When an American taxpayer-funded cartload of medicine and food arrives in some disaster zone across the globe, it will usually have USAID stamped on every package.

While many Americans regard the U.S. Agency for International Development as some bureaucratic sinkhole in Washington, around the world it is the face of U.S. goodwill.

President Trump, who has thrown the future of USAID into doubt, warns that it has been steered far from its original mission by “radical left lunatics” who were in charge of the agency.

USAID was founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 by way of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and an executive order. The agency’s purpose was built from the Marshall Plan, which helped Europe recover from World War II. 

However, the agency’s focus shifted in the 1970s away from providing “technical and capital assistance programs” to spending taxpayer dollars on sustaining “basic human needs.” Its mission since then includes providing food and nutrition, population planning, health, education and human resources development.

Critics, including Mr. Trump, argue that the agency’s overseas spending is wasteful and that taxpayer-funded aid sometimes gets diverted to bad actors, including terrorists.

The Congressional Research Service describes the agency as “the cornerstone for the United States’ foreign assistance policies and programs.”

USAID’s workforce is made up of over 10,000 people, with roughly two-thirds working overseas.

USAID is supposed to help developing countries, countries surrounded by conflict and those engaging in democratic reforms. It had a budget of roughly $43 million in fiscal year 2023, according to CRS, and roughly 130 countries. Still, it only makes up less than 1% of the federal budget.

Ukraine received the most foreign aid in 2023 — over $16 billion, followed by Ethiopia with roughly over $1.6 billion, Jordan, Afghanistan and Somalia, all receiving over $1 billion, among other countries, according to the Foreign Assistance website.

The highest-funded sector of the agency in FY 2023 was governance, with over $16 billion spent, due to the large amount of aid to Ukraine to war with Russia. Humanitarian aid followed at more than $10 billion health at $7 billion.

Health was the highest-funded sector from the early 1990s to 2022 due to an AIDS relief program, which provided HIV/AIDS testing and treatment globally, and then health care programs related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.