Fight over USAID underscores fracturing of bipartisan China-hawk stance in Washington
Congressional Republicans previously strong supporters of foreign-aid agency find reasons to align with Trump’s bid to dismantle it
The increasingly bitter fight over the United States Agency for International Development is testing Washington’s bipartisan consensus on China, in one of the first clear signs of its limits in the second Trump administration.
Last week, US President Donald Trump appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the acting administrator of the decades-old agency and its US$40-plus billion a year in development assistance, following a January executive order to pause and review foreign aid for 90 days, and a stop-work order from Rubio.
The fate of USAID – whether it will be retooled, dismantled or subsumed – remains up in the air. For one thing, it’s far from clear that the president has the authority to unilaterally close an agency that Congress has created.
On Friday, hours before over 2,000 USAID staff were poised to be put on administrative leave, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order halting the move. For weeks, the new administration, driven by a cost-cutting campaign of Trump adviser Elon Musk, had been putting senior staff on leave and signalling that it could shut the agency down.
USAID, the main US agency for humanitarian aid and disaster relief, was originally set up in 1961 via executive order by President John F. Kennedy as a means to consolidate US foreign aid programmes, expand American soft power, and counter the Soviet Union’s influence.
In 1998, Congress established USAID as an independent agency, operating under the State Department’s policy guidance. With the end of the Cold War, its supporters from both the left and right have increasingly invoked countering China’s influence as a justification to keep it funded.
