Trump administration cuts 90% of USAID foreign aid contracts

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it would eliminate more than 90% of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall US aid worldwide.

The cuts, detailed by the administration, would leave only a handful of USAID projects operational.

The Trump administration outlined its plans both in an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press and in filings Wednesday in one of those federal lawsuits.

Wednesday’s disclosures offer insight into the scale of the administration’s retreat from US overseas aid and development assistance, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.

President Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk, in their efforts to slash the size of the federal government, have targeted foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target. Both men say USAID projects advance a “liberal” agenda and are wasteful.

Trump on January 20 ordered a 90-day, program-by-program review of which foreign aid programs deserved to continue, and cut off all foreign aid funding almost overnight.

The White House and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) teams furloughed and severed ties with most USAID personnel, while the funding freeze halted thousands of US-funded programs abroad.

In filings in federal court Wednesday, nonprofits with receivables from USAID contracts argued that both Trump’s political appointees and DOGE members were terminating USAID’s contracts around the world at breakneck speed, without allowing time for meaningful review.

“Many more terminations are coming—please prepare yourselves!” the nonprofits’ lawyers wrote, quoting from an email sent Monday to staff by a USAID official.

The State Department also said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was reviewing the terminations.

The Trump administration said it would terminate 5,800 of 6,200 multiyear USAID contracts, for a total cut of $54 billion. 4,100 of the State Department’s 9,100 grants are also being eliminated, a cut of $4.4 billion.

The memo noted that the administration was acting under pressure from a federal court order giving officials until the end of Wednesday to lift the Trump administration’s month-long blockage on foreign aid funds.

Nonprofits, among the thousands of contractors owed billions of dollars since the funding freeze began, described the mass contract terminations as a maneuver to avoid complying with the order to lift the temporary funding freeze.

Trump administration officials also said in Wednesday’s filings that, after repeated warnings from the federal judge overseeing the case, they were finally restarting reimbursements of USAID bills after a month-long payment halt, releasing a few million of the billions of dollars owed for delivery.