THE United States, the world’s biggest donor, froze virtually all foreign aid on Friday, making exceptions only for emergency food and military funding for Israel and Egypt.
The order threatened a quick halt to many of the billions of dollars in US-funded projects globally to support health, education, development, job training, anti-corruption, security assistance and other efforts.
The US provides more foreign aid globally than any other country, budgeting about $60 billion in 2023, or about 1 percent of the US budget.
In Manila, the Palace said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) would work with the US government to see how its freeze order would affect the Philippines.
“The DFA is closely monitoring reports on the possible freeze of US foreign assistance and will work with partners in the US Department of State and the US government to determine how this will affect the Philippines,” the Presidential Communications Office said in a statement.
The Philippines has been the largest recipient of US military assistance in the Indo-Pacific region, receiving over $1.14 billion in military equipment and training from 2015 to 2022.
During a Saturday news forum in Quezon City, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said the freeze order would not severely affect the Philippines as the US involvement in the country’s economy as a trade partner was “still very high.”
He also said the aid freeze would not affect the US military operations in the Philippines, particularly those involving Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites.
EDCA is the 2014 deal between Manila and Washington that permits US troops to construct and operate facilities on Philippine bases, as well as to rotate and stay in the country for extended periods.
“It’s not part of that aid package that we’re talking about,” de Vega said. “They will not suddenly abandon the EDCA sites. They know the importance of EDCA for the interest of both the US and the Philippines.”
De Vega said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio “is one of those important statesmen in the US who is very concerned about China.”
“We’re confident that in all aspects, our relationships will continue to be solid,” the DFA official said.
On Wednesday, the DFA said Secretary Enrique Manalo and Rubio agreed to explore a first meeting between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and US President Donald Trump in the near future.
In a call with Manalo, Rubio “underscored the United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines under [the] Mutual Defense Treaty.”
In an internal memo days after Trump took office vowing an “America First” policy of tightly restricting assistance overseas, Rubio said: “No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved.”
The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid — including to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, as it tries to repel a Russian invasion.
The directive also means a pause of at least several months of US funding for PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that buys anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease in developing countries, largely in Africa.
Launched under President George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR is credited with saving some 26 million lives and, until recently, enjoyed broad popular support along partisan lines in Washington.
But the memo explicitly made exceptions for military assistance to Israel — whose longstanding major arms packages from the United States have expanded further since the Gaza war — and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Rubio also made an exception for US contributions to emergency food assistance, which the United States has been contributing following crises around the world, including in Sudan and Syria.
Lawmakers from the rival Democratic Party said that more than 20 million people relied on medication through PEPFAR and 63 million people on US-funded anti-malaria efforts, including nets.
“For years, Republicans in Congress have decried what they see as a lack of US credibility vis-a-vis countries like China, Russia, and Iran,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Lois Frankel.
“Now our credibility is on the line, and it appears we will cut and run from American commitments to our partners around the world,” they wrote in a letter.
Washington has long leveraged aid as a tool of its foreign policy, saying it cares about development and drawing a contrast with China, which is primarily concerned about seeking natural resources.
Meeks and Frankel also noted that foreign assistance is appropriated by Congress and said they would seek its implementation.
Life or death consequences
The memo allows the State Department to make other case-by-case exceptions and temporarily fund salaries to staff and other administrative expenses.
The memo called for an internal review of all foreign assistance within 85 days.
In justifying the freeze, Rubio — who as a senator was a supporter of development assistance — wrote that it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy.”
The United States has long been the world’s top donor in dollar terms, although a number of European nations, especially in Scandinavia, give significantly more as a percent of their economies.
The United States gave more than $64 billion in overseas development assistance in 2023, the last year for which records were available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises industrialized countries.
Trump had already on taking office Monday signed an executive order suspending foreign assistance for 90 days, but it was not immediately clear how it would be implemented.
Anti-poverty group Oxfam said that Trump was abandoning a longstanding consensus in the United States for foreign assistance.
“Humanitarian and development assistance accounts for only around 1 percent of the federal budget; it saves lives, fights diseases, educates millions of children and reduces poverty,” Oxfam America president Abby Maxman said in a statement.
“Suspending and ultimately cutting many of these programs could have life or death consequences for countless children and families who are living through crisis,” she said.
In related developments:
* House Ways and Means Committee Chairman and Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Salceda said US-Philippine relations will remain strong and strategic amid a freeze in foreign aid by the US government. He added that the US has not been a major source of aid for the Philippines, as it is behind Japan, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank. “The US has been in the low single digits as far as aid goes, even behind Korea. On that matter, we’ll be fine. Their aid is their decision to make. Nothing needs to be done on our end,” Salceda said. He added, however, that the Philippines should be given fair access to US markets, as the US remains the country’s biggest export destination.
* House Blue Ribbon panel chairman and Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chua said the “America First” policy the US now has more likely means the US will retreat from the rest of the world. He said that in the Philippines’ national interest, the government should look for aid from the European Union, the Middle East, Japan, South Korea, and Australia for foreign aid. He also warned against approaching Russia for foreign aid, something that the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte tried to do. “One administration ago, the former president tried Russia, but that was unproductive and deeply misguided. Unless Russia ends its war with Ukraine, we should just wait until Russia engages better and peacefully,” Chua said.
* Prof. Anna Malindog-Uy, a PhD candidate at Peking University’s Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, asserted that despite Trump’s reassessment of foreign policies, a complete dissolution of agreements such as the EDCA or the Mutual Defense Treaty is improbable. Instead, she predicted a recalibration of US-Philippines military relations rather than their outright termination. She suggested that under Trump, the operationalization of the US-Philippine treaties would shift toward a less aggressive posture. “If Trump has the political will to push for peace, the emphasis on these agreements could be downplayed,” she said while cautioning against expectations of their complete removal. WITH FRANCO JOSE C. BAROÑA, RED MENDOZA
