The Foreign Aid Wipeout: A Shadow Revolution in America’s Middle East Policy

Since January, Donald Trump has fundamentally reshaped U.S. foreign assistance, ostensibly to align with his “America First” foreign policy. The administration has effectively eliminated Washington’s main development agency—the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—terminated some 86 percent of its foreign aid programs, and dismissed thousands of humanitarian and development experts from both USAID and the State Department.¹

The most heart-wrenching impacts of the near-total shutdown of America’s foreign assistance programs have been from the poorest and neediest communities in the world. HIV patients in Uganda and Tanzania have been denied their medications;² refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are unable to access clean water, and there has been a 62 percent increase in cholera there in 2025;³ in war-torn Sudan, which is suffering from famine and the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, the closure of food kitchens and health centers has led to preventable deaths, and 5 million people may lose access to lifesaving health services;⁴ psychological and social services have been defunded in Ukraine.⁵ Oxfam has estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their lives as a result of the cuts,⁶ while the Lancet’s modeling predicts that, by 2030, defunding USAID programming will result in 14 million preventable deaths.⁷

Stunning as these figures are, they actually only sketch an outline of the biggest short-term effects of aid cuts. Yet the longer-term effects have so far been hard to assess, at least in the specifics of program area and region, because the administration has also shut down data reporting websites. This report—the first of the kind, to the authors’ knowledge—compares data leaks with official reports from previous years to create a detailed tally of the overall cuts to American aid funded by USAID and the State Department in the Middle East and North Africa. The research reveals, in stark terms, that the Trump administration is driving a much more fundamental shift in the United States’ positioning in the world, with a foreign policy that prizes force and narrow alignment over long-term stability, rights, and human development.

This shift is especially apparent in the Middle East and North Africa, a region of enduring geostrategic importance to the United States but where the Trump administration evidently sees only a limited role for U.S. economic assistance beyond transactional commercial deals. This report’s analysis draws from three main data sources: the website ForeignAssistance.gov; analyses conducted by the Center for Global Development using data sets sent by the State Department to Congress in March 2025; and updated versions of these lists released by the Career Pivot group in August 2025. While the data are in some cases incomplete, the general picture is clear. Although overall aid to the region has dramatically atrophied, security assistance has not decreased very much at all. Instead, the vast majority of the decrease has been absorbed by cuts to economic, development, and humanitarian aid. And within those categories, economic and development aid has been cut much more than humanitarian aid.

These cuts come as the Middle East stands at an inflection point. After years of devastating conflict, Gaza and Syria now face fragile transitions that offer a glimmer of hope but remain vulnerable to internal and external spoilers. Their trajectories will have cascading impacts on the rest of the region, particularly neighboring states already strained by refugee inflows and economic shocks. Israel has emerged as the dominant military power; its growing reliance on force has undermined Iran’s ability to destabilize the region even as Israel itself is becoming a dangerous new source of destabilization. The resource-rich Gulf states have responded to this shifting order by primarily seeking de-escalation—offering financial investments and engaging diplomatically to manage crises and consolidate influence. Meanwhile, in North Africa, major protests in Morocco and Tunisia underscore that even the region’s more stable middle-income countries are not immune to unrest when economic and governance grievances go unaddressed.⁸

The vast changes to the aid regime in the Middle East and North Africa are a slow burn compared to the more shocking effects of humanitarian cuts in the poorest countries of the world. They nevertheless represent a sort of shadow revolution in American foreign policy that could impoverish the United States’ diplomatic standing and influence in the region for years to come.

The Data Problem

Assessing the scale of Trump’s cuts to foreign assistance presents unique challenges for researchers, because the State Department has not made public updated, reliable, and accurate data on the status of former and current USAID and State Department programs. (It is important to note that Congress has passed multiple statutes requiring all U.S. agencies involved in foreign assistance to publish detailed information on publicly available sites.)⁹ The authors approached these challenges with a strategy that produced instructive comparisons, even as data remained incomplete.

The first challenge is finding comparable time periods. Most aid obligations are made and reported by fiscal year (October 1–September 30), but Trump’s cuts began at the end of January, after his inauguration, in the middle of the fiscal year, and end-of-year data are not yet available.

A second and even bigger challenge is that the disruption of massive and rapid cuts to foreign assistance has also affected agencies’ ability to report data. Before January, information about USAID and State Department programming could be found on agency websites and in the Development Experience Clearinghouse (a USAID data repository), which stored reports, workplans, and other forms of program documentation. As part of the effective closure of USAID, these sites were removed from the Internet and the data are no longer being reported. While ForeignAssistance.Gov and USAspending.gov—which house additional data—continue to be operational, the data on obligations and spending reflected on these sites are reported well after the end of a fiscal year, meaning that full data for fiscal year 2024 (which ended on September 30, 2024) and 2025 (which ended September 30) are still not reported.

Massive and rapid cuts to foreign assistance have also disrupted agencies’ ability to report data.

This report addresses these challenges by comparing the complete data for fiscal year 2023 (October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023) to the first ten months of fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024 to August 2025). Data for 2025 were obtained from analyses conducted by the Center for Global Development, using data sets sent by the State Department to Congress in March 2025 of lists of active and terminated USAID and State Department programs; and updated versions of these lists released in August 2025 by a group of former USAID staffers called Career Pivot. Although the compared time periods are not equal (twelve months in fiscal year 2023 versus ten months in fiscal year 2025), the authors assess that this makes for the best available comparison at the moment, and will reflect the lion’s share of the Trump administration’s changes to aid, especially because it remains unclear whether there is the will or the capacity to spend significantly more. (For the ease of reading, this report will refer to “fiscal year 2023” and “fiscal year 2025,” though it should be understood that the latter refers only to the first ten months of the fiscal year. A longer explanation of this report’s methodology, including additional caveats, is included in Appendix 1.)

The analysis here presents a stark, albeit evolving picture of the shift in U.S. aid priorities in the Middle East and North Africa. (The countries and territories this report includes in the Middle East and North Africa region are based on awards issued by USAID or the State Department to Algeria, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, the West Bank, and Yemen.) The shrinking footprint of U.S. foreign investment reflects, in part, a narrowing view of U.S. engagement around the world and in the Middle East and North Africa, in particular: limited humanitarian assistance, minimal medium- to long-term economic development, and continued security assistance.

A Sharp Decrease in Total Foreign Assistance

While the Trump administration, like its predecessors, continues to be heavily engaged in the Middle East, its dismantling of the foreign assistance architecture and limited efforts to build back capacity at the State Department to manage new programs in the region suggest it does not actually value foreign assistance as a significant tool in advancing its interests. This evidence stands in contrast to its insistence, in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the cuts are meant to make foreign aid “be part of the toolbox of foreign policy . . . designed to further the national interest of the United States.”¹⁰

A simple comparison of obligated funds by fiscal year shows these trends. Before diving into the comparison, it is helpful to review some terms:

• Appropriations by Congress are the amounts Congress provides annually to the executive branch and which agencies are legally supposed to spend, which, for foreign assistance accounts except humanitarian aid, are required to be spent within two fiscal years.
• Obligations are those amounts that agencies have actually committed to spend, which are often defined by fiscal year.
• Disbursements are the amounts that have actually been spent, generally reported some time after the close of a fiscal year.

This report compares obligated funds when possible, because, of the data available, these figures tend to be the most up-to-date and the best for time-bound comparisons.

In fiscal year 2024, Congress appropriated $39.6 billion for foreign assistance programming, managed by USAID and the State Department,¹¹ representing only 0.6 percent of the full federal budget that year; the Department of Defense, in contrast, received appropriations of $824.4 billion.¹² The foreign assistance programming amount includes program costs and contributions to international organizations and international peacekeeping for both security and economic assistance, but excludes operational and non-programmatic costs (select amounts from Title I, III, and IV of the Consolidated Appropriations Act). In fiscal year 2025, Congress passed a continuing resolution rather than a full-year appropriations bill, which meant that fiscal year 2025 funding levels carried over from fiscal year 2024. However, in July and August of 2025, the administration rescinded $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2024 funds and $8.8 billion in fiscal year 2025 funds from foreign assistance program accounts (this included the removal of USAID operating expenses through rescission).¹³ Accounting for these rescissions, $35.7 billion remains for global programming managed by USAID and the State Department in fiscal year 2024, with $30.8 billion for programming in fiscal year 2025 (using the same appropriated budget level of $39.6 billion for fiscal year 2025 as in fiscal year 2024). The rescissions packages do not include detail at the country or regional level of where funding will be cut, but the administration has signaled efforts to protect some areas of funding for the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in security assistance, throughout the funding cuts.

At a programmatic level, the Trump administration’s foreign assistance review and the State Department reorganization led to the termination, globally, of 5,341 USAID awards—86 percent of the total—and 2,100 State Department awards—42 percent of the total. The administration retained close to 900 USAID programs, which were handed over to the State Department to manage, and close to 2,900 State Department awards.¹⁴

In terms of the Middle East and North Africa, specifically, all countries in the region receiving U.S. foreign assistance before January suffered a drop in funding this year, according to the Center for Global Development, which examined USAID-specific funding cuts.¹⁵ A number of regional countries saw more than half of their prior nonmilitary assistance revoked, including Morocco and Tunisia (100 percent reduction), Iraq (93 percent reduction), Egypt and Libya (84 percent reduction) and Jordan (61 percent reduction). While State Department programmatic data is harder to corroborate, there appear to be similar trends in terms of which countries faced the largest percentage of cuts.

Figure 1

These data indicate that the Trump administration has prioritized life-saving humanitarian assistance over other kinds of aid, a decision that has disadvantaged middle-income economies not beset by or recovering from active conflict in the last year. However, this could be a risky bet—even the relatively stable countries in the region face tenuous economic and political contexts that could be further exacerbated with the elimination of foreign assistance. Broadly speaking, economic growth is expected across the Middle East and North Africa in 2025 based on oil output,¹⁶ but there are many uncertainties and potential disruptors to continued economic stability in the region. Unemployment is high, especially among youth (joblessness among youth is as high as 25 percent in some countries).¹⁷ Debt-to-GDP ratios are soaring (Jordan’s was 90.2 percent in 2024)¹⁸ as is inflation (21 percent in Egypt in 2024).¹⁹ Poor governance and widespread corruption have led to public discontentment. And unresolved conflicts and crises, from Sudan to Yemen, pose risks for the broader region.

Interestingly, the Trump administration’s prioritization of acute humanitarian needs seems to have initially been more powerful than its penchant for rewarding allies. For example, Morocco, which is currently facing the largest anti-government protests in years, saw a complete elimination of its USAID programming, even though Rubio has noted that it is the one country in the region that views the United States more positively than China.²⁰ That said, geopolitics has always driven funding decisions in the Middle East and North Africa more so than in other regions, and that approach has ultimately prevailed. For example, after the initial foreign assistance cuts, Jordan, one of the United States’ closest Arab allies, lobbied aggressively to secure assurances from the Trump administration that the majority of the $1.45 billion assistance it receives annually would continue, including for non-humanitarian initiatives like water desalination and direct budget support.²¹

Sector-Specific Foreign Assistance Cuts

Amidst these massive overall cuts to non-security foreign assistance, some sectors have been hit much harder than others. In the Middle East and North Africa, the Trump administration made complete funding cuts to several areas, including education and social services; democracy, rights, and governance; and environment programming. Additionally, the administration significantly reduced funding for economic development and peace and security programming. The least impacted sectors were health and humanitarian assistance, even though they also faced sizeable cuts.

These cuts are, for the most part, consistent with the Trump administration’s broader policies and public rhetoric. During his first overseas trip, which was to the Middle East—underscoring the region’s importance to the administration’s priorities—Trump decried “Western interventionists . . . giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your affairs.”²² Rubio has instructed the State Department to “avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.”²³ And the State Department’s annual reports on international human rights have been substantially overhauled to remove longstanding critiques of human rights violations and to emphasize entitlements “given to us by God, our creator.”²⁴ Similarly, the administration has been clear on its position on combatting climate change, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, terminating its financial commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), and, in a historic move, not sending an official delegation to COP30 in Brazil (this year’s meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCC). At the same time however, Rubio has repeatedly said that disaster relief will continue.²⁵ Notably, Rubio has also said that the administration will “target our resources to areas where they can have a multiplier effect and catalyze durable private sector and global investment.”²⁶ But economic development programming has taken a big hit, as have governance and stabilization programming that can help build much-needed local capacity and restore essential services in places like Syria that attract investment and business opportunities.²⁷

Figure 2

In September, the administration shared additional details about how it intends to spend non-humanitarian money in the region in the next year, in a court filing as part of an ongoing lawsuit related to foreign assistance expenditures (see Appendix 2). The shared information indicates that the State Department will support some longer-term development efforts, consistent with what Congress mandated in the fiscal year 2024 Appropriations bill. However, there have been no details provided publicly about which countries (for regional programs), through what mechanisms, and on what timeline this funding will be spent. Moreover, the administration’s earlier decision to rescind large amounts of certain funding types—like development assistance through a July 2025 rescissions package approved by Congress²⁸ and a September “pocket rescission” package²⁹—calls into question the accuracy of some of the numbers in the information the administration has shared.

More recently, in one of the few indications of new assistance being delivered anywhere in the world, the State Department announced humanitarian aid to Druze, Christian, and Bedouin communities in southern Syria. The announcement not only reinforces the prioritization of life-saving aid, but also suggests a preference for supporting religious and other minorities in the Middle East, a continuation of the Trump administration’s approach in its first term.³⁰

The Trump administration’s decision to primarily focus on life-saving assistance is a departure from long-standing U.S. policy, which had sought to address the root causes of instability in addition to responding to its short-term consequences. In every other recent administration—Democratic and Republican alike, including the first Trump administration—longer-term efforts to support stability were seen as important to consolidating security gains in postconflict contexts, building resilience to exogenous shocks, and engendering trust in beneficiary governments to deter public unrest. The particular focus of stability-focusing efforts varied somewhat according to which American administration was in power, but often included measures aimed at strengthening good governance, protecting minority rights, improving access to education, promoting climate change adaptation, and increasing youth employment. These previous administrations had various motives for wanting to support such initiatives: they looked at politically oriented aid as a tool for wielding influence and shaping political dynamics, while economic development programs would create a business environment conducive for attracting private sector investments. As Washington retreats from these broader commitments, a question looms about whether regional governments or other donors will fill the vacuum. And if they don’t, what risks will that pose for human development, social cohesion, and the long-term stability of an already volatile region?

Humanitarian Assistance Is the New Foreign Assistance

While humanitarian assistance now makes up a larger share of foreign assistance in the Middle East and North Africa than it did before Trump took office, the cuts to this sector are still substantial. Comparing fiscal year 2023 funds obligated by USAID for humanitarian assistance programs in the Middle East and North Africa³¹ to the humanitarian programming managed by USAID that remained active in August 2025 for the region,³² there was a 36 percent reduction in the value of humanitarian assistance awards.

Before January 2025, the U.S. government funded humanitarian work primarily through UN agencies. (In 2024, close to 80 percent of U.S. funding globally was disbursed via UN agencies and the Red Cross, while more than 20 percent went to nongovernmental organizations.)³³ As such, another way to understand the cuts to humanitarian programming is to consider the specific cuts to UN awards in the Middle East and North Africa.

The August 2025 data show a total of 115 awards in the Middle East and North Africa granted to UN agencies managed by either USAID or the State Department. Of these, 35 awards remained active (12 at USAID and 23 at State), and 48 were listed as terminated (17 at USAID and 31 at the State Department). At the time of the August 2025 update to the available data, 32 awards had an unknown status (there was no information as to whether the award was terminated or still active) or the program was very close to its scheduled end date and there was no indication that the program would be extended (23 at USAID and 9 at State).³⁴

Figure 3

Figure 4

The Trump administration’s deep skepticism about the UN has resulted in broad cuts to U.S. funding of UN agencies, which could have major implications for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Some UN agencies in the Middle East and North Africa have held on to more U.S.-funded programs than others, particularly those with mandates that align with current humanitarian priorities. These include the World Food Programme (WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian organization and the major international effort to fight hunger) and UNICEF, which works to meet children’s basic needs. However, even these agencies might not be fully insulated. For example, WFP plans to cut its staff by a third due to donor cuts³⁵ and the Trump administration’s July rescissions package included $142 million in global cuts to UNICEF, among cuts to other agencies.³⁶

The UN agencies that have experienced the heaviest cuts are those addressing issues that are not favored by the Trump administration. For example, there have been reductions to funding for UNRWA, which Israel has accused of colluding with Hamas³⁷ (an allegation the agency denies and for which an independent review has found no evidence);³⁸ WHO; the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which provides sexual and reproductive health services; and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which promotes the Sustainable Development Goals and seeks to eradicate poverty, including by addressing climate threats.

These cuts have occurred against a backdrop of continuing need in the region, where there are 83.1 million people requiring health and nutrition assistance, 2.4 million people in need of social protection services, and 65.9 million people without access to safe water. Multiple crises and conflicts, climate disasters, food insecurity, and lack of state capacity across the region only exacerbate these challenges.³⁹ Not only is the scale of humanitarian funding not commensurate with demand, but the narrow scope of such assistance also prevents tackling complex, multifaceted crises or bridging the gap between short-term emergency aid and long-term development, leaving hard-won welfare gains vulnerable to future shocks.

Another major implication of Trump’s approach to humanitarian aid is an eagerness to support new private sector or security actors, or both, in lieu of multilateral organizations and nongovernmental organizations.⁴⁰ This shift is best exemplified by the U.S. government contribution of $30 million to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a nongovernmental organization that Israel created this year, with American backing, which worked with Israeli intelligence and foreign contractors to distribute aid in the territory.⁴¹ The GHF was unable to provide aid at the scale or geographic footprint of UN-led operations; worse, hundreds or even thousands of Palestinians seeking food at the sites were shot and killed in incidents that are still being investigated.⁴² While the GHF is reportedly winding down its operations,⁴³ the Trump administration continues to embrace militarized solutions to aid delivery: the initial post-Gaza ceasefire plan could include having the CENTCOM Civil-Military Coordination Center provide aid through distribution hubs and armed escorts, akin to the GHF method. The plan could also establish “alternative safe communities,” where aid is distributed to Palestinians vetted by Israeli intelligence services and living in areas controlled by the Israel Defense Forces.⁴⁴ This approach of once again supplanting the UN-led aid system, along with the emergence of private aid groups with military links that do not abide by humanitarian principles⁴⁵ could further test the humanitarian system if not properly regulated.⁴⁶

Weapons, Not Social Progress

The U.S. foreign assistance review tipped the already-unequal balance between economic and security assistance even more in favor of military aid. The United States’ continued prioritizing of military aid is consistent with global trends; in 2024, global military spending reached a record high while financing for development decreased, with the former equating to almost thirteen times the latter.⁴⁷

U.S. security assistance is channeled through multiple funding mechanisms. One is “foreign military financing,” or the provision of arms, of which the largest recipients globally are Ukraine, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Despite the foreign assistance cuts, foreign military financing for the three Middle Eastern countries remains at the levels of fiscal year 2024: $3.3 billion for Israel, $1.3 billion for Egypt, and $425 million for Jordan. In fiscal year 2024, the United States also provided Jordan and Egypt $3.8 million and $2 million, respectively, in international military and education training, and $10.4 million and $3 million, respectively, in nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, demining, and related programs.⁴⁸

In January, at the start of its foreign aid review, the Trump administration exempted foreign military financing contributions to Israel and Egypt from being subject to the foreign assistance review. As for Jordan, Trump initially threatened to cut aid if it did not accept displaced Palestinians. However, Jordanian leadership was later able to secure assurances that military support would continue without such requirements.⁴⁹ Moreover, in July, Congress shielded these three countries from foreign aid cuts when passing the Trump administration’s rescissions package, which canceled $7.9 billion in previously approved foreign assistance. A press release from Senator Eric Schmitt, the Republican of Missouri who introduced President Trump’s rescissions package in the Senate, said that the exemptions for the three countries were an acknowledgment of the importance of supporting Israel and its neighbors “at a time of heightened uncertainty and risk for cascading regional conflicts in the Middle East.”⁵⁰

Beyond these three countries, the State Department continues to manage security assistance programs in Algeria, Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen, including for demining, promoting nonproliferation, supporting international narcotics and law enforcement, and providing policy direction for bilateral security partnerships. Active State Department awards for the Middle East and North Africa total $725 million (including amounts that were obligated before 2025), and of these, about 9 percent ($63 million) are for non-foreign-military-financing security assistance awards. The State Department terminated or let expire nearly a hundred security assistance programs, primarily focused on rule of law, demining, and nonproliferation, in these countries as a result of its foreign aid review.⁵¹

A New, Uncertain Order

The Middle East features prominently in Trump’s approach to foreign policy, reflecting its enduring strategic importance to Washington even as the administration rejects many of the norms and conventions of the foreign policy establishment. One of those long-held norms is the role of foreign assistance in advancing foreign policy goals. With the decimation of USAID and the termination of the majority of foreign assistance programs, the U.S. government has limited its ability to respond to crises and socioeconomic challenges in the region. Given the many twists and turns of Trump’s governance style, the current status of programs does not necessarily reflect what the future landscape will look like. However, new trends are difficult to track and analyze, since the Trump administration has provided to the public only limited information about the status of programming and its thinking. Transparency from the U.S. government on current programming, funding, timelines, and strategic priorities for U.S. foreign assistance, and details on the new alignment of programming with foreign policy goals, would provide increased clarity on the kind of partner the United States intends to be to countries in the region, and how those partnerships will be funded and structured.

Trump has doubled down on militarized approaches at the expense of human development, risking deepening the very instability U.S. policy aims to prevent.

Defenders of the cuts to foreign aid claim that the protracted violence, chronic state fragility, and pervasive unfavorable views toward the United States in the Middle East are a self-evident indictment of the previous American aid regime—that economic and development aid over the years has been wasted, or even made these situations worse. Just as likely is that such aid has been a small bulwark against even worse consequences of decades of American military intervention and assistance to authoritarians, in the name of security.

Indeed, in recent years, a growing body of research has argued that Washington would advance its interests in the Middle East more effectively by emphasizing economic investments and diplomatic engagement rather than primarily relying on military tools.⁵² Foreign assistance, though imperfect, remains one of the few instruments capable of addressing the structural socioeconomic pressures that fuel unrest across the region. By contrast, security partnerships rooted in outdated threat perceptions risk entrenching authoritarian forces, exacerbating public discontent, and reinforcing the United States’ image as a military occupier in the region. As the Trump administration undertakes reforms to better align foreign assistance with national security priorities, doubling down on militarized approaches at the expense of human development risks deepening the very instability U.S. policy aims to prevent.

Only time will reveal the consequences of this region-scale social experiment, but it stands to reason that they could be dangerous in the extreme, and hard to reverse. And even as it is uncertain which outcomes the Trump administration’s approach will yield—or even whether it will maintain this approach during the remainder of Trump’s presidency—the quiet aid revolution has undeniably deprived Washington of a source of influence and goodwill in the region. Moreover, the new approach to aid is likely unintentionally fostering new orders in the region—new orders that will probably not fully hew to American interests.

This report is part of “Networks of Change: Reviving Governance and Citizenship in the Middle East,” a Century International project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.

Appendix 1: Methodology and Data Limitations

To understand more about how the funding cuts will impact the Middle East and North Africa in the short and long term, we analyzed available data within the limitations presented by the data availability and uncertain validity.

This analysis drew from three main data sources: the website ForeignAssistance.gov; analyses conducted by the Center for Global Development using data sets sent by the State Department to Congress in March 2025 of lists of active and terminated USAID and State Department programs;⁵³ and versions of these lists updated in August 2025 and shared by the Career Pivot group.

Experts on foreign assistance familiar with these programs have questioned the accuracy or completeness (or both) of the March 2025 (and subsequently the August 2025) data set. The State Department has not released any official data on the status of foreign assistance programs, but conversations with implementing partners responsible for programming reveal that additional programs have been terminated, reactivated, and, in some cases, extended since March and August. Data sources that would normally be used to corroborate or provide additional insight into data drawn from sites like ForeignAssistance.gov or USAspending.gov, such as the USAID website or the Development Experience Clearinghouse (a USAID data repository), have gone dark as a result of the Trump administration’s restructuring.

Based on the data that are comparable across the data sets used in this analysis, the authors focused on both grants and contracts from USAID, but only grants issued by the State Department. This decision was made based on the more limited information provided in the data for the State Department contracts, which made accurate analysis of the data uncertain.

Considerations and limitations with the available data that have a potential impact on this analysis include the following.

• Fiscal year 2023 data from foreignassistance.gov was chosen for a baseline to use in comparisons, as it remains the most complete data set for U.S. foreign assistance money. Reporting on the fiscal year 2024 data was complicated by the terminations and changes to plans to obligate funds, and fiscal year 2025 data are incomplete at this moment as reporting occurs after spending has already happened. There was an additional complication of the administration obligating up to $6.5 billion in the last days of fiscal year 2025 (see Appendix 2).
• In both the leaked March 2025 list of programs and the August 2025 update to those data, it is very difficult to disaggregate obligations by fiscal year. Instead, we chose to use total expected obligations, which represent obligations made to projects across multiple fiscal years. By contrast, the baseline data are only for one fiscal year of obligations (fiscal year 2023). However, we believe these comparisons, however imperfect, still illustratively highlight the scale of recent changes to foreign assistance funding and indicate how the administration’s priorities will play out in the Middle East and North Africa.
• While the March and August 2025 lists of active and terminated projects included both State Department grants and contracts, this analysis focuses specifically on the grant data both because it is more complete and because it makes up the majority of the foreign assistance awards issued by the State Department.

Stronger analysis of the current status of foreign assistance programming globally and for the Middle East and North Africa region would be aided by the State Department issuing accurate public data with detail at the program level. However, in the absence of that data, this analysis seeks to provide illustrations of how the region has been impacted by the cuts to foreign aid.

Appendix 2: Fiscal Year 2025 Plan Released by the State Department to Allocate Unspent Funds for the MENA Region

The information in the table below was submitted by the administration as part of the updates on foreign assistance spending required by the courts in Global Health Council et al. vs Donald Trump et al., D.C. Cir., 25-5097 (2025). While the administration has shared these numbers along with their stated intent to allocate $6.5 billion in unspent funding allocated by Congress, the plan for allocating these funds has not been detailed. Even after the conclusion of fiscal year 2025, it is unclear how these funds were obligated, and to where, or the timeline for spending these funds.

Header Image: The USAID logo is seen on a machine that processes recycled plastic into construction blocks at the Pasig Eco Hub, a project impacted by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid, on March 10, 2025, in Pasig, Metro Manila, Philippines. Source: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

1. Joseph Gedeon, “Rubio Says 83% of USAID Programs Terminated After Six-Week Purge,” Guardian, March 10, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/marco-rubio-usaid-funding; updated by Elissa Miolene, et al., “The USAID Awards the Trump Administration Killed—And Kept,” Devex, March 27, 2025, https://www.devex.com/news/the-usaid-awards-the-trump-administration-killed-and-kept-109732#:~:text=The%20Trump%20administration%20has%20shared,money%20yet%20to%20be%20obligated; Christopher Flavelle et al., “Missteps, Confusion, and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D,” New York Times, June 22, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-cuts-doge.html; Fatma Tanis, “Usaid Terminates Nearly All Its Remaining Employees,” National Public Radio, March 28, 2025, https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/03/28/g-s1-56968/usaid-terminates-nearly-all-its-remaining-employees; and Matthew Lee, Farnoush Amiri, and Manuel Balce, “State Department Lays off over 1,300 Employees Under Trump Administration Plan,” Associated Press, July 11, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/layoffs-diplomats-state-department- -rubio-bfdb86767b7bd5b6570819d404a7782e.
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5. Anya Hirschfeld, “U.S. Cuts to Ukraine’s Foreign Aid Hit Health Workforce,” Think Global Health, April 17, 2025, https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/us-cuts-ukraines-foreign-aid-hit-health-workforce.
6. “The Human Impact of Cutting USAID: Billionaire Wealth and the Decimation of Livesaving Aid,” Oxfam America, November 7, 2025, https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/making-foreign-aid-work/human-impact-of-usaid-cuts/.
7. Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti et al., “Evaluating the Impact of Two Decades of USAID Interventions and Projecting the Effects of Defunding on Mortality up to 2030: A Retrospective Impact Evaluation and Forecasting Analysis,” Lancet 406, iss. 10500 (2025): 283–94, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext.
8. See, for example, “Morocco Charges More than 2,400 People over Gen Z Protests,” CNN, OCtober 29, 20205, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/29/world/morocco-charged-over-2400-gen-z-protests-latam-intl; and “Tunisia an ‘Open-Air Prison’, Say Protesters at Anti-President Saied March,” Al Jazeera, July 26, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/26/tunisia-an-open-air-prison-say-protesters-at-anti-president-saied-march.
9. George Ingram and Sally Paxton, “Advancing Aid Transparency,” Brookings Institution, April 8, 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/advancing-aid-transparency/.
10. “Foreign Aid Is Not Charity—Secretary Rubio,” posted May 21, 2025, by the State Department, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-d4gullH7U8.
11. Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016, Public Law No. 114–191, July 15, 2016, 130 Stat. 666, https://www.congress.go l/118th-congress/house-bill/4366/text.
12. “Federal Budget in Fiscal Year 2024: An Infographic,” Congressional Budget Office, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61181.
13. “Rescissions Act of 2025,” H.R. 4, 119th Cong., July 24, 2025, https://www.congress.gov/bill 19th-congress/house-bill/4/text; “Propos  Rescissions of Budgetary Resources, no-23,” The White House, August 28, 2025,”  https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Proposed-Rescissions-of-Budgetary-Resources-August-28-2025.pdf.
14. Elissa Miolene, et al., “The USAID Awards the Trump Administration Killed—And Kept,” Devex, March 27, 2025, https://www.devex.com/news/the-usaid-awards-the-trump-administration-killed-and-kept-109732#:~:text=The%20Trump%20administration%20has%20shared,money%20yet%20to%20be%20obligated.
15. Justin Sandefur and Charles Kenny, “USAID Cuts: New Estimates at the Country Level,” Center for Global Development, March 26, 2025, https://www.cgdev.org/blog/usaid-cuts-new-estimates-country-level.
16. “Resilience amid Uncertainty: Will It Last?,” International Monetary Fund, Regional Economic Outlooks Middle East and Central Asia, October 2025, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/MECA/Issues/2025/10/21/regional-economic-outlook-middle-east-central-asia-october-2025.
17. Robin Wright and Peyton Dashiell, “Economic Challenges the Middle East in 2025,” Wilson Center, March 18, 2025, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/economic-challenges-middle-east-2025.
18. “Jordan Government Debt to GDP,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/jordan/government-debt-to-gdp; “Debt to GDP Ratio by Country 2025,” World Population Review, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/debt-to-gdp-ratio-by-country. Data for 2024 is the latest available.
19. “Robin Wright and Peyton Dashiell, Economic Challenges the Middle East in 2025,” Wilson Center, March 18, 2025, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/economic-challenges-middle-east-2025. Figures for2024 are the latest available.
20. Marco Rubio, “Making Foreign Aid Great Again,” posted by the U.S. Department of State, Substack, July 1, 2025, https://statedept.substack.com/p/making-foreign-aid-great-again.
21. “Exclusive—Jordan Wins Trump Aid Carve-Out for Strategic Projects,” USA Today, April 30, 2025, https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-04-30/exclusive-jordan-wins-trump-aid-carve-out-for-strategic-projects-and-support.
22. “In Riyadh, President Trump Charts the Course for a Prosperous Future in the Middle East,” The White House, May 13, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/in-riyadh-president-trump-charts-the-course-for-a-prosperous-future-in-the-middle-east/.
23. Humeyra Pamuk, “Trump Administration Tells Us Diplomats Abroad Not to Opine on Foreign Elections,” Reuters, July 17, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-tells-us-diplomats-abroad-not-opine-foreign-elections-2025-07-17/.
24. Graham Smith, “The State Department Is Changing Its Mind about What It Calls Human Rights,” NPR, April 18, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/18/nx-s1-5357511/state-department-human-rights-report-cuts; Adam Taylor and Hannah Natanson, “Under Trump, U.S. Human Rights Reports Will Flag Abortion, Gender Care,” Washington Post, November 20, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/20/trump-rubio-human-rights-report/.
25. “WATCH: ‘We’re Going Be Doing [sic] All of It,’ Rubio Says of U.S. Foreign Aid, amid Cuts,” posted May 20, 2025 by PBS Newshour, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z6URc6E-5I#:~:text=Secretary%20of%20State%20Marco%20Rubio%20told%20the,and%20an%20effort%20to%20close%20the%20U.S.
26. Marco Rubio, “Making Foreign Aid Great Again,” posted by the U.S. Department of State, Substack, July 1, 2025, https://statedept.substack.com/p/making-foreign-aid-great-again.
27. Josh Rogin and Nour Wood, “New Business Opportunities, and Challenges, in a New Syria,” Washington Post, November 10, 2025, https://wpintelligence.washingtonpost.com/topics/global-security/2025/11/19/new-business-opportunities-challenges-new-syria/.
28. “Rescissions Act of 2025,” H.R. 4, 119th Cong., https://www.congress.gov/bill/1 th-congress/house-bill/4/tex.
29. “Propos  Rescissions of Budgetary Resources, no -23,” The White House, August 28, 2025,”  https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Proposed-Rescissions-of-Budgetary-Resources-August-28-2025.pdf.
30. “Trump Administration Provides Life-Saving Humanitarian Assistance to Druze, Christian, and Bedouin Communities in Southern Syria,” U.S. Department of State, October 27, 2025, https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/10/trump-administration-provides-life-saving-humanitarian-assistance-to-druze-christian-and-bedouin-communities-in-southern-syria.
31. Fiscal Year 2023, Obligations for USAID and State Department, Middle East and North Africa, U.S. Department of State, https://foreignassistance.gov/.
32. Authors’ calculations, August 2025 data updated by Career Pivot.
33. “Grouped view: United States of America, Government of 2024,” OCHA Services, FInancial Tracking Services, https://fts.unocha.org/donor-grouped/2933/recipient-types/2024.
34. Authors’ calculations, August 2025 data updated by Career Pivot.
35. Gabriel Spitzer, “U.N. World Food Program to Slash Jobs, Drastically Shrink Food Aid,” NPR, May 5, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/05/05/nx-s1-5384292/u-n-world-food-program-to-slash-jobs-drastically-shrink-food-aid.
36. Patrick Quirk, “The Senate Rescinded Vital Unicef Funding,” Wall Street Journal, July 20 2025, https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-senate-rescinded-vital-unicef-funding-765ad5d0?st=4ii8dN&reflink=article_copyURL_share.
37. Jeff Mason and Michelle Nichols, “Trump to Target UN Rights Body and Palestinian Relief Agency,” Reuters, February 4, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-order-us-withdrawal-un-human-rights-council-halt-unrwa-funding-2025-02-03/#:~:text=ambassador%2C%20Danny%20Danon%2C%20on%20Monday,2023%2C%20attack%20and%20were%20fired.
38. “UNRWA: Facts Versus Claims,” UNRWA, September 2025, https://www.unrwa.org/unrwa-claims-versus-facts-2025; Ayesha Rascoe and Jackie Northam, “An Independent Review Finds No Evidence for Israel’s Claims About UNRWA and Hamas,” NPR, April 28, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/04/28/1247702980/an-independent-review-finds-no-evidence-for-israels-claims-about-unrwa-and-hamas.
39. “Middle East and North Africa Region: Highlights,” UNICEF, 2025, https://www.unicef.org/media/166036/file/2025-HAC-MENA.pdf.
40. Marco Rubio, “Making Foreign Aid Great Again,” posted by the U.S. Department of State, Substack, July 1, 2025, https://statedept.substack.com/p/making-foreign-aid-great-again.
41. “Un Experts Call for Immediate Dismantling of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” press release, UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, August 5, 2025, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/un-experts-call-immediate-dismantling-gaza-humanitarian-foundation.
42. “US-Backed Aid Distribution Points in Gaza Are Sites of Orchestrated Killing,” Doctors Without Borders, August 7, 2025, https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/us-backed-aid-distribution-points-gaza-are-sites-orchestrated-killing.
43. Natan Odenheimer et al., “Gaza Operations of Much-Criticized U.S. Aid Group Unravel,” New York Times, October 202, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/world/middleeast/gaza-humanitarian-foundation.html.
44. Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay, “Exclusive: US Mulls Gaza Aid Plan That Would Replace Controversial Ghf Aid Operation,” Reuters, October 23, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-mulls-gaza-aid-plan-that-would-replace-controversial-ghf-aid-operation-2025-10-23/; and Hana Kiros, “The Trump Administration Has a New Plan for Gaza,” Atlantic, November 10, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2025/11/gaza-new-plan-united-states/684879/.
45. Joshua Craze and Joseph Falzetta, “Fogbow Operations in South Sudan and Beyond Raise Red Flags for Faltering Aid System,” New Humanitarian, June 16, 2025, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigations/2025/06/16/fogbow-operations-south-sudan-raise-red-flags-aid-private-sector#:~:text=To%20date%2C%20Fogbow%20has%20transported%20thousands%20of%20metric,officials%2C%20and%20analysts%20raised%20concerns%20about%20its%20practices.
46. Jeremy Konyndyk, “How Hunger Threatens Peace in Gaza,” Foreign Affairs, October 23, 2025. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/how-hunger-threatens-peace-gaza.
47. ILeana Exaras, “Military Spending Worldwide Hits Record $2.7 Trillion,” UN News, September 9, 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165809.
48. “Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations,” U.S. Congress, May 19, 2025, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL33546#:~:text=It%20represents%20the%20largest%20multiyear,aid%20to%20Jordan%20since%20FY2018.
49. Suleiman Al-Khalidi “Exclusive: Jordan Wins Trump Aid Carve Out for Strategic Projects and Support,” Reuters, April 30, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/jordan-wins-trump-aid-carve-out-strategic-projects-support-2025-04-30/.
50. “Schmitt substitute for H.R. 4,” Eric Schmitt press release, July 2025, in possession of authors.
51. Career Pivot; State Department fiscal year 2023 obligations for MENA and military assistance, ForeignAssistance.Gov.
52. For example, see Dalia Dassa Kaye et al., “Reimagining U.S. Strategy in the Middle East, Sustainable Partnerships, Strategic Investments,” RAND Corporation, 2021, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA958-1.html; Ilan Goldenberg et al. “A People-First U.S. Assistance Strategy for the Middle East,” Center for a New American Security, June 10, 2021, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/a-people-first-u-s-assistance-strategy-for-the-middle-east; and Daniel Serwer, “Recalculating U.S. Policy in the Middle East: Less Military, More Civilian,” Middle East Institute, April 11, 2016, https://www.mei.edu/publications/recalculating-us-policy-middle-east-less-military-more-civilian.
53. Justin Sandefur and Charles Kenny, “USAID Cuts: New Estimates at the Country Level,” Center for Global Development, March 26, 2025, https://www.cgdev.org/blog/usaid-cuts-new-estimates-country-level.

Tags: usaid, donald trump