The Left Didn’t Always Love USAID

Until recently, the agency received criticism not only from conservatives but from leftists and centrists

By Tom Nicholson. He is director of Advance Access and Delivery, a global health nonprofit. Excerpts:

"Critics note that a substantial portion of “foreign aid” never leaves the U.S., instead staying within USAID or circulating among well-heeled USAID subcontractors. Many of these subcontractors later work for USAID and sustain the revolving door of self-interest. Some dollars do reach intended recipients around the world, but plenty of the funding goes to local affiliates of those same USAID subcontractors. By most assessments, less than 10% of U.S. nonmilitary foreign aid ends up with locally based organizations.

Critics on the left made these charges for decades"

"also criticized USAID for some of its more nefarious actions, deeming them politically subversive and manipulative. In 1965 the New York Times reported that the level of USAID funding to India was contingent on India’s importing certain products, such as fertilizer, from U.S. companies."

"The agency generously supported many authoritarian figures and regimes"

"Some economists and aid practitioners argued that USAID’s economic assistance to these countries was often paternalistic at best and destructive at worst. They accused the agency of undercutting farmers by dumping free grain in local markets in Haiti, impoverishing rural communities that were critical constituencies resisting dictatorial rule. While USAID fed hungry people, critics argued, it also sometimes fatally compromised a society’s ability to produce its own food, weakening popular resistance to authoritarian rulers.

In 2006 the U.S. spent millions of dollars through USAID to boost the popularity of the Palestinian Authority before its election against Hamas in Gaza."

"President Obama said “the American people’s money must be spent to advance their priorities, not to line the pockets of contractors or to maintain projects that don’t work.” Today, these kinds of critiques have all but disappeared"

"the agency’s Center on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance had turned some of its focus inward and was meddling in domestic politics. In 2021 this USAID bureau published a 100-page “disinformation primer” for USAID staff and partners on how private tech and media companies can better “manage” inconvenient political speech online."