President Donald Trump may have thought that defunding the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would only hurt foreigners -- but it turns out he could actually be mistaken.
The Washington Post reports that shuttering the agency entirely "threatens billions of dollars the agency spends on American businesses and organizations."
In particular, the Post report notes that American farms are responsible for roughly 41 percent of all food aid provided by the agency and it adds that the U.S. government bought $2.1 billion in food aid from American farmers in the year 2020 alone.
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"Purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million — including rice, wheat and soybeans — have been paused during Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, according to officials and an email obtained by The Post," the paper reports. "That has left hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone."
George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, emphasized to the Post that Trump's decision to shut down USAID is already having a "direct impact on American products and American jobs."
“The bulk of U.S. assistance is implemented through U.S. organizations,” he added. “A lot of the money starts out with American organizations staffed by Americans.”
