The liberal media erupted in outrage when President Donald Trump’s new administration announced a funding freeze on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with some claiming it would result in thousands of government job losses and warnings of global starvation and outbreaks of disease. On the surface, this freeze was portrayed as an abandonment of humanitarian principles, but a deeper analysis reveals the real function of USAID which is not as a benevolent force but an instrument of US imperialism.
Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) movement is rooted in a bourgeois nationalist agenda, heavily focused on ending certain foreign spending to prioritise domestic interests. His administration framed the USAID freeze as a common-sense move to ‘put America first.’ Yet, the outrage from the establishment reveals more about the true purpose of USAID. Far from being a simple aid organisation, USAID is a key apparatus for sustaining US global hegemony under the façade of foreign assistance.
USAID: A Trojan horse of imperialism
Founded in 1961 under President John F Kennedy, USAID was established to centralise various foreign aid programmes during the Cold War. Its purported mission was to promote economic growth and humanitarian relief, but in reality, it was, and remained, a tool to counter Soviet and/or Chinese influence and spread bourgeois ideology. Operating under the direct guidance of the US Secretary of State, USAID’s actions have consistently aligned with Washington’s foreign policy objectives.
The current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a rabid anti communist, particularly on Latin American affairs, exemplifies USAID’s role in undermining socialist movements. Rubio’s hostility toward Cuba is said to be because of the Cuban revolution displacing his family but the reality is that his family fled the corrupt US stooge regime of Batista. This only reveals his staunch subservience to imperialism no matter the truth. His support for the failed regime change attempt in Venezuela, led by US-backed self identified president Juan Guaidó, was heavily facilitated through USAID’s financial and media networks.
In Venezuela, economic hardship that was purposely created by the crippling US sanctions and the withholding of Venezuelan assets abroad, with USAID playing a central role in disseminating propaganda. Western media, funded through USAID channels, perpetuated the myth of a famine in an attempt to delegitimise the ant-imperialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. USAID offered ‘aid packages’ with the caveat that they could only be received by the Western puppet Guaidó. Maduro’s government rightfully rejected these thinly-veiled attempts to violate Venezuelan sovereignty and facilitate regime change.
Media manipulation and the illusion of aid
One of USAID’s most significant but underreported activities is media control. By funding local and international outlets, USAID shapes narratives to favour US interests. When Trump’s freeze was announced, panic spread among these outlets, particularly in Ukraine, where Oksana Romanyuk, head of the Institute of Mass Information, accidentally revealed that 90% of Ukrainian media rely on USAID funding. The media control has been part and parcel of using Ukraine as a battering ram into Russia, opening the country back up to imperialist hegemony and Western pillaging as it once was under Yeltsin. Such overwhelming influence serves to manufacture consent, brainwashing populations into accepting US dominance and enabling the spread of fascism. The Kiev regime, under US comprador President Volodymyr Zelensky, has signed into Ukraine law the regulation of media by the government, which strengthens their ability to remove dissenting opinions and allowing the Western controlled media to run roughshod over the Ukraine population’s news consumption.
Ukraine is far from unique. Across the Balkans, USAID-backed organisations like the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) have been instrumental in promoting pro-NATO governments, undermining non-aligned states, and rewriting the history of conflicts like NATO’s illegal bombing of Serbia in 1999. The organisation’s involvement in the proxy state of Kosovo, and also in Montenegro and North Macedonia, aims to secure US strategic interests by toppling governments resistant to Western control.
Former Soviet republics are targeted through Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty—both heavily funded via USAID—to eradicate socialist thought and promote capitalist values. In the imperialist core itself, media outlets like Bellingcat and Vice masquerade as independent and alternative. However, beneath their anti-establishment veneer, they parrot the same narratives as corporate media conglomerates, ensuring ideological conformity within the US and its allies.
Trump’s opportunism and the reality of imperialism
While Trump’s freeze was marketed as an anti-interventionist measure, it did not of course reflect a genuine challenge to imperialism. Instead, it represented a shift in how imperialism is exercised—focusing on direct economic extraction and military power rather than then the more sinister approach of false ‘humanitarian’ aid – this being aligned with President Trump’s character.
One of the actual positives of Trump’s presidency is his blatant honesty: in his last term he openly stated his intention to “take the oil” in Syria, exposing the true motives behind US interventions. Even Elon Musk, a symbol of 21st-century capitalism, labelled USAID a “criminal organisation“—not out of anti-imperialist conviction but as a tactic to realign global profiteering strategies.
It’s important to note that Trump’s policies do not benefit the American working class. The funds saved from the USAID freeze will not be redirected to healthcare, education, or infrastructure but funnelled into military spending and tax breaks for corporations. The move merely shifted the tactics of imperialist extraction rather than ending it.
Why the working class should care
The international working class bears the brunt of these policies. In the oppressed countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, USAID-facilitated interventions destabilise economies, crush labour movements, and install comprador puppets loyal to Washington. In the US, the working class is duped into believing that cutting foreign aid serves their interests, when in reality, the ruling class hoards the wealth generated by imperial plunder.
USAID’s aid is not about charity—it’s about control. The media frenzy over the freeze underscores how deeply imperialism relies on propaganda. Reports of millions of children starving without US aid obscure the historical reality: the same imperialist policies creating dependency are responsible for the crises in the first place.
Reject imperialism and all its mechanisms
The working class in both the imperial core and the periphery must reject the false dichotomy of foreign aid versus domestic welfare. Solidarity between workers in the US and those in the neo colonies is essential to dismantle the imperialist system. The solution is not more USAID funding but the liberation of nations from capitalist exploitation and imperial coercion.
Efforts must be directed toward exposing the role of media in sustaining hegemony, supporting anti-imperialist movements worldwide, and building genuine internationalist alliances. Real aid comes from mutual cooperation, not from institutions designed to maintain imperialist domination.
Trump’s freeze on USAID funding laid bare the realities of US foreign policy. While the liberal media decried the supposed humanitarian fallout, their true concern was the loss of a tool that underpins American dominance. USAID’s history of destabilising governments, manipulating media, and entrenching capitalist interests proves it is no friend of the working class.
Capitalism cannot be reformed—it must be abolished. The working class must unite against all forms of exploitation, reject the propaganda of imperialist ‘aid’, and fight for a world where resources serve people, not profits. That can only come about via the overthrow of the imperialist ruling class by the proletariat and the establishment of a socialist order.
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