A sobering new study published in The Lancet has projected that more than 14 million people—over 4.5 million of them children under five—could die by 2030 as a direct result of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to U.S. foreign aid.
The research, released just as global leaders convene in Seville for the largest aid summit in a decade, paints a devastating picture of how abrupt policy shifts in Washington are echoing across the developing world. The United States, notably, is not attending the conference.
Until Donald Trump’s return to the White House earlier this year, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) accounted for more than 40 percent of global humanitarian funding. Within weeks of his inauguration, the agency’s funding was slashed by 83 percent. Elon Musk, then a close Trump advisor, quipped that USAID had been put “through the woodchipper.”
The human cost, however, is no joke. According to the study, programs backed by USAID between 2001 and 2021 are credited with preventing nearly 92 million deaths—more than were lost in World War II. For young children, USAID interventions were associated with a 32 percent drop in mortality. The impact on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases was particularly stark: in countries receiving high levels of aid, deaths from these illnesses fell by up to 65 percent.
“For many low- and middle-income nations, this funding loss is akin to a global pandemic or a major war,” said Davide Rasella of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a co-author of the study. “It risks halting—and even reversing—two decades of health progress.”
Mozambican health researcher Francisco Saute echoed the concern: “Cutting this funding now not only puts lives at risk—it also undermines critical infrastructure that has taken decades to build.”
An independent tracker maintained by Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols estimates that more than 332,000 people—roughly 88 every hour—have already died since the cuts took effect.
The ripple effect of the U.S. withdrawal has been swift. France, Germany, and the UK have all announced similar reductions in aid. The European Union’s pullback alone could result in even more additional deaths in the coming years, researchers warned.
But the projections, grim as they are, are not set in stone. The study’s authors stress that outcomes could still change—if donor nations course-correct.
“Now is the time to scale up, not scale back,” Rasella said.
Before the cuts, USAID funding made up just 0.3 percent of total U.S. federal spending. “That’s about 17 cents a day per American,” noted James Macinko of UCLA, another co-author. “For that, millions of lives were saved. It’s a bargain by any standard.”
Yet for now, the world’s most vulnerable remain caught in the fallout of a political decision made an ocean away—one that may define a generation of loss.
