The eyes of the nation are on American foreign policy after the U.S. military captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in the dead of night.
But just a month beforehand, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. government would also be overhauling the way it has historically handled foreign aid.
In the past, the State Department and other agencies forked money over to nonprofits, which would then administer programs in countries receiving the assistance.
But now, the U.S. government will move toward giving money directly to the recipient nations.
Rubio said on Dec. 4 that the new policy would start with Kenya.
“The United States has spent billions of dollars over the years in helping with health strategies all across the world,” the official said.
“What we learned over time, especially after coming here, is that oftentimes — and I am oversimplifying it, but this is an accurate description — what would happen is we would go to a country and say, ‘We’re going to help you with your health care needs,’” Rubio described.
NEW: Marco Rubio announces a new Trump Administration policy to give foreign aid directly to governments instead of bloated NGOS.
“If we’re trying to help counties, help the country. Don’t help the NGO to go in and find a new line of business.” pic.twitter.com/bv2HpzRXma
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) December 4, 2025
“Then we would drive over to Northern Virginia somewhere, find an NGO, one of these organizations, give them all the money, tell them: ‘Go to this country and do their health care program for them.’”
But the NGOs, which stands for non-government organizations, would inevitably skim funds off the top for themselves as middlemen.
“That NGO would then take some percentage of that money for their overhead and administrative costs, and by the time it got down to it… only a percentage of the overall money ever actually reached the patients and the people on the ground that we were trying to help because of these costs,” Rubio continued.
He concluded that the policy “makes no sense.”
“So why are we hiring American and international NGOs to go into other countries and run health care systems that are parallel and sometimes in conflict with the health care systems of the host country?” Rubio added.
“If we’re trying to help countries, help the country. Don’t help the NGO to go in and find a new line of business,” he noted.
“So that is the model that we are breaking. We are not doing this any more. We are not going to spend billions of dollars funding the NGO industrial complex while close and important partners like Kenya either have no role to play or have very little influence over how health care money is being spent.”
In the case of Kenya, the U.S. government will provide $1.6 billion to its government as assistance with health programs, while the African nation also increases its domestic health spending by $850 million.
The policy will help Kenya “gradually assume greater financial responsibility as U.S. support decreases over the course of the framework,” per a release from the State Department.
The announcement from Rubio comes months after the Trump administration largely dismantled USAID, the agency which once handled foreign aid distribution.
The dismantling of USAID revealed a network of left-leaning nonprofits and questionable ideological programs they were sponsoring around the world.
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