The Budget That Was Working: The Cost of Dismantling U.S. Foreign Aid

A sign with the names of US government agencies housed at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, with the USAID headquarters taped over, February 7, 2025. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

The United States has provided international aid to over 150 countries for 63 years. With the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), that number is no longer certain. USAID was the largest program falling under the International Affairs Budget and supported many global health and development programs. In July 2025, the Trump Administration announced it was shutting down the branch and by February 2026, this foreign aid agency was officially defunct.

The United States was formerly the world’s largest donor of global health and development funding and saved approximately 3.3 million lives every year. However, with 80% of the programs being cut without a replacement, the number of lives saved will dwindle and the human cost will compound with every passing year. From the one-year funding discontinuation, there were an estimated 781,343 deaths. It is predicted that by 2030, there will be over 14 million preventable deaths.

While the consequences seem shocking, many have argued for years that the United States spends too much on our foreign affairs. However, the budget line was less than 1% of the total federal budget, and in FY24, the spending was 0.3% of a $6.78 trillion budget. To put it in perspective, the Office of Personnel Management was 1.7% of the budget that same year. The median American believes that the United States spends roughly 25% of the federal budget on foreign affairs and they believe that we should spend 10% instead.

In reality, since 2000, the U.S. has spent between 0.7% and 1.4% of the total expenditures after the modernization of the aid system after the Cold War Era. However, we’ve seen the U.S. foreign aid spending drop from $61.1 billion in 2025 to a $9.4 billion request for FY26 – a 84.6% decline. While $9.4 billion is still a lot of money, each ship from the Gerald R. Ford class of aircraft carriers costs between $12-14 billion, with approved plans to add 5 more.

For decades, the slice of the budget dedicated to international affairs was largely invisible and misunderstood. But in reality, it was doing an enormous amount of work saving millions of lives a year by supporting health efforts and preventing malnutrition. Some of the biggest losses from the foreign aid cuts include PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which alone saved 25 million people from HIV/AIDS through prevention, care, and treatment.

USAID also helped fund 1.5 million tons of food annually across the world in crisis zones. Without this funding, Sudan is facing acute child malnutrition 10 times above the emergency threshold, 4.4 million in Somalia are confronted with severe levels of food insecurity, and more than half of the Haitian population is no longer receiving rations. 

However, the more unknown side of the budget supported economic development, disaster relief, and democratic institutions abroad. One might question how any of this supports America’s interests, which the current administration asked as well. In the announcement to cut USAID funding, the official statement declared that programs will need to “advance American interests” in order to be funded by the State Department. What that perspective misses is that the budget already was keeping American interests in mind, just less obviously and not on U.S. soil.

The connection between foreign aid and U.S. interest is more connected than many realize. Eleven of America’s top 15 largest export markets, such as South Korea, Brazil, Taiwan, Costa Rica were once beneficiaries of foreign aid. South Korea alone received U.S. development aid for decades after the Korean War. Now, Korea is investing in the United States with a $350 billion bill to support various American sectors such as shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, AI, energy, and more.

This backing will go on to support millions of jobs and reinvest in the U.S. economy. Countries with citizens who are struggling to meet fundamental needs like food, safety, shelter, healthcare, cannot participate in a global economy. People who are focused on survival, are not buying American goods, investing in businesses, or participating in the supply chain. 

In addition, by removing aid, it not only removes access to basic human rights, but in its place creates what is called a power vacuum. When a power stabilizing the region is suddenly removed, it leaves a void in its place leaving militant groups to easily take over. With funding cuts to USAID, it also eliminated the peacekeeping program within Somalia, with the Al-Shabaab terrorist organization now threatening the political stability of the region.

People need to rely on the government for help and if the central power can no longer do so, a new regime will exploit the pressure and offer assistance. This circumstance also leads to more recruitment into these organizations usually in the form of financial motivators to youth. Cutting aid does not just increase instability abroad, but creates the conditions for threats that could impact American security.

The consequences of unmet public health also extend beyond the countries experiencing them. At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, 20% of adults in seven southern African counties were infected with HIV. This means entire workforces were decimated, generations were born HIV-positive, and health systems were put under immense pressure. This was beyond a humanitarian issue but reaching emergency levels of crisis. PEPFAR and other USAID health programs go beyond just providing for the populations at risk but preventing further spread of the disease past borders.

The same infrastructure that helped contain HIV/AIDS also prevented further Ebola outbreaks and the spread of the Zika virus. Preventing dangerous diseases from reaching U.S. borders is more important than anyone could have predicted before COVID-19 back in 2020. Preventing a disease from taking hold is a much safer and cheaper option than responding to it once it arrives domestically. 1.2 million people lost their lives during the pandemic in the U.S. and that was with a global health structure in place. The question is not whether another pandemic will occur, but whether there is infrastructure there to stop it when it matters.

The passage of a $50 billion foreign aid bill in February 2026 was $31 billion more than the original budget request, so it offered some relief but it cannot undo the damage that was already done. Sudan’s child malnutrition crisis, Somalia’s food insecurity, and the drastic reduction of PEPFAR’s HIV/AIDS programs did not pause while Congress deliberated spending. The 781,343 estimated deaths from a single year of funding cuts is a result of inaction.

Meanwhile, the gap left by the United States has not gone unfilled. China is looking to expand its development and humanitarian assistance programs in the regions that American aid once influenced, now that the United States has surrendered the soft power. What many fail to realize is that foreign aid is not a charity donation in the federal budget. It was a system that saved millions of lives every year, supported over 1.7 million American jobs, and kept conditions for global stability intact. Now that so many of these mechanisms have been exposed by their absence, the case for rebuilding them fully, not just partially, has never been clearer. The world’s most powerful nation cannot afford to learn this lesson twice.

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This article written by Bianca Filoni, Master's student in Strategic Communications at Rollins College. She is an advocate with the Borgen Project, with a focus on U.S. foreign assistance policy and its humanitarian and geopolitical implications.