WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday the United States was cancelling 83 per cent of programmes at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). 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 programmes not aligned with his "America First" agenda.
"After a 6-week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programmes at USAID," Rubio said on social media platform X. "The 5,200 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 added.
Rubio on Monday notably thanked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which billionaire Elon Musk is leading in a drive to slash costs and cut jobs across government departments. Trump and his allies have argued that foreign assistance is wasteful and does not serve US interests. — AFP
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