(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday ordered a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending assessments of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.
“All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds,” read the executive order signed by Trump just hours after he took office for a second term.
It was not immediately clear how broad the order was and what programs, countries, non-governmental organizations and international organizations would be effected by the move.
It was also unclear what funding could be cut given the U.S. Congress sets the federal U.S. government budget.
The executive order echoes a return to the approach Trump took during his first term in office between 2017 and 2021.
He first came to power proposing to cut about a third off U.S. diplomacy and aid budgets, which included steep reductions in funding for U.N. peacekeeping and international organizations. But Congress pushed back on Trump’s proposals.
Then at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in 2018, Trump complained that the U.S. was the largest foreign aid donor, “but few give anything to us.”
“That is why we are taking a hard look at U.S. foreign assistance,” he said. “Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Costas Pitas and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
