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Back in 2025, DOGE axed USAID and, according to partisans on the left and right, the results have been monumental.
To the left, USAID was somehow singlehandedly keeping millions of Africans alive. The loss of USAID resulted in their deaths. Wikipedia, the fallen one, reports this:
Obviously this is farcical on its face. And nearly 18 months later, there is no evidence of the massive death wave that was predicted.
Not to be outdone, the right has its own version of a USAID conspiracy theory: that closing USAID somehow killed leftism in South America.
Since USAID was shut down, seven countries in Latin America have held Presidential elections (Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia). All seven have elected a President who is right of center. Brazil now remains as the strongest center of leftism in Latin America. But it looks like they might flip as well. In the first round of voting, Flávio Bolsonaro beat Lula by nearly 2 points. They now advance to the runoff.
Conservatives on X are crowing about how this shows that USAID was propping up leftist governments in Latin America. But... I just don't see the mechanism. The money spent was too small. The programs too ineffectual.
The likelier truth about USAID is, like most government programs, it was essentially useless. The biggest political effect is that it allowed leftists a sinecure with good pay and benefits. And cutting it was worth it for that reason alone. But did cutting USAID kill people in Africa or bring down communists in Latin America? Press D to doubt.
I don't think it's tenable to deny that the US intervenes in other democracies. A lot of money is spent on facially-neutral "Initiatives" that are staffed by the 95% Democratic Washington DC one-party state. They will define democracy, a priori, as left-wing culture war victories, and spend money. A lot of this stuff was operant in Hungary, where NGOs lead out of Washington defined Orban's government as anti-democratic and spent money on his opposition. It's the same kind of thing that hobbled the American occupation in Afghanistan. It happens everywhere, it's the American government on autopilot.
It's even public knowledge in Brazil in one respect: In the run-up to the 2022 election, there was a lot of speculation that Bolsonaro could seize on irregularities and declare the election invalid. The CIA and the Biden White House told the Brazilian government that if this happened they would cut all diplomatic ties and consider sanctions.
At the same time, I don't believe that everything in the world was a giant USAID-organized US government plot. For one thing, USAID is basically what every department of the American government looks like when it interacts with foreign countries. For another, USAID would have been the most successful program in the American government, ever, if true. I find it much more likely that the modal failure for USAID was elites in foreign countries skimming vast quantities of money off the top.
Yes, I think this is the correct take.
USAID was just a small part of a whole government pressure program in support of Leftism. Cutting USAID didn't have much of an effect since the amount of money spent was small and most was simply wasted. But turning off or even reversing the whole government pressure is quite impactful.
For example, this time it is Lula who must beware of U.S. intervention. And Trump actually did tariff Brazil for their politically motivated prosecution of Bolsonaro. (It's currently at 25%). Brazilians can look forward to the prospect of being much richer if Flavio Bolsonaro is elected and the tariffs are ended. My $PAGS stock which I recommended on the finance thread two weeks ago is up 21% today on election news.
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