GAO: Trump-Era Foreign-Aid Overhaul Slashed Programs and Left State Without Guidance or Reliable Data

A new Government Accountability Office report says the Trump administration’s foreign-aid overhaul sharply reduced programs and staffing across the government, but left the State Department running the remaining system without documented standards for key decisions and without reliable data on its workforce and grants.

The Sept. 30 report found the biggest changes at the U.S. Agency for International Development, long the government’s main civilian foreign-aid agency. According to State Department data cited by GAO, USAID terminated about 6,780 of 7,510 awards that were active on or after January 2025, between January 2025 and March 2026. GAO also said USAID staffing collapsed from about 13,600 employees worldwide in January 2025 to 241 in April 2026. “USAID reduced staffing by 98 percent, from about 13,600 reported staff worldwide as of January 2025 to 241 reported staff as of April 2026,” the report said. The remaining active USAID awards were transferred to the State Department, and the administration announced that USAID ceased administering foreign-assistance awards as of July 1, 2025.

GAO said those changes matter not only because of their scale, but because State took over as the government’s primary foreign-assistance provider without basic management controls. The watchdog said State could not provide evidence of documented guidance to staff, including standards for decisions on changing foreign-assistance programs. Without that guidance, GAO said, officials may make inconsistent, ad hoc or inefficient decisions that could waste taxpayer funds and increase the risk of legal disputes or reversals of terminations.

The report, titled “Foreign Assistance: Agencies Made Broad Changes, but State Lacked Guidance for Decisions,” examined nine agencies or subcomponents involved in foreign assistance: USAID, the State Department, the Agriculture Department’s Foreign Agricultural Service, the Treasury Department’s Office of Technical Assistance, the Millennium Challenge Corp., the Inter-American Foundation, the U.S. African Development Foundation, the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the U.S. International Development Finance Corp.

Across those agencies, GAO found broad cutbacks. Eight of the nine agencies reviewed decreased funding for or the number of foreign-assistance awards. One agency did not reduce the number of awards but has been unable to disburse funds since January 2025. All nine agencies also reduced staff from January 2025 through May 2026.

GAO said State’s data problems were significant enough to limit oversight of the new aid structure. In the department’s MyGrants system, more than 4,000 of roughly 10,000 awards were listed as both active and terminated because end dates had not been updated. GAO said State did not provide an accurate updated dataset.

The watchdog also said the full extent of State’s staffing reductions is unknown because the department could not produce comprehensive agencywide staffing data for the 11 months GAO requested. Without readily available staffing data, GAO said, State cannot effectively plan operations, respond to risks from staffing changes or meet oversight needs.

The report included a major caveat on the size of the USAID award terminations. GAO said cumulative obligations tied to USAID awards totaled about $131.2 billion, including $79.1 billion tied to awards that were terminated and $52.1 billion tied to awards that remained active. But it said those figures do not represent money saved. “Cumulative obligations for terminated awards do not represent cost savings, money returned to the federal government, or any future obligations that have been eliminated due to the termination of these awards,” the report said.

The changes followed Executive Order 14169, signed Jan. 20, 2025, which directed an immediate pause on new obligations and disbursements of U.S. foreign development assistance pending review. “All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds…” the order said. GAO said later executive orders drove broader workforce reductions and reorganizations across agencies.

Before the overhaul, USAID was the principal U.S. civilian foreign-assistance agency, overseeing programs that support humanitarian relief, development, health, democracy and strategically important countries.

GAO made three recommendations to the State Department: improve MyGrants data, ensure the department can generate comprehensive workforce data and develop and document guidance with standards for foreign-aid decisions. State agreed with the recommendations.