Among the slew of executive orders issued by U.S. President Donald Trump on his first day in office, one of the most impactful for U.S. foreign policy was the order to stop all foreign aid and assistance programs so the new administration could evaluate these programs for their “programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy.” Critics of the policy change have noted its likely long-term impacts on the global reputation of the United States, and the resulting benefit to China. While China will no doubt benefit from U.S. retrenchment in the provision of foreign aid, the manner in which China will gain has been widely misunderstood.
The executive order was reinforced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Jan. 26 order to pause all foreign aid and assistance for review, though he also issued a waiver three days later for life-saving humanitarian efforts after media reports of impacts on impoverished children, AIDS prevention and treatment programs, and post-conflict stabilization efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is unclear whether Rubio’s waiver has allowed for some programs to restart operations.
The assault on foreign aid should not be unexpected. Project 2025, the playbook for the administration to overhaul the executive branch, proposed a pause in all foreign aid programs and a review for consistency with U.S foreign policy goals and values. The authors of Project 2025 desire to realign foreign aid toward Trump’s foreign policy goals, to root out redundancy and inefficiency, and to attack anything that smacks of progressive concerns, from DEI to climate change. In addition to these concerns, the takedown of USAID may also be related to thwarted attempts in the first Trump administration to remake the agency. In this iteration, the long pause in all foreign aid, which did not occur in the first administration, has been combined with removal of USAID senior leadership and the use of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to publicize programs under threat of cancellation.
The immediate impact of the freeze is tragic and heartless. It includes the denial of food, education, medicine, and security for the most vulnerable and underserved people across the globe. The medium-term impact is on the development sector, including universities, NGOs, charitable and religious organizations that deliver the programs as grantees, and contractors to the U.S. federal government. Many projects have already laid off staff and only the largest and most well-resourced will survive the 90-day review period.
Critics of the move posit that the longer-term impact will be on the global reputation of the U.S, which will further hamper U.S. competition with China as both countries vie for influence and respect in the global south. This analysis envisions China as “filling the vacuum” left by the United States’ desertion of its humanitarian role. The problem with this take is two-fold. First, it gets China’s likely reaction wrong. It also underestimates the fundamental reworking of U.S. foreign policy that this foreign aid freeze signals.
China does not need to take on the work of the U.S. in humanitarian aid to benefit from the United States’ dereliction of its humanitarian role. The vacuum and the effects of the vacuum will be blamed on the United States.
First, China has no interest in filling the vacuum. China is not a leader in global humanitarian aid, nor will it become one given its own economic constraints at home. China’s comparative advantage is the funding of large infrastructure projects through its Belt and Road Initiative. BRI allows China to demonstrate its contribution to global development while also providing investment opportunities for its state-owned enterprises, which face overcapacity at home. While BRI has been criticized for corruption, lax labor and human rights practices, and contributing to heavy debt loads of some countries, it has largely achieved its soft and hard power goals.
The vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal will remain a vacuum, demonstrating to many that the Trump administration no longer believes that helping the most vulnerable populations across the globe is in the national interest of the United States. As stated plainly by Rubio, “the United States government is not a charity.”
China does not need to take on the work of the United States in humanitarian aid to benefit from the United States’ dereliction of its humanitarian role. The vacuum and the effects of the vacuum will be blamed on the United States. It will bolster Xi Jinping’s claim that China is the responsible great power that hopes to push forward globalization and economic cooperation against the more nationalistic U.S. turn under President Trump as he freezes foreign assistance, puts punitive tariffs on the U.S.’ closest trading partners and makes threats of territorial aggression to Denmark, a NATO ally.
Second, this pause in foreign aid is not just an ideological attack on the “woke left” or an efficiency move by Elon Musk, the leader of DOGE. This is part of a more fundamental shift toward a U.S. foreign policy that will be more like China’s, emphasizing hard power over soft power, interests over ideology and territorial control over cooperation with allies.
The vacuum created by the shift in attention away from humanitarian aid is a deliberate reorientation, driven by a conclusion that whatever soft power the U.S. has gained from humanitarian work has made the U.S. soft. This is particularly in contrast to China’s newfound hard power through the BRI, from a port in Sri Lanka to a permanent military base in Equatorial Guinea. Those affected most in the short term by the pause in foreign aid—NGOs, universities, foundations and religious organizations—will need to readjust to a new normal in which foreign aid, if restored, must further the new aims of a fundamentally changed U.S. foreign policy.
Mary Gallagher is the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.