US president Donald Trump’s choice to cut the majority of US foreign aid funding could result in a “staggering” 14 million deaths by 2030 – including 5 million children under five, research has found.
The first-of-its-kind study, published in The Lancet medical journal and using data from 133 countries and territories, also raised concerns that the 40% international aid cut in the UK, as well as similar cuts in France and the Netherlands, threatened a "polycrisis".
Davide Rasella, a co-author of the report and researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, told the BBC that cutting funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) risked “abruptly halting – and even reversing – two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations”.
On January 20, 2025, the Trump administration announced Executive Order 14169, which suspended existing foreign aid programmes, with the exception of military aid and emergency food assistance.
In March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83% of all USAID programmes would be cut in a bid to slash “wasteful spending”.
In a post on social media, Rubio claimed that USAID had cost the United States “tens of billions of dollars” and “did not serve or in some cases harmed” American national interests.
The new study in the Lancet was based on Rubio’s announcement of an 83% reduction in funding, which led researchers to conclude that the cuts would result in more than 2.4 million additional deaths annually.
The report – which was ultimately funded by the EU, UK, and Spanish governments – found that over the last two decades, USAID support has helped to save over 90 million lives, including over 30 million children, in low-income and middle-income nations.
It stated: “According to the forecasting models, the current steep funding cuts – coupled with the potential dissolution of the agency – could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, averaging more than 2-4 million deaths per year.
“These deaths include 4-5 million among children younger than 5 years, or more than 700,000 deaths annually.”
Humanitarian organisations have voiced serious concerns about the lack of notice regarding the cuts. Without adequate time to implement adaptive measures, they warn of “severe” and “profound” consequences for public health, economic development and societal stability.
The publication of the Lancet report comes as a United Nations aid conference gets underway in Seville. With some 50 world leaders expected to attend to discuss global inequality, the financial loss of USAID is sure to be high on the agenda. The United States, however, is not expected to attend.
President Trump’s cuts to USAID have caused a global knock-on effect, with the UK, France, Netherlands and Belgium having unveiled their own cuts to international aid of 40%, 37%, 30%, and 25% respectively.
“These decreases not only threaten to reverse three decades of unprecedented human progress, but also intensifies the extraordinary uncertainty and vulnerability already caused by the ongoing polycrisis,” the study states.
The United States had been the leading government donor to humanitarian programmes for the last twenty years, and accounted for 43% of all government humanitarian funding in 2023.
By 2024, USAID was responsible for a 65% reduction in the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS, equating to over 25 million lives saved, the study said.
The United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres urged the US government to reconsider, and stated the cuts would make the world “less healthy, less safe, and less prosperous”.
The USAID began under President John F Kennedy in 1961, who told Congress it was America’s “moral” and “economic” obligation as a wealthy nation to assist struggling countries across the globe.
Speaking to the Associated Press, former president Barack Obama called the shut down of USAID a “travesty” and a “tragedy”.
