The Trump administration has officially shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ending decades of independent operations and folding its remaining functions into the State Department.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement Tuesday, calling the move long overdue.
“USAID had a near-limitless taxpayer budget to promote American interests and lift up developing nations,” Rubio said. “But instead, it created a bloated NGO-industrial complex while delivering little to show since the Cold War ended.”
For months, the Department of Government Efficiency has been auditing USAID’s programs, cutting thousands of wasteful projects and reining in tens of billions in spending. With the agency now under State Department control, Rubio vowed tighter oversight and a complete refocus on measurable outcomes tied to U.S. national interests.
According to Rubio, USAID’s track record reveals staggering failure. Despite pouring $165 billion into sub-Saharan Africa since 1991, those nations sided with the U.S. just 29% of the time on key UN resolutions — the worst rate in the world. In the Middle East and North Africa, $89 billion in U.S. aid bought less influence than China, with anti-American sentiment often growing, not shrinking.
Rubio was especially critical of USAID’s $9.3 billion in Gaza and the West Bank, where aid allegedly benefited Hamas-linked entities while generating “grievances rather than gratitude” toward America.
“The only people living well were NGO executives—flying first class, staying in five-star hotels—on the backs of U.S. taxpayers,” he said.
Foreign leaders have echoed Trump administration concerns. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned in February that USAID-backed NGOs had funneled resources to leftist political groups in an attempt to undermine his government.
“These international networks have to be taken down,” Orban said. “They must be made legally impossible.”
Moving forward, Rubio said foreign assistance will shift away from indefinite aid and toward strategic trade, opportunity, and U.S.-aligned investment.
“USAID didn’t answer to the American people—it answered to the UN, multinational NGOs, and global elites,” Rubio said. “That ends today. Where there was once a rainbow of unaccountable logos, there will now be one symbol: the American flag.”