It’s been eleven months since Donald Trump reclaimed the U.S. presidency, and eleven months since his administration upended foreign aid. For half the year, assistance was halted in its tracks — but now, the U.S. government is beginning to channel aid across the world.
We pulled together all the latest announcements to paint a picture of what’s been obligated since Trump returned to the White House — and what that might tell us about the year ahead.
Also in this edition: A reboot for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and some good news for the fight to end polio.
After a year marked by freezes, cancellations, and chaos, the U.S. State Department has obligated roughly $4.7 billion in new development and humanitarian assistance in the second half of 2025 — about one-fifth of what the State Department and USAID spent over comparable periods in prior years.
What funding has flowed has clustered around two priorities: short-term humanitarian responses and a late-year surge of multiyear global health deals, largely in Africa. My colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan and I take a closer look, pulling publicly available information, data, and announcements to paint a picture of the past year’s foreign aid commitments.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comments on this story, so in light of that, this list reflects only what we could verify — and may not include the full list of nonpublic commitments from the department. But from economic growth programs in the Philippines to disaster relief in the Caribbean, here’s where the State Department has prioritized foreign aid.
Read: 24 weeks, $4.7 billion spent — how aid has slowed under Trump (Pro)
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We publish tenders, grants, and other funding announcements on our Funding Platform. Here are some of those viewed the most in the past 10 days.
The World Bank has approved $599.66 million in funding to enhance air quality in India.
The Asian Development Bank has signed a $200 million loan to empower women by supporting micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in rural Thailand.
French DFI Proparco is providing a $23 million loan to promote food security in Sierra Leone.
The German foreign office, BMZ, is launching a call for applications to advance sustainable green economic activities across southern Africa.
The Inter-American Development Bank is seeking qualified firms to provide services for the modernization and technological upgrade of Chile’s hazardous waste declaration system.
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Miguel also charts out what had already been committed by the U.S. government over the course of the last fiscal year.
In FY 2025, which ended in September, the vast majority of that money came from the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development — in other words, cash committed under the Biden administration before Trump retook the White House. The departments of Treasury and State also obligated development money, but only $1.6 billion and $819.1 million, respectively. So, where is that money going, and who’s likely to benefit the most?
Read: How US aid obligations fell by 65% in 2025 (Pro)
Aid does seem to be slowly moving again across Washington — and not just at the State Department. Last week, lawmakers passed a U.S. defense spending bill that included a long-awaited reauthorization of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, or DFC, a government agency that partners with the private sector to fund projects in low- and middle-income countries.
“This comes after weeks of meetings and at-times tense negotiations, where DFC’s reauthorization was uncertain,” writes Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger. “Some of the key issues lawmakers grappled with include expanding the agency’s work to high-income countries, the agency’s mandate — and how much it should focus on development as its core mission versus strategic self-interests — and how much oversight lawmakers would have.”
But DFC’s reauthorization — tucked inside the National Defense Authorization Act — passed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 10.
While it still needs to be passed in the Senate and signed by Trump, its ultimate passage would expand the DFC’s mandate, and bring its total spending cap to $205 billion. The corporation would also have the authority to invest in more countries, though it would be barred from investing in so-called countries of concern: Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, and Belarus.
Read: Reauthorization of the US development finance corporation gains traction
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The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, or GPEI — a public-private partnership created in 1988 — received more than $1.8 billion in pledges, with money pouring in from the Gates Foundation, the Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, and others at a pledging event held in the United Arab Emirates last week.
“We’re 99.9% of the way there — but the last stretch demands the same determination that got us this far,” Bill Gates said in a news release. “This renewed funding will help us cross the finish line and strengthen the systems that protect children from this terrible disease for good.”
The new pledges are huge for GPEI, which is expected to channel the cash to protect 370 million children from polio every year. But even with the new cash, GPEI still faces a funding gap of $440 million through 2029, Devex Senior Reporter Jenny Lei Ravelo writes.
In October, GPEI noted it was facing a 30% budget reduction in 2026, the result of foreign aid cuts across not just the United States, but around the world.
Read: Polio eradication secures nearly $2B in pledges at Abu Dhabi summit
Seventy percent of Americans think the U.S. spends too much money on foreign aid. For many in the sector, that’s a difficult pill to swallow — especially because historically, such spending comprises less than 1% of the federal budget. But for Dalberg’s Kusi Hornberger and Ben Schatz, it doesn’t necessarily need to be that way.
“The age of abundant [official development assistance] is over; the age of strategic partnership and investment has begun,” the two write in an opinion piece for Devex. “The question is no longer whether development funding should exist, but how it can adapt fast enough to matter to the median voter.”
Really getting to that median voter, Hornberger and Schatz write, is critical — and to do that, the two recommend several ways forward. The first is to refocus aid on “tangible shared economic benefits,” such as the roads, bridges, and jobs that catalyze economic growth. The second is to mobilize private capital, with Hornberger and Schatz noting the power of local pension funds.
The third is to position aid as a strategic national investment, and to show voters “concrete home-country gains.” And the fourth is to scale up what works, especially when it comes to blended finance.
Opinion: Rethinking development funding means making it matter to the median voter
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