Conflict tracking in Myanmar. Investigations of Chinese human trafficking. Refugee healthcare in Thailand. Strengthening independent media in Mongolia. Environmental conservation in Tibet.
These are just a few of the Asia-focused programmes operating with US government funds that risk permanent closure after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week suspending all foreign aid, pending review.
Activists and aid workers across Asia and their American partners are reeling, describing the situation as “chaotic” and “nightmarish” as US officials notify groups they must obey a “stop-work” order. Uncertain about future funding, some groups have already put their employees on unpaid leave. Many more workers expect to be furloughed in the coming weeks, if not laid off.
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Of the US$68 billion of foreign aid approved by Congress and committed in the 2023 fiscal year, about US$6 billion was allocated to East, South and Central Asia. In 2023, the last year for which data is fully available, top recipient countries included Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and the Philippines, with funding supporting everything from democracy promotion to potentially life-saving treatment and shelter.
For some countries – including China – US grants can have an outsize impact in areas deemed sensitive by local governments. Some of the more sensitive projects in China focused on the rule of law and human rights development.
Military assistance to Taiwan and the Philippines, in the form of grants and loans for equipment, services, and training, has also been halted. In 2023, the US extended US$135 million in credit to Taiwan and US$40 million to the Philippines under a State Department programme called “foreign military financing”.
Former officials and non-profit leaders called the suspension unprecedented, going far beyond typical aid reassessments in previous US administrations, and warned that despite the shutdown’s temporary nature, many programmes would be hard to bring back; some could disappear altogether.
“There is no such thing as a temporary pause,” said Michael Schiffer, a former assistant administrator of the Asia bureau of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
“When an NGO, a small business or an American company that receives US government funding to implement US foreign assistance is told to stop work, even for 90 days, that means people are fired, expertise is lost, and programmes are shut down with no guarantee they’ll start back up, even if they survive the review,” he said.
The impact could be particularly significant for certain sectors. “The freeze, if it persists, could dramatically reshape Chinese civil society, both inside and outside China, for years to come,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Centre for Asian Law at Georgetown University, who previously oversaw grant-making for Chinese civil society.
For those supporting the executive order, the elimination of certain initiatives appeared to be the goal. Former US representative Ron Paul, a reported adviser to Elon Musk – the tech mogul running the “Department of Government Efficiency” – has pushed vocally for the elimination of foreign aid.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that US officials had told some aid groups that programmes promoting climate resilience, diversity and women’s reproductive rights were all but certain to not survive the review.
The executive order, issued on the first day of Trump’s second term, described the US foreign aid bureaucracy and aid network as “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values”.
“They serve to destabilise world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries,” the order said.
Trump’s order proposed a 90-day review of foreign assistance programmes to determine whether they should be maintained, modified or eliminated. A separate order, issued the same day, directed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to adopt an “America-first foreign policy”.
A directive from Rubio, released on Friday, ordered the suspension of all new funding commitments through the US State Department and USAID; it also issued stop-work orders for existing aid programmes.
Rubio’s directive provides some exceptions, including military aid to Egypt and Israel, as well as emergency food assistance. On Tuesday, Rubio approved an additional waiver for “life-saving humanitarian assistance” and said that groups could apply for other humanitarian exemptions.
This came as news broke of refugee health services operated by the International Rescue Committee being suspended along the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Still, vast swathes of aid are not exempt. In the US, affected organisations – many working directly with partners in Asia – have been advised against publicly discussing the impact of the shutdown as they try to devise a strategy to engage the Trump administration.
Smaller non-profit groups are expected to bear the brunt of the impact.
Aue Mon, a programme director at the Thailand-based Human Rights Foundation of Monland, said that the pause was already affecting efforts to document conflicts in southeastern Myanmar.
“To cope in the short term, we’re leaning on a small reserve from non-US sources to sustain our core operations,” he said, adding that the group has already scaled back some activities and might soon face “difficult decisions” about staffing.
In light of the funding suspension, China Labor Watch, a New York-based group founded in 2000 to expose labour abuses in Chinese factories and build worker solidarity, has put two staff members on unpaid leave and shifted others to hourly pay.
According to its founder Li Qiang, the disruption damages the credibility of the US as a reliable partner.
“Even if the US increases funding for China-related initiatives in the future, the trust and partnerships lost due to this sudden disruption will significantly limit the effectiveness of those efforts,” he said.
There is some bipartisan recognition of the potential harm of rolling back foreign aid. Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are pushing for the resumption of aid, as well as the return of other programmes like refugee resettlement also halted by Trump during his first days in office.
“These actions undermine America’s credibility and put US diplomats, American implementers, and vulnerable people around the world at risk,” Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the committee’s senior Democrat, wrote in a Monday letter signed by 21 other Democrats.
And at a hearing on January 22, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, noted that getting rid of foreign aid – which makes up less than 1 per cent of the US government budget – would not balance the budget.
“I think soft power is a critical component of defending America and our values,” he said.
“If you don’t get involved in the world and you don’t have programmes in Africa where China is trying to buy the whole continent, we’re making a mistake.”
On Monday, the Trump administration put dozens of top career officials at the USAID on administrative leave.
Separately, it issued a memo suspending all grants and loans disbursed by the federal government. That order, which was temporarily halted by a federal judge on Tuesday and rescinded by the White House on Wednesday, wrought alarm within the aid community as it could have further affected Asia-focused programmes.
Some analysts noted that the suspension of foreign aid was equivalent to “handing a gift” to countries like China seeking to exert their reach abroad through influence campaigns and development financing.
“Foreign assistance, though charitable, isn’t charity,” Schiffer said. “It’s a strategic investment that safeguards America’s most important interests while reflecting its highest values.”
Like other critics, Schiffer argued that the programmes could be reviewed without imposing an almost universal stop-work order.
Others contended it was too soon to say that the aid suspension would ultimately give China a strategic advantage.
“I don’t think it necessarily has the effect of ceding ground to China,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington. The suspension, she noted, was aimed at “better tailoring the aid projects to meet US national interests”.
More from South China Morning Post:
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- US freezes foreign aid after Trump orders review
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