When Donald Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, one of his first acts was to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development. With a budget of $35 billion, USAID had funded thousands of projects in more than 100 countries around the world for 60 years. Its most important projects included the delivery of food, medicine, and emergency supplies to those affected by conflict and natural disasters. The agency also funded and operated life-saving programs across the developing world that provided vaccinations and medicines to treat HIV-AIDS, malaria; projects to improve maternal health and sanitation; and contributed to provide technical assistance for agriculture and to access clean water.
The impact of the agency’s official closure on July 1, has been felt around the world. A study published by the medical journal, the Lancet on June 30. The study estimates that over the past 20 years USAID programs have saved over 90 million lives. The researchers also estimated that if USAID’s programs remain closed through 2030, 14 million people who might have otherwise lived could die, including 4.5 million children younger than 5 years old.
Dr. Brooke Nichols, associate professor of global health at Boston University, estimates that the abrupt cuts to USAID programs had already resulted in more than 300,000 deaths as of late June. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Abby Maxman, Oxfam America’s president and CEO, who examines the Trump regime’s rapid and chaotic closing down of USAID programs and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost as a result.
So looking forward into the future as we watch vital food, clean water, medicine both disappearing—but in the early days, the cruelty was even worse because they just shuttered clinics and access and warehouses to aid that was already in process, already in motion taken away from people without coordinating with local governments, local communities, nothing. It was chaotic in every way you could imagine. And so under the guise of efficiency and preventing waste, I don’t think there could have been a more wasteful, more cruel, more harmful and inefficient way of rolling out any kind of change or reform.
SCOTT HARRIS: When I first heard about DOGE and these major cuts to these vital USAID programs that so many lives were dependent on, I thought, why are they cutting this off abruptly rather than if their real goal was to save money in the U.S. budget? And it’s not that big a part of the U.S. budget, we should say. But if that was the goal, why not work over a course of months to hand off these extremely important projects to maybe other European nations, other countries around the world, so they could take them over? This abrupt dropping of all these programs and closing of clinics, as you said, costing hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions—seemed vengeful and vindictive. It was irrational in a way that you couldn’t understand it in any other way.
ABBY MAXMAN: Thank you for naming that, Scott. I have run out of adjectives to describe this. “So vengeful, vindictive.” All of those things are so apt in describing what we’ve seen, what we’ve witnessed. And there’s so many different ways to do meaningful reform of anything. And this way has been intentionally chaotic. It seems intentionally chaotic, at least how we’ve experienced it, seen it and had seen its impact roll out.
And as you say, on the savings side of it, the U.S. support—and there’s a misunderstanding that we and many others have been trying to help people, taxpayers in the U.S.—we all have a right and a responsibility to know what our taxes are going for. The U.S. foreign assistance represented 1 percent. One percent of the U.S. budget. So even not just the way they’ve taken the “chainsaw” or the “sledgehammer” has been destructive, but the harm so disproportionally outweighs the savings.
It’s staggering if you just want to look at finances. And what’s further troubling is that the $30 billion of assistance that goes to the UN and others in the humanitarian and development architecture, President Trump’s tax cuts that he’s pushing through are going to increase—be tax cuts that benefit $60 billion, double the amount of the savings, to go into the pockets of the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers and these billionaires. So we’re seeing this case of reverse Robin Hood. Stealing, taking food, clean water, life-saving support from the poor. Obviously, we know how it’s rolling out in the United States as well. Similarly, taking support and services from the poor and doing so to give tax breaks for the ultra rich. It’s obscene.
For more information, visit Oxfam America at oxfamamerica.org
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