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Washington’s foreign aid cuts could lead to an additional 14 million deaths by 2030 as countries scramble to make up for the sudden, massive shortfall.
According to a report in The Lancet, up to a third of those premature deaths would be of children, with sub-Saharan Africa likely to be hardest hit. US humanitarian assistance has plunged by around 80% since billionaire Elon Musk — who as a White House aide oversaw drastic budget cuts — boasted of feeding aid agency USAID “into the wood chipper.”
The abrupt cuts have already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, according to one estimate, with one expert telling the BBC that further reductions would wipe out “two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations.”
The aid cuts have also come in for criticism in Washington: The top Democrat on the US Senate’s foreign relations committee argued that foreign assistance was not charity, and was instead “a strategic tool to promote American interests, strengthen alliances and counter the growing reach of countries like China and Russia.”
Yet in a Substack note published on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end.” He said foreign aid must now “be in furtherance of an America First foreign policy.”
