USAID Is a Failure

National Review Online

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

 

President Trump has given Secretary of State Marco Rubio responsibility for a long-overdue reorientation of the U.S. Agency for International Development. This opens up the possibility that the agency can finally be wrenched away from divisive ideologies and progressive shibboleths and become a streamlined international-development assistance system that truly advances America’s interests.

 

For now, Rubio will serve as the agency’s acting director, and he’s said that he wants to work with Congress to move some of its functions into the State Department with the aim of potentially abolishing the remaining parts.

 

Whatever the merits of the method — and there will be significant legal issues — the overarching direction is worthy and important.

 

USAID seeks, at least in theory, to help put unimaginably poor, misgoverned societies on the path to free-market capitalism and political liberty. Through poverty-reduction programs, public-health initiatives, and humanitarian assistance, America has at times burnished its reputation abroad, while also doing good at a relatively affordable price.

 

But, in practice, USAID has been a problem for decades, as it asserted itself as its own power center, rather than a federal bureaucracy accountable to Congress and the president. As Rubio noted, “When we were in Congress we couldn’t even get answers to basic questions about programs.”

 

More recently, the Biden administration inflicted great damage on USAID, injecting its twin obsessions of climate change and DEI into the agency. There’s no reason for American taxpayers to support a $400 million digital technology project for LGBTQ people in Africa, or to spend $53 million “to enable and empower local governments and vulnerable communities to realize their own resilient, low-carbon futures.”

 

None of this is a one-off, and the problem isn’t just a handful of programs. The agency elevated its fight against climate change into a central pillar of U.S. development work akin to poverty reduction — a woeful distraction from its work in war zones and in countries suffering famine.

 

It’s unsurprising that USAID constructed its own DEI bureaucracy during the Biden administration — a waste, at best, and ideological poison at worst. Appropriately, the Trump administration has been busy dismantling U.S. government offices that promoted equity. A tougher challenge is that the international nongovernmental organizations that receive grants from USAID have infused their own work with DEI and other radical social agendas, making it difficult to find partners who haven’t bought into fashionable left-wing ideologies.

 

That’s the crux of Rubio’s challenge. He’s up against a powerful ecosystem of development organizations that have a vested interest in preserving a status quo that doesn’t work and is unaccountable to the public. This lobby has strong support among Democratic lawmakers, and even a few Republicans.

 

At least, though, a Republican administration is finally grappling with this runaway agency. Ultimately, fundamental changes will require congressional action, but the goal should be nothing less than a revolution in U.S. foreign-assistance efforts.