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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.
USAID was spending most of its money in Africa, so I'd expect that to be where things change.
There is maybe a story to be told that USAID was a method for coordination among the left. They go out and verify that a charitable cause in another country or region will advance the goals they care about, and private money simply follows their recommendation. This is somewhat explicitly what they were doing. Its just that they didn't say something like "advancing leftist ideology is our goal". Usually the goal of USAID was stated to be a kind of soft power projection by the US. Show the world we are the good guys by giving money to good causes.
I do think USAID was doing something. Simply because throwing billions of dollars around in poor nations is bound to have some effect. From some numbers I looked up on wikipedia we were giving about 1 billion to ethiopia, ethiopia's government expenditure is about 25 billion. Therefore we were contributing about 4% of ethiopias government budget. Its play money for the US, but that is a big amount for other countries. Certainly enough to sway elections.
The parsimonious explanation is that an extra 1 billion dollars given to Ethiopians is immediately spent on consumption, mostly on imported goods.
Definitely nice for the Ethiopians who benefited, but I doubt they made any progress on fixing entrenched problems.
We simply must get past the idea that government/NGO spending does anything useful unless we can closely track it and see the progress. Allocating funds != accomplishing goals. Look at California High Speed Rail. This applies doubly in corrupt countries.
Yes, to be clear when I said USAID money was definitely doing something I don't mean to imply that "something" is good. My default assumption with untracked aid money is the "something" is being used by the government in charge to hand out bribes to their friends.
I'd expect that removing the spigot of money results in more political upheaval since the group in charge has less of an ability to bribe people into being allies. And they either have to make that up through increased extraction from their enemies, or reduce their bribing amount. Both of which make their position weaker.
I just ultimately don't think it should be the responsibility of the US taxpayer to worry about these things. So I'm happy to see the program ended.
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