Trump’s first 100 days: What’s next for US foreign aid?

The first week of United States President Donald Trump’s second term has provided plenty for the U.S. development community to talk about. By many accounts, too much. Trump is setting a record-breaking pace for executive orders, having issued more in the first days of his presidency than any other president in U.S. history, David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, told a Devex Pro Live audience on Wednesday. Several of those executive orders have aimed at U.S. global development engagement — initiating U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement; stamping out diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and personnel; and imposing a 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign assistance spending while the White House undertakes an “America First”-focused review. “If any of us are surprised that they’re proposing a substantial change, then we weren’t paying close enough attention over the last 18 months,” said Porter DeLaney, founding partner of the Kyle House Group, at Wednesday’s event on how Trump could change U.S. foreign aid. But while U.S. development professionals and partners scramble to assess the fallout from Trump’s aggressive early actions, aid experts also urged caution. “It’s dangerous to draw conclusions about things that we don’t have all the information about, of which there are many right now,” DeLaney said. The freeze on aid spending is a case in point. An order that could have immediate implications for the financial viability of global development organizations and their programs is still clouded by uncertainty and unanswered questions. “There’s substantial uncertainty within USAID as to what the boundaries and limits of this activity are,” said Berteau. It also remains to be seen who will lead the review — especially in the absence of a permanent USAID administrator — and how it will balance dual objectives of increasing government efficiency and rooting out programs the Trump administration opposes. “We don’t have some key positions who are going to be ultimately deciding this. It’s hard to know which of those two will be more emphasized, but they’re both at play,” said Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of the global health and HIV policy program at KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.