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US secretary of state Marco Rubio has ordered an immediate halt to work on virtually all existing foreign aid programmes pending a review into whether they are consistent with President Donald Trump’s policies, according to an internal cable seen by the Financial Times.
The move will affect international assistance contracts administered by Washington, including through the US Agency for International Development, worth billions of dollars and spanning countries around the world.
In the cable sent to the state department and USAID on Friday, Rubio said that all new foreign aid disbursements were to be suspended, and contracting officers and grant officers needed to “immediately issue stop-work orders . . . until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review”.
The review period is expected to last as long as 85 days, leaving the fate of hundreds of US foreign aid contracts, which were worth more than $70bn in the 2022 fiscal year, potentially in limbo for as long as three months.
Rubio also ordered that all foreign aid disbursed through any agency or department be approved by the secretary of state, centralising the vetting of all international assistance programmes within his office.
Rubio’s cable implements an executive order signed by Trump on his first day in office. In it the president bashed the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy” as “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values”, and asked for assistance to be suspended.
In the first days of his second term in the White House, Trump has taken aggressive steps to reshape and redirect all agencies of the US government to implement his policies.
Scientific agencies such as the National Institutes of Health have also paused grant work pending review by the new administration, alarming researchers.
There are some exceptions to Rubio’s aid freeze order, among them “approved waivers” for military financing for Israel and Egypt, as well as foreign emergency food aid. But the cable said that in addition to pausing new and existing contracts, US government agencies, including USAID, must stop publishing proposals for foreign aid projects.
Earlier this week, Rubio said in a statement that Trump had asked him “to place our core national interest as the guiding mission of American foreign policy”, saying among his top priorities were curbing mass migration and scrapping climate policies that “weaken” America.
“Every dollar we spend, every programme we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
The state department has been approached for comment.
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