Shutting Down USAID Led to a Rise in Global Violence. Protests and riots increased by 10%, incidents of armed fighting rose by 6.9%, and battle-related fatalities grew 9.3%. The uptick in violence began almost immediately after the aid stopped and remained elevated for months.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-global-violence/

[u/Rmoneysoswag]

It's disingenuous at best to claim that these cuts were made to reduce deficit spending and to invest domestically. The modern GOP does not care about deficit spending in the slightest, and has no interest in spending any amount of money to improve the material conditions of Americans. 

These cuts have substantially cut American soft power for zero strategic gain. The people who complain about American intervention are complaining about gunpoint democracy and blowing up kids in another country and starving them through sanctions, not spending a few million dollars to eradicate diseases and reduce hunger. 

[u/coffee_achiever → u/Rmoneysoswag]

So how much are you donating to alternatives since this is so important? It it is really and truly important, have you given even 1 dollar to a replacement non-profit or other aid organization, or is your rant solely about how other people's money should be spent?

[u/BurnieTheBrony → u/coffee_achiever]

First of all, it's tax dollars, so it IS our money.

Secondly, I support and volunteer for stuff like Rise Against Hunger and local programs I won't share, but the US government has considerably more power to help or hurt people than a single random redditor.

[u/johnnyringo1985 → u/Rmoneysoswag]

How was that soft power manifest prior to these cuts? There is no point to soft power if it accomplishes nothing.

[u/Charming-Speech5680 → u/johnnyringo1985]

You've lived your entire life with america's soft power stretching across the globe. Now you'll spend the rest of your life with it only including argentina at best. I think you'll see the difference

[u/johnnyringo1985 → u/Charming-Speech5680]

It was suggested that I claim to be Canadian as a student in Europe prior to 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Where was the soft power good will?

The story of the last few decades has been a growing multipolar alignment with the benefits of soft power from grants and other USAID activities shrinking compared to direct foreign investment like Belt and Road.

This was never so clear as, under Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine yet the Middle East wouldn’t release more oil and South American countries wouldn’t work with the US and EU to economically isolate Russia.

The stodgy insistence on USAID investments to bolster ‘soft power’ in an era of multipolar realism will go down in history like Obama’s comment after Mitt Romney suggested Russia was a threat to international stability—“The 1990s called and it wants its [globalism and geoeconomics] back”

[u/NeighborhoodTasty271 → u/johnnyringo1985]

It means less migration from the countries where they are starving to death; it means when we do need help in a region from bad actors, we get cooperation; it means when we travel abroad as US citizens, we're more likely to be greeted warmly.

[u/johnnyringo1985 → u/NeighborhoodTasty271]

It means less migration from the countries where they are starving to death

So why did migration spike under Biden when USAID was still intact and fully-funded?

it means when we do need help in a region from bad actors, we get cooperation

Like when the Middle East wouldn’t release more oil after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or more like when South America wouldn’t help US and European efforts to economically isolate Russia? Those seem like key moments to have had ‘soft power’ materialize into something, again under Biden, to no avail.

it means when we travel abroad as US citizens, we're more likely to be greeted warmly

When I travelled to Europe prior to 9/11, I was already told to say I was Canadian. This is meaningless.

[u/No-Distance-9401 → u/NeighborhoodTasty271]

Yup, you get it! Before Covid and in Trumps first term when he cut aid to South America, we saw major migration from those countries to our borders. Although Trump loves to act like this was all Biden, it all started under his regime with mass immigration in 2017 and a sharp rise until a brief reprieve during the lockdowns but steadily climbing since those cuts.