Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered some shocking data points about American foreign aid spending before the Trump administration reformed the system.
During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, the top diplomat revealed that the White House discovered a foreign aid regime that was distracted and inefficient.
Only 12 cents of every dollar spent by USAID reached recipients.
“That means that in order for us to get aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex,” Rubio said, per a State Department transcript.
In other words, while a mere 12 cents went to recipients, the other 88 cents was pocketed by third parties.
“We’re going to find more efficient ways to deliver aid to people directly, and it’s going to be directed by our regional bureaus, and it’s going to sponsor programs that make a difference, and it’s going to be part of a holistic approach to our foreign policy,” he told lawmakers.
Mind Blowing information from Marco Rubio
– Only 12 cents of every dollar spent from USAID went to recipients, the other 88 cents went to NGOs who pocketed the money
– Even with the reforms we put in place and what we’re suggesting in changes to our foreign aid, we still will… pic.twitter.com/Tf5LQRNpaR— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 21, 2025
The administration provoked controversy by folding USAID back into the State Department, but Rubio noted that the United States is still giving “more humanitarian support than the next 10 countries combined” even after the reforms.
He compared American foreign aid spending to the much more nefarious strategy maintained by China.
“China doesn’t do humanitarian aid. China does predatory lending. That’s what Belt and Road Initiative is,” Rubio continued, referring to the communist nation’s debt-trap diplomacy program.
“They have zero record of doing humanitarian aid in the world, and frankly, they don’t know how to do it,” he observed.
“They have no interest in doing it.”
Rubio said that China is instead adept at “going into some country, making you a loan, and then holding that debt over your head.”
Beyond the wasteful spending, Rubio voiced concern that the State Department had been entirely dislodged from the foreign policy ecosystem and replaced “by the National Security Council or by some other agency” in the federal government.
He noted that staff at the State Department were nevertheless the ones with the most relevant foreign policy experience.
“We have these highly talented people, many of whom have served in multiple posts around the world and have a holistic view of how foreign policy needs to be conducted that were being edged out,” Rubio said of his own agency.
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