The Elimination of USAID & Competing Colonialisms

By: Justin Laing | April 5, 2025 | Antiracism

On January 20th, 2025, Donald Trump’s first day of his second term as U.S. President, he signed Executive Order 14169, “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” This policy ordered the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the almost $44B agency responsible for 60% of the U.S.’s provision of foreign aid¹ to cease all activity while it underwent a 90-day “review.” The purpose of the so-called review was to find and eliminate programs that were not aligned with Trump’s foreign policy.² “So-called review,” because on February 2nd, less than two weeks after the Executive Order, the White settler-capital class member directing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),  Elon Musk, said on his platform “X,” “I spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone (sic) to some great parties. Did that instead.” What did Musk mean by “wood chipper”?

On March 10th, Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State, announced that the Trump Administration would terminate 5,200 of 6,200, or 83%, of USAID’s programs. The remaining programs would be managed by the State Department.³  Then, on March 28th, Rubio informed Congress that the responsibilities of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would be passed over to the State Department and all but the legally mandated jobs would be eliminated. In keeping with this direction, USAID staff had been given the choice of picking July 1 or September 2 as their firing date and if they were interested in working for the U.S. State Department they could reapply.⁴ In just over two months, the agency began with an executive action by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as a strategy to stop the spread of socialism known not only for humanitarian aid but as a front for the Central Intelligence Agency,⁵ was having its name taken off its building.  Obviously, a multi-billion dollar agency with a 60-year history, almost 5,000 employees, and nearly 800 sub-contractors⁶ supplying billions in food and medical aid to more than 170 countries wasn’t terminated because of a 10-day review. So, when was the plan made to put USAID into the wood-chipper and why?

It is true, cutting a portion of that $44B will save some money, but USAID does not amount to 2% of the U.S. budget and compare that to the more than $1.5T U.S. military budget⁷ and what are we talking about, really? Insight into what is motivating Trump, Musk, and Rubio can be found in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Project 2025 is part of the Foundation’s “Leadership Mandate” series that has been published every four years since it was first given to Ronald Regan in 1981. Emerging from a movement begun in the early 70’s to stop the increasingly popular left, the series is intended to provide Republican Presidents with a playbook to protect the interests of the conservative wing of the capital class.⁸ The 900+ page 2025 playbook is no different. Titled simply “USAID,” the chapter written by Max Primorac clearly lays out what is being targeted in the elimination of USAID: diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives (DEI), climate change policy that restrains the development of fossil fuels and the reproductive justice movement, particularly access to abortion in Africa and Latin America. What underlies these policies is a Trump political base that is a blend of White Christian nationalism and the fossil fuel industry. Trump seeks to get rid of “progressives” both nationally and internationally and replace them with his brand of people, a step he thinks he missed in his first term.⁹  

In the dismantling of USAID, one political trend is declining while another is surging. The neocolonialist/neoliberalism trend that helped the Black professional class to develop with DEI and Affirmative Action, that dressed itself in the Black Power¹⁰ adjacent language of “racial equity” and almost brought a second Black president to power, while simultaneously incarcerating millions of working-class Black people at unprecedented levels,¹¹ destroying a generation of Black wealth in the great recession¹² and putting U.S. military bases all over Africa¹³ is being overtaken by a no-holds barred White settler colonial Christian nationalism that openly mocks the idea of a Black competent professional class. In the rising of one trend and declining of another, we see an intra-national White settler colonial struggle re: how to maintain the U.S. settler colonial empire: velvet glove covering the steel fist or plain steel fist? Segregation or integration? Colonialism or neocolonialism? Trump signals the era of soft power and partnership with the Black professional class in rule is receding to one of plain White settler colonial force. How can this growing, in our face and very dangerous White settler colonialist movement (MAGA) be fought without strengthening the shape shifting and dangerous neocolonialism (the Democratic Party)?

Footnotes

1.  Drew Desilver, “What the data says about U.S. foreign aid,” Pew Research Center, 2/6/2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/06/what-the-data-says-about-us-foreign-aid/
   ↩︎
2. The White House, “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” 1/20/25 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reevaluating-and-realigning-united-states-foreign-aid/
   ↩︎
3. Guardian, “Rubio says 83% of USAID programs terminated after 6 week purge,” 3/10/25 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/marco-rubio-usaid-funding
   ↩︎
4. Jonathan Landlay and Daphne Psaledakis, “Remaining USAID staff fired, Trump says Myanmar will still get earthquake aid,” Reuters, 3/28/25. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/state-department-notified-congress-intent-reorganize-usaid-rubio-says-2025-03-28/
   ↩︎
5. Jon Lee Anderson, “Growing Up U.S.A.I.D.” The New Yorker, 2/25/25. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/growing-up-usaid
   ↩︎
6. Ryan Knappenberger, Hundreds of USAID contractors face chopping block as Federal Judge oks cuts, Courthouse News Service, 3/6/25. https://www.courthousenews.com/hundreds-of-usaid-contractors-face-chopping-block-as-federal-judge-oks-cuts/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20declaration%20by,Moldova%20and%20Thailand%20were%20terminated. ↩︎
7. Gisella Cernedas and John Bellamy Foster, “Actual U.S. Military Spending Reached $1.537 Trillion in 2022—More than Twice Acknowledged Level: New Estimates Based on U.S. National Accounts,” Monthly Review, 11/1/23, https://monthlyreview.org/2023/11/01/actual-u-s-military-spending-reached-1-53-trillion-in-2022-more-than-twice-acknowledged-level-new-estimates-based-on-u-s-national-accounts/
   ↩︎
8. David Sirota, “Project 2025 started a half-century ago. A Trump win could solidify it forever,” The Guardian, 8/29/24. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/29/trump-project-2025-history
   ↩︎
9. Flip Timotija, “Trump says picking ‘disloyal people’ was ‘biggest mistake’ of first term,” The Hill, 10/26/24, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4955032-trump-criticizes-administration-picks/
   ↩︎
10. Tom Davies, Mainstreaming Black Power (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017) Introduction, Apple Books. ↩︎
11. The Sentencing Project, “Mass Incarceration Trends,” 5/21/24, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/ ↩︎
12. Christopher Famighetti and Darrick Hamilton, “The Great Recession, race, education and home ownership,” Economic Policy Institute, 5/15/19 https://www.epi.org/blog/the-great-recession-education-race-and-homeownership/
    ↩︎
13. Tricontinental, The Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group, “Defending Our Sovereignty: U.S. Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity,” 7/5/21, https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-42-militarisation-africa/ 
    ↩︎

Tags: necolonialism, Trump, USAID