyed its files (Herald, Feb. 8). The new Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed up by announcing the cancellation of 83% of USAID’s programs, claiming whatever was left would be managed by the State Department, an agency ill equipped for the task. Just like that, USAID was dead, and America had delivered a new message to the world, “We don’t care about you.”
The damage done is beyond quantification. Goodwill toward the US built up over decades wiped away. Valuable alliances severed. The abrupt withdrawal of food and health aid expected to bring death to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.
In withdrawing foreign assistance, the US abandoned fields of influence it dominated for decades. China and Russia are now stepping in. Take for example Cambodia where I directed USAID-funded projects from 2006 to 2010. When the US froze funding for a program that cleared land mines and unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War era, China announced it would replace it. When DOGE canceled USAID projects encouraging literacy and improving nutrition for impoverished children, China announced it would establish similar programs with near identical goals.
In the Republic of Georgia where I spent more than six years delivering USAID projects, the impact has been even more devastating. When the US withdrew its support to local groups standing up against their pro-Russian government’s assault on civil liberties, they found themselves stuck far out on a limb. Trump and Musk cut off that limb when they called USAID a group of “criminals and traitors,” statements that both the Georgian and Russian governments used to attack anyone who had worked with USAID.
Our new administration claims destroying USAID will save significant tax dollars. Don’t believe it. Foreign assistance made up less than 1% of the US budget. In fact, in the short term, destroying USAID may cost more than save since the government is paying furloughed workers to do nothing and is spending massive amounts of money defending associated lawsuits. In the long term, assuming Congress passes the administration’s tax bill, most of the money theoretically saved will go into the pockets of America’s wealthiest in the form of tax cuts.
What eliminating USAID has done is put more than 50,000 Americans out of work (according to a USAID Stop-Work analysis). It will also cost American farmers $2 billion a year since they supplied nearly half of the food USAID delivered around the world.
Congress created USAID. USAID designed itself to report to Congress in detail and on demand. Every year, USAID sent libraries of reports, rivers of data, and streams of experts to Congress explaining exactly what it was working on, how much it was costing, and what was being achieved.
The record shows that up until Trump took office, most Republican senators and congressman supported USAID. In 2017, then Sen. Rubio called USAID “critical to our national security,” and a key tool to “counter the Chinese Communist Party’s expanding global influence.” In 2024, Kansas Republican Rep. Tracey Mann gave a speech praising USAID’s Food for Peace Program noting, “how important that program has been and how many lives it has saved, and the amount of goodwill our country has around the world because of the aid we give others.”
But when Musk and his Lost Boys destroyed this major instrument of foreign policy and ruined the lives of people doing Congress’s bidding, these Republicans either stayed silent or competed with one another to defame USAID and the people working for it. Who could have predicted the entire Republican Congressional delegation would turn out to be such hypocrites and cowards?
Someday this madness will end. We should start thinking now about how we will rebuild our foreign assistance programs and engage with the world in a way that will allow ourselves to believe, once again, that we might somehow, be exceptional.
Herb Bowman, a Durango High School and University of San Diego graduate, is a former prosecutor, FBI agent and criminal defense attorney. He has spent more than 20 years doing development work around the world related to rule of law and human rights. He is also the father of current Herald newsroom intern Jessica Bowman.
