Ellen Nickmeyer and Heather Hollingsworth
WASHINGTON (AP) – US supply chain companies have executives who have broken voices telling employees that they are no longer at work, facing the next call.
And Missouri farmers grew up knowing that a world with hungry people is a more dangerous world.
And Maryland-based philanthropy, founded by Jews who fled the Pogrom in Eastern Europe, has shut down many of its missions that lasted more than 120 years.
Beyond the impact of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US International Development Agency, there are around 14,000 agency employees and foreign contractors, as well as hundreds of thousands of American companies receiving assistance overseas. , farms, nonprofits say cuts in US money, are struggling to pay workers and cover bills. Some people face financial collapse.
The US organization has billions of dollars in business with USAID and the State Department and oversees more than $60 billion in foreign aid. According to AID Data Company DevelopmentAid, more than 80% of companies that have contracts with USAID are Americans.
President Donald Trump suspended payments overnight to freeze foreign aid in his January 20th executive order. The Trump administration has accused USAID of wasted and promoting a liberal agenda.
The suspension work for USAID, a group tracking Impact, says USAID contractors have reportedly fired nearly 13,000 American workers. The group estimates that the actual total is more than four times that.
Here is the story of an American whose livelihoods are disrupted.
Crop innovation work facing closure
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign – The lab, which works with processors, food manufacturers, seed and fertilizer companies, to expand soybean use in 31 countries, is expected to close in April unless there is a last-minute reprieve.
Peter Goldsmith, director and chief researcher of the Soybean Innovation Lab, said the group helped open international markets to US farmers and made crops more common in Africa.
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For Goldsmith, such a stable partnership and US foreign aid built on trade offer the best way to influence us, he said.
Goldsmith said other land grant universities’ innovation labs are also closing. Without them, Goldsmith is worried about what will happen in the country they worked for – whether other actors may intervene, or whether conflicts will arise.
“It’s a vacuum,” he said. “And what fills that vacuum? It’s filled. There’s no doubt about it.”
Refugee missions are at risk
For nonprofits working to stabilize the population and economy abroad, the United States has not only been the largest humanitarian donor, but also an inexplicable part of the entire machinery of development and humanitarian research.
In it, Hyas, a Jewish group supporting refugees and potential refugees, must close “almost everything” of its mission, which has been in operation for over 120 years.
The Maryland-based philanthropy was founded by Jews who fled persecution in Eastern Europe. Hias President Mark Hetfield has expanded the mission of recent decades to include keeping vulnerable people safe in their country, saying there is no need to escape.
Hetfield said the first Trump administration saw the wisdom of its efforts. HIAS experienced some of the biggest growth during Trump’s first term as a result.
But now, Trump’s closure of foreign aid has cut 60% of HIAS funds overnight. HIAS has launched fraud among 2,000 direct employees operating in 17 states and 20 countries.
The administration calls it a “suspension,” rather than a fire, Hetfield said. “But we have to stop paying leases and stop paying employees.”
“It’s not suspension,” Hetfield said. “That’s a lie.”
Tracking the effectiveness of USAID can fall on the roadside
Keith Ives, a Marine Corps veteran who fell in love with data, has brought relentlessness to figure out his USAID-funded mission to test the effectiveness of the agency’s program. I have it.
For Ives’ team, it includes measuring and measuring Ethiopian children who are receiving USAID support. (On average, that’s true.)
Last week, Ives had planned to tell half of his 28-year-old full-time staff member that he was leaving his job at the end of the month. Ives’ causal nonprofits obtain 70% of their work from USAID.
Initially, Ives said, “It was an obsession with how to fix this,” explains that he almost numbed anxiety on the first day of the cutoff. “There has to be a magic formula. …I’m not thinking hard enough, right?”
Now, Ives passes all staff calls after the call, breaking bad news about the impact of the USAID shutdown. Being transparent to them was the best he could do.
He sees breaking US partnerships and contracts, which was USAID’s sixth year objective to boost national security by building alliances and crowding the enemy.
“I think people are thinking, ‘Yeah, but do you remember 2025 for years to come, if we try to bend it,'” he said. “It could be gone tomorrow.”
Suppliers are facing doom
Expertise, cash flow, and hundreds of staff need to obtain USAID-funded food and products in remote and often illegal locations around the world.
For our businesses doing that, the only follow-up of the administration to a suspension order sent after the money freeze has ended tells us that some contracts have not only been suspended but have ended. .
Most of these companies are publicly silent for fear of causing rage in the Trump administration or putting court agenda at risk.
Speaking anonymously for these reasons, executives from one supply chain business that offers everything from huge equipment to food, explain the financial ruin that those companies face.
Executives making hundreds of workers sob in total, explaining layoff calls for the next round.
Farmers could lose market share
Tom Waters, a seventh generation farmer who grows corn, soy and wheat near Oric, Missouri, thinks about his grandfather when he read what’s going on with USAID.
“I heard him say, ‘People get hungry, and they’re going to fight,'” Waters said.
Feeding people abroad is a way for American farmers to stabilize things around the world, he says. “We’re helping them keep people’s belly full.”
The USAID-run food program has been a trusted clientele for farmers in the US since the Kennedy administration. The law requires that US shippers also gain share in the business.
Still, the USAID Humanitarian Program’s American farm sales are only a small portion of the total exports of US agriculture. And politically, US farmers know that when his tariffs and other moves threaten demand for US agricultural products, Trump is always careful to mitigate the impact.
American commodity farmers generally sell their harvests to grain silos and cooperatives at rates per bushels. The impact of Waters’ farms is not yet clear, but farmers say something could collide with crop demand and prices, or give foreign competitors an opening to permanently separate their market share. I’m worried.
Still, Waters doesn’t believe that uncertainty is eroding Trump’s support.
“I really think people, Trump supporters, will really have patience with him. I feel this is what he has to do,” he said.
Hollingsworth was reported from Kansas City, Missouri.
Original issue: February 18, 2025, 12:46pm EST
