Marco Rubio Announces Major Restructuring of USAID, Cancels 83% of Contracts to Align with National Interests

Sources who spoke to CNN at the time said those terminations included funding for programs that had been deemed lifesaving and granted waivers to the sweeping foreign aid freeze. Several humanitarian officials described the terminations of the awards as “a bloodbath.” Others said the rollout of the terminations from the State Department and USAID was confusing and unexpected, even to some officials within those agencies. There were reports that some terminated contracts had been restored.

US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said on Monday that the United States was cancelling 83 per cent of programmes at the US Agency for International Development. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January demanding a freeze on all US foreign aid to give his administration time to assess overseas spending, with an eye to gutting programs not aligned with his “America First” agenda.

“The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” he claimed without providing details on the canceled contracts. “In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department,” he said.