USAID Funds U.S. Foreign Policy

The foreign aid agency is not only a humanitarian organization, but a vehicle for moving money from the U.S. Treasury to international organizations and foreign governments.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power (left) with Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska (right) in July 2022. Source.

Foreign aid is a key tool of governments to build alliances with other states and to influence military, political, humanitarian, and economic developments abroad. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the single largest source of foreign aid globally. In 2022 it disbursed $38.7 billion, accounting for well over half of U.S. foreign assistance, with the remainder primarily coming from the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the Treasury.¹ The agency maintains over 100 missions, or regional program headquarters, through which it distributes funding. Its goals extend to pursuing U.S. foreign policy and countering Chinese and Russian influence. For example, for fiscal year 2022, the single largest recipient of funds by far was Ukraine at about $9 billion, nearly a quarter of all disbursements.²