In a year of upheaval for U.S. development agencies — and amid volatile trade policy — one small agency that deals in both has come through largely intact. The U.S. Trade and Development Agency has navigated 2025 fairly unscathed, even as peers faced cuts, pauses, or outright dismantling.
That doesn’t mean USTDA has escaped scrutiny. The agency, which funds feasibility studies, technical assistance, and pilot projects for infrastructure projects to help countries unlock economic development while boosting opportunities for U.S. companies and services, spent much of the first year of the second Trump administration proving its utility and efficiency.
“It’s been a year of recalibrating, reorganizing, reorienting our program,” said Thomas Hardy, USTDA’s deputy director and chief operating officer, currently performing agency director duties. “There’s a lot of noise in Washington about the deconstruction of [USAID] and so forth, but if you look at the president’s executive orders, it’s kind of the signal that USTDA has been following.”
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
