Marco Rubio defends USAID closure as uncertainty surrounds future help for poorer countries

Secretary of State points to parts of region as places that have benefitted from assistance but have negative view of America

The administration of US President Donald Trump says that countries want investment, not handouts. AFP

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended the closure of the US Agency for International Development, which officially shut its doors on Tuesday after more than six decades of assistance to poorer countries.

Five months after Elon Musk called USAID a “criminal organisation” and said he had fed it into a “wood chipper”, the agency started by president John F Kennedy and credited with saving millions of lives around the globe no longer exists.

Its remaining functions have been absorbed into the State Department, which will oversee a new “America First” approach to international aid.

In a statement, Mr Rubio gave parts of the Middle East and North Africa as examples of places that have received US aid but held a negative view of America.

Since 1991, “more than $89 billion invested in the Middle East and North Africa left the US with lower favourability ratings than China in every nation but Morocco", Mr Rubio said. “The agency’s expenditure of $9.3 billion in Gaza and the West Bank since 1991, whose beneficiaries included allies of Hamas, has produced grievances rather than gratitude towards the United States.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Reuters

Beyond creating a globe-spanning “NGO industrial complex” at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War, he said.

“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”

Mr Rubio said Americans should not pay taxes to fund failed governments far from the US.

“Moving forward, our assistance will be targeted and time-limited.”

USAID was known globally for providing life-saving help to poorer countries, including medicine to combat HIV and Aids. Its termination comes amid several new reports projecting that cuts to US aid could lead to millions of preventable deaths.

The Lancet, which analysed data from 133 low and middle-income countries from 2001 to 2023, estimates that USAID-funded programmes helped to prevent more than 91 million deaths over the past two decades, including 30 million among children.

If the cuts continue, researchers project 1.8 million excess deaths in 2025 alone, with a total of 14 million by 2030 – including 4.5 million children under the age of five.

“US aid cuts, along with the probable ripple effects on other international donors, threaten to abruptly halt and reverse one of the most important periods of progress in human development,” the study said.

Mr Rubio said USAID had marketed its programmes as a charity, rather than instruments of American foreign policy intended to advance US interests

Former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, and Irish singer Bono, on Tuesday questioned the Trump administration's closure of USAID, including funding cuts to a popular Aids and HIV programme known as Pepfar (the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief).

Mr Obama called the dismantling of USAID “inexplicable” and “a colossal mistake.”

Washington has been the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38 per cent of all contributions recorded by the UN. It disbursed $61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of that through USAID, according to government data.

The State Department denied criticism, saying countries want investment opportunities, not handouts.

“We think that the best thing we can do, from a moral perspective, to lead to development and a betterment of life all around the world, is to invest in the peace and prosperity of those countries,” a senior State Department official told reporters.

“Which means trade, investment, sort of growing our bilateral connection that way so that's the administration's view at least.”

The official also said reports that Pepfar funding will not continue are inaccurate.

“The Secretary said, many, many times, Pepfar will continue, will become more efficient and we believe, more impactful,” the official said.