Two senior USAID officials have been placed on administrative leave following a conflict involving Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Trump administration. This development is part of ongoing turmoil within USAID, with potential implications for U.S. international development efforts.
Ian Vásquez, our Vice President for International Studies at the Cato Institute says “It is long-past time that the United States government recognize that foreign aid to promote development has been a failure. There is no relationship between aid and growth nor between aid and policy reform that would promote growth. Economic development is not a top-down process, as implied by wealth transfers from the United States to poor countries but rather depends instead on the domestic policies and institutions of any given country—and those are factors not susceptible to be easily influenced by aid. In the worst of cases, aid harms development. When aid goes to countries that have policies and institutions that are inimical to growth, it finances the causes of poor people’s misery in the first place. In many cases, the result is debt and greater corruption, not development. It makes sense to shut down U.S. AID and move any emergency or humanitarian assistance programs to the State Department.”
Ian Vásquez is available for comment on this topic at this time.
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