Every administration since Kennedy has tried to fix USAID. Nixon tried to dismantle it and route aid through the World Bank. Clinton cut staff without cutting scope, fueling the rise of the “development industry.” Bush built PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation outside USAID's walls because the agency couldn't deliver fast enough.
The first Trump administration brought the most serious reform in a generation. Under Administrator Mark Green, USAID launched the Journey to Self-Reliance and overhauled procurement through 170-plus reform recommendations. Green stated the thesis directly:
“I believe the purpose of foreign assistance should be ending its need to exist. Each of our programs should look forward to the day when it can end.” — Mark Green, USAID Administrator, August 2017
Congress passed reform after reform — the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act, the Global Food Security Act, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, the Global Fragility Act. None of it quite stuck.
What happened in 2025 was not the sudden departure from a working system. It was the end of a long story of partial reforms. Yes, the disruption had painful human costs. So did the decades of programs that didn't meet their potential. Now is the chance to build a system that can be the pride of America and a model for the world.
USAID's central failure was the way it spent money: too many programs aimed at marginal rather than transformational improvements, in too many countries. Each country office spread its money too thin. Despite a veneer of strategic planning, country missions had too many programs in too many sectors. Each program had too many components. This meant that even successful programs (and USAID's own evaluations show many were not) could not play a significant role in moving countries along the path from poverty to prosperity. These programs failed in their ambition, their design, their costly method of implementation and therefore their impact. Any chance at transformational change was whittled away by this diffusion of focus in general, and on the number of programs chasing small impacts in particular.
What was lost was the opportunity to work on big things with the possibility of game changing impact. Despite good intentions, the reality was too few programs that partnered with nations on ambitious initiatives in our mutual interest.
The new foreign assistance should focus. It should focus geographically. It should focus on problems where there is a meaningful opportunity for major impact, on targeted interventions, on working with the private sector. It should focus on program impact, not paperwork process. It should treat governments as partners with the responsibility to solve their own development challenges with support from the United States. The new foreign assistance should not have the United States substitute for the local government and private sector.
Legacy-building, focused, achievable with existing interventions, capable of crowding in bilateral and philanthropic capital.
Too many USAID programs focused on small-scale household and individual level interventions which, even if highly successful, would only help tens of thousands of people rather than millions. U.S. government funding should focus on assistance that has transformational potential. The new foreign assistance should move beyond investments with limited scale to those that drive systematic change and rapid economic growth.
Prioritize investments that promote jobs and economic growth while securing new markets for U.S. products and services.
It is not the responsibility of the United States to substitute for good governance or cover for predatory governments. Rather, as in the MCC model, the State Dept. should prioritize assistance to governments committed to reform, markets and basic liberties. Reject approaches that make the U.S. the sole international assistance funder with no sustainability plans or transition strategies for local ownership.
Embed results- and milestones-based awards to replace compliance-oriented models, with up-front payment to get started coupled with subsequent payments tied to results delivery. Focus on paying for measurable results rather than activities.
Leverage technology, innovation, and evidence to bring down costs, deliver faster results, and scale what works. Stop developing aid projects in Washington, DC or behind embassy walls that lack buy-in or co-investment from host countries or the private sector, jeopardizing sustainability. End reliance on the contractor industry and instead fund those closest to the challenges, increasing sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and self-reliance.
Demonstrating American generosity and goodness by funding programs that address:
Feedback and reflections welcomed. contact@thenewforeignassistance.org