Breaking USAID
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Should the U.S. stop giving foreign aid?
This is a question many have been asking long before Elon Musk and Donald Trump launched DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and began dismantling USAID and its work around the globe.
I’ve wondered about this myself. My reporting career began in South Sudan, where I witnessed the tension between the immediate, tangible benefits of foreign aid for individuals and its more troubling downstream effects. On the one hand, it was hard to ignore the sight of desperate, hungry families being fed by bags of food branded with the red, white, and blue USAID logo, or the health clinics delivering life-saving care that would otherwise be unavailable. But on the other hand, this aid was often exploited by corrupt local leaders to remain in power. And there’s the stark reality that after 40 years and tens of billions of dollars spent in Sudan, the country remains far from economic stability.
Critics of foreign aid, like Bill Easterly, author of The White Man’s Burden, and Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, argue that foreign aid often does more harm than good. They contend that the U.S. and other nations should radically rethink their approach.
But this winter, Donald Trump did something no one expected: he halted nearly all foreign aid and operations worldwide. Elon Musk even went as far as to call USAID a “criminal organization.”
In today’s episode, we’re joined by long-time international correspondent and host of NPR’s Rough Translation, Gregory Warner, for a deep dive into why USAID was founded in the first place, how it expanded into the massive program it is today, the consequences of freezing its operations, and an examination of the claims that USAID is part of a U.S. deep-state operation.
For the listener who’d like to hear more from Warner, he publishes a Substack newsletter called Rough Transition. His latest series explores words that have no direct English translation, like tamana, a Malagasy word describing the feeling of being deeply at home in a stranger's house. And if you reach out to him mentioning you're coming from Reflector, he’s happy to offer a complimentary six-month subscription.