In the midst of Devex’s Pro Briefing today on the latest developments in U.S. President Donald Trump’s unprecedented overhaul of foreign aid, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters traveling with him in Panama that he was acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
It was yet another sign of the breakneck changes seizing America’s once-premier aid agency. Taken together, they point to a wholesale dismantling of USAID, as opposed to a good-faith review of aid programs, said Beth Tritter, a partner in the government affairs division at FGS Global.
“I think that the objective here is obviously to just convulsively upend the entire system. It's not reform. This is sort of wiping the slate clean and starting [from scratch]. That has to be it, because otherwise, this is not the approach you take,” Tritter, one of the panelists at the Pro event, said.