Lancet: Trump’s 83% USAID Cuts Risk 14 Million Deaths by 2030

Deep funding cuts and a potential dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030, according to peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet. The modelling study links the projected toll to the Trump administration’s decision to shrink USAID’s budget by roughly 83 percent and transfer most remaining programmes to the State Department.

Analysing data from 133 low- and middle-income countries, the authors estimate that USAID programmes prevented 91 million deaths—including 30 million children—from 2001 to 2021. Removing that support would generate a shock comparable to a global pandemic or major armed conflict, the study warns.

Around 4.5 million of the forecast deaths would be children under five, driven by resurgent HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoeal diseases as well as rising malnutrition. The model anticipates about 1.8 million excess deaths in 2025 alone if the cuts remain in place.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who announced the reductions in March, says they target wasteful spending and will bring USAID’s roughly 1,000 surviving projects under closer congressional oversight. Health experts counter that abrupt clinic closures and interruptions to medication supplies are already costing lives; a Boston University tracker attributes more than 330,000 deaths to the cutbacks since late June.

The United States previously accounted for more than 40 percent of global humanitarian funding, and researchers caution that Washington’s retreat is prompting other donors to pare back. Restoring USAID’s roughly US$35 billion annual budget—equivalent to 0.3 percent of federal spending—would quickly avert millions of preventable deaths, the study concludes.