Last year was comfortably the most turbulent in recent history for U.S. development assistance. But now that the book’s been closed on the last financial year, we can see which organizations did actually get money from the Trump administration, and how much they received.
Spoiler alert — it’s not a lot.
Also in today’s edition: The future of localization, the last days of Cindy McCain, and chaos over health compacts.
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We now know that U.S. spending on aid fell by around 88% in the first eight months of the second Trump presidency, compared to the same period in the year before, according to our latest analysis of USASpending.gov — an official government website. Total spending fell to $3.5 billion, compared to $29.6 billion the year before.
That’s both shocking and unsurprising.
After Elon Musk began a process in late January last year which ultimately led the government to close USAID down and transfer its functions to the Department of State, it became clear relatively quickly that very little new money was going to be spent on development in 2025. The State Department had no infrastructure to hand out substantial sums of money, and despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “stronger, safer, and more prosperous” rhetoric, there appeared to be little framework to decide who might receive cash, or for what.
Last year, we were able to use the department’s own press releases to estimate that little had been spent on aid, and to pin down a rough figure for the year. Now we’ve got firmer numbers from USASpending.gov which have allowed us to isolate not just what was spent last year but who got it.
The largest single grantee was the National Endowment for Democracy, but altogether, most organizations received pretty small sums. A lot of the biggest grantees were mine clearance organizations. It’s not obvious why mine clearance continued when almost all other work stopped, but it seems that it did.
It’s worth noting that spending did ramp up considerably in the fourth quarter of 2025, when the U.S. began to sign health compacts with African nations — more on that below — but because the U.S. fiscal year ends in September, we haven’t got the same level of authoritative data on that spending yet.
Read: Who were the top US grantees in 2025? (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 Asian Development Bank has approved a $25 million loan to expand access to affordable and quality health care in Indonesia.
The Central American Bank for Economic Integration has approved $185 million of financing to improve the drinking water system in El Salvador.
The European Union has launched a new project to strengthen the economic capacity and efficiency of small and medium-sized farmers in Uzbekistan.
The Green Climate Fund has signed a grant agreement to strengthen climate programming capacity in Nigeria.
Impact Fund Denmark is investing $4 million to build resilient economies and improve income opportunities for low-income communities in Latin America.
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Following on from what I wrote above, it’s clear that the United States is now ramping up aid spending — but it wants to do so very differently to how it has in the past.
Recently, the U.S. signed a deal to offer health funding to Panama — the 18th such agreement, but the first outside the African continent. Altogether, the 18 deals represent more than $11.3 billion in U.S. assistance, alongside $7.2 billion in coinvestment from recipient countries, my colleague Sara Jerving reports.
The pattern here is to focus much more on direct agreements with governments and try to cut out middle men. The U.S. ambassador to Panama, Kevin Marino Cabrera, took time to take a pop at “bloated NGOs” during the signing.
Still, there have been concerns in many countries about what the U.S. is asking for in exchange for the funding. My colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo has a detailed analysis of how and why Zimbabwe rejected a $367 million deal, reportedly over concerns that the agreement undermined national sovereignty in areas such as access to health data and critical minerals. Factions in other countries, including Zambia and Kenya, have looked askance at aspects of their countries’ bilateral deals with the U.S.
Read: US State Department signs first Western Hemisphere bilateral health deal
The World Food Programme is having a tough time. The agency has nowhere near enough money to feed all the people it needs to help. Its relationship with the United States — long its largest donor — seems to be on the rocks. And now it’s lost executive director, Cindy McCain, midway through her term.
McCain was due to serve until April 2028, but she suffered a mild stroke last year, and she announced last week that the demands of her job were too great to allow time for recovery.
Even without health pressures, McCain faced serious headwinds in her job. Her relationship with the U.S. administration is poor — President Donald Trump previously attacked her late husband, onetime Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Her relationship with staff has been rocky. And she has not had success as a fundraiser for the organization she leads.
The race now begins to see who will succeed her. In theory, the role is open to any nationality, but in practice, it’s typically been handed to U.S. citizens. Trump insiders are lining up to fight for the job.
Read: WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain to step down, citing health concern
During the Biden administration, back when USAID was the world’s largest bilateral donor, localization was a key term in aid funding. Nowadays, the word has slipped off the radar somewhat. But the issue is still a very live one. Development is about transferring power and resources to a local level, and localization was seen as a way to do that.
In a fascinating series of conversations with global south aid leaders, Devex contributor Jessica Abrahams explored how they feel now about localization.
For many, localization has been revealed as a fig leaf — a tool to pretend that aid was changing, while inside, things stayed the same.
But now, more radical voices are rising. Previously, they say, the system seemed unchallengeable. But now, the old way has fallen into chaos, and out of that chaos, they hope, a new order will emerge — one in which organizations in the global south take power for themselves.
Read: Does the global south still want localization — or does it want more? (Pro)
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