Meet Donald Trump’s aid agency
Sep 11th 2025|Washington, DC|3 min read
Eight months after taking office, Donald Trump has blocked an astonishing amount of the cash America once sent abroad. In April officials had barely shut down USAID, America’s biggest foreign-aid agency, when they froze the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which was set up by George W. Bush to build infrastructure in poor countries. From the Global Engagement Centre (established by Barack Obama to support pro-democracy activists) to the Agency for Global Media (by Bill Clinton to fund foreign reporters), the institutions founded by presidents to do good abroad mostly no longer exist.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “A sovereign-wealth fund in disguise”
From the September 13th 2025 edition
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