American foreign assistance can be a powerful instrument of good — but is best when it is managed with discipline, strategic intent, and genuine accountability. We know this from direct experience running foreign assistance at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development during the first Trump administration. The lesson was unambiguous: The effectiveness of American influence abroad hinges greatly on the accountability structures behind it.
The Trump administration deserves credit for attempting to align our assistance with U.S. national security, economic, and health priorities. By treating foreign aid as a strategic tool, the president can use common sense to demand that every dollar serve the American taxpayer. This shift toward a results-driven framework is a victory for common sense that all of Washington should endorse. We also must remember that the United States has always been guided by our values. We have helped the poor, downtrodden, those places and people around the globe facing the worst hunger, disease, or natural disasters in a lifetime. A nation of not only strength, but one of mercy. The golden rule serves this nation well. Just ask our farmers, who know that they are helping to feed the world. It’s in our DNA.
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The president and Congress’s joint commitment to roughly $50 billion in fiscal 2026 foreign assistance — and the stated goals of Secretary of State Marco Rubio — signal a determination to deliver results. Programs such as PEPFAR and Food for Peace remain in the portfolio because they produce measurable outcomes that advance American interests and help people. That standard of accountability and impact should apply everywhere.
But goals are not actions. A quiet structural crisis is building inside the State Department. With the elimination of USAID, the federal government no longer has the depth of technical experience, infrastructure, or processes — including monitoring and evaluation — in place to execute effectively on the president’s vision. Therefore, we fear the bureaucracy will inevitably resort to the “easy button”: government-to-government transfers or outsourcing implementation to multilateral partners such as the United Nations.
This overreliance on the U.N. and “easy” transfers is a recipe for strategic failure. It also starves our own nonprofit community, faith-based organizations, and businesses that share our values and know how to deliver. It makes accountability more difficult and strips away the “From the USA” branding that builds real diplomatic leverage over time. When we outsource implementation, we outsource the influence that comes with direct involvement and oversight.
With the continuing integration of USAID into the State Department and the transfer of Food for Peace to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we have an obligation and an opportunity to build the people, processes, and infrastructure correctly. Done right, every foreign assistance dollar will be strategic, accountable, and impactful — executed through programs that Americans can be proud of.
That capacity won’t build itself. Here is what it looks like in practice:
First, the State Department needs a dedicated foreign assistance career track — a “cone” of professionals trained in contracts, grants, and taxpayer oversight. Managing assistance dollars requires specialized expertise that the department currently lacks at scale.
Second, every embassy with significant assistance resources needs a single and designated lead — a foreign assistance coordinator — serving as the ambassador’s point person. Their job is to ensure every agency operating in-country is working from a single, coherent, and accountable plan. Without it, you get the fragmentation we’ve all seen before. Artificial intelligence is amazing, but only people can input the crucial on-the-ground data that tells us where the current crisis of food, water, and medicines exists.
Third, the State Department needs a permanent institutional home for the contracts, grants, compliance, program evaluation, and technical expertise functions that USAID once housed. This should be built inside the foreign assistance undersecretariat with the authority and expertise to hold implementing partners accountable. Without it, technical capacity will atrophy, and accountability will become impossible to sustain at scale. Foreign assistance isn’t about writing checks and hoping for the best. It’s about building programs that produce results you can prove.
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Efficiency isn’t just about spending less. It’s about fixing what we can, eliminating what we can’t, and spending well on what matters — with the ability to prove it.
If we want foreign assistance to serve American interests, we must manage it ourselves — our own professionals, our own systems, our own accountability structures, and our own goodness. The Trump administration has committed to results. Congress has signaled strong bipartisan support for the investment. Now we must build the machine capable of delivering on that promise. The window to get this right is narrow, and the cost of getting it wrong will be measured in squandered leverage, wasted dollars, and diminished influence at a moment when America can afford none of the above.
Jim Richardson was the former director of foreign assistance at the U.S. Department of State during the first Trump administration. Bob Powers was the deputy assistant to the administrator for policy, planning, and learning at USAID during the first Trump administration.
