US President Donald Trump signed an executive order putting all US foreign aid programmes on temporary hold for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they met his policy goals.
Foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.
However, the executive order will not affect aid for which Congress has already appropriated funds. The Trump administration said such aid could “serve to destabilise world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internally to and among countries.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that “every dollar we spend, every programme we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions”:
Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?
The order signed by Trump allows Rubio the authority to make such decisions in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget. Trump has long opposed foreign aid, including billions in weapons supplied to Ukraine.
One of the biggest aid recipients is Ukraine, which has been waging war against Russia since 2022. It is unclear how Trump’s executive order will affect aid to Kyiv, but he has previously promised to end the armed conflict during his term as president.
However, other major recipients of US aid, such as Israel ($3.3 billion a year), Egypt ($1.5 billion a year) and Jordan ($1.7 billion a year), are unlikely to be affected by the changes. Aid to the three countries is included in long-term packages that have been in place for decades and in some cases are governed by treaty obligations.
The US under Trump has already withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council and lost the ability to fund the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) under a bill signed by former President Joe Biden last March.
