Introduction
On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order freezing foreign assistance funds and laying the groundwork to dissolve the world’s largest aid donor, the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In the following weeks, the Trump administration cut $54 billion in foreign aid contracts, resulting in over 177,000 jobs lost from USAID and its implementing partners. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) then announced its intent to shut down the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a smaller US government aid agency focused on reducing poverty through economic growth in mostly Africa and Asia. These moves may create further ripple effects that could lead to a massive breakdown of trust between the United States and communities it serves in over 100 countries.
Virtually overnight, the US foreign aid sector seized up. The United States stepped back from the leadership role it had occupied since the end of World War II in supporting local economies, feeding the most vulnerable, responding to humanitarian crises, and providing critical health services. By gutting USAID and the MCC, the Trump administration has created a self-inflicted development crisis leading to a vacuum in expertise, institutional memory, and diplomatic engagement that will not be quickly or easily restored.
Whether the future of US foreign assistance lies in a reimagined aid architecture, a renewed commitment to development, or something entirely different, one thing is clear. Rebuilding will require more than just money or organizational reshuffling within agencies; it will demand talent. Investing in a new generation of what I call “development diplomats,” professionals trained to bridge foreign policy and development, can help the United States pursue strategic goals while advancing poverty reduction, economic opportunity, and global stability. How, and whether, the United States chooses to rebuild that capacity remains an open question and a test of its commitment to global leadership in a rapidly changing world.
A New Architecture: Foreign Assistance Reimagined?
In March 2025, Trump aides circulated a memo proposing the contours of a new foreign assistance architecture, defining foreign aid as an instrument of US foreign policy. The proposal argues for streamlining and aligning US foreign assistance with the United States’ strategic interests by absorbing remnant parts of USAID within the State Department and expanding the mandate and resources of the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the US government’s development finance institution that partners with the private sector to mobilize capital for strategic investments around the world.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed a major overhaul of the State Department at the end of April 2025, eliminating several offices and consolidating non-security foreign assistance in regional bureaus as a way to “drain the bloated, bureaucratic swamp.” These changes likely require congressional authorization and could face legislative and political hurdles before becoming reality. Nevertheless, these announcements are in line with President Trump’s priorities to engage in a more transactional foreign policy that delivers resources and revenue for the United States, particularly US businesses, and aligns foreign aid squarely to support foreign policy objectives.
This new vision sketches out what US foreign assistance might look like under this administration, but it fails to address how it would be implemented. With the dismantling of the foreign assistance workforce and a current diplomatic corps within the State Department not trained to achieve development outcomes, who will get the job done?
Who Oversees Foreign Aid?
There has always been an uneasy relationship between international development and foreign policy within national policy structures. Development officials pride themselves on being technical and sectoral experts, well-versed in economics and public policy, to make evidence-based decisions on how best to lift communities out of poverty. They may represent their own country, as in the case of USAID officials, but ultimately, their jobs are to design, implement, and fund programs to help the countries where they work achieve development outcomes. They work hard to not politicize the development agenda and stay out of the political fray where they can.
Diplomats, on the other hand, work to advance their country’s national security and foreign policy priorities and protect their national citizens abroad. They may be trained in a variety of areas, from politics to economics to public diplomacy and consular affairs. While they may speak local languages and fit easily into local cultures in the countries where they are stationed, their jobs are to serve the interests of their own country.
While US development officials and diplomats often work together, there is a meaningful, and sometimes tense, power dynamic between them regarding how decisions are made. International development is largely funded by governments that support aid funding because it advances their own foreign policy objectives or other political purposes. Foreign affairs ministries—the State Department, in the case of the United States—often exercise final political and budget authority on foreign aid priorities aiming to match development programs to policy priorities, and are willing to trade off economic outcomes for political gain.
This was true in the United States even before President Trump took office. In 2006, Secretary Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration created the “F Bureau,” the Office of US Foreign Assistance Resources, in the State Department to centralize planning and budgeting of US foreign aid, giving the State Department greater oversight over USAID. When Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State under President Obama, she expanded the strategic integration of development into US foreign policy by elevating development alongside diplomacy and defense through initiatives like the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR).
The Trump administration’s decision to completely consolidate foreign aid within the framework of its foreign policy mirrors recent actions taken by other governments, including those of the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, and Japan. These countries illustrate a trend where foreign ministries are either directly responsible for or play an integral role in the administration of foreign aid, reflecting a strategic alignment of development goals with diplomatic objectives.
A New Concept: Development Diplomacy
How can development goals still be met when merged with foreign policy priorities? As the US moves toward a new foreign assistance architecture, there is a real risk that political imperatives could crowd out long-term development objectives. But there is also an opportunity to rethink how these priorities intersect. One emerging approach is what I call “development diplomacy”—diplomacy that best leverages foreign policy to achieve development outcomes.
At its core, development diplomacy bridges the worlds of foreign policy and international development. It highlights how addressing the urgent needs of communities can foster sustainable growth, global stability, and international cooperation that ultimately serve a country’s own domestic interests. It recognizes the interplay between political stability and economic growth, striving to create environments where development initiatives can thrive within their political systems.
Development diplomats must bring a multi-layered skill set: negotiation, political economy, development economics, cultural intelligence, and knowledge on how policy is designed and implemented across international and domestic systems.
I saw this firsthand during my years working at MCC, where I led multimillion-dollar investments on behalf of the US government on education in El Salvador, electricity in Nepal, the water sector in Mongolia, agriculture in Burkina Faso, and many other sectors in countries across the world. My role was to convene cross-sector teams of economists, engineers, evaluators, and partner with local governments and communities to design and implement programs to reduce poverty through economic growth.
But success required more than development expertise. I often spent just as much time negotiating with US ambassadors, political appointees at the State Department, White House national security officials, and congressional oversight committees as I did with partner governments’ prime ministers, foreign ministers, governors, or mayors. These efforts demanded fluency in both diplomatic and development spaces.
Having trained as a diplomat at the State Department, worked in US aid agencies, and served on Capitol Hill, I was able to move between these worlds and, in doing so, break down the silos that often block progress. In my experience, development diplomacy could be the difference between transformative anti-poverty initiatives succeeding or getting bogged down in politics.
A New Professional Cadre: Training Development Diplomats
Despite the growing recognition that diplomacy and development must work hand in hand, too few professionals are trained to operate at this critical intersection. Foreign policy and international development are still largely siloed: development practitioners may lack the political savvy to operate in highly political environments, while diplomats are often unfamiliar with the development tools, analytics, and long-term strategies driving economic and social progress. As a result, the US government frequently misses opportunities to align its foreign policy objectives with long-term development outcomes.
If the United States, under any administration or foreign aid structure, wants to shape stable, prosperous societies—whether to advance global security, create markets for American businesses, or support democratic values—it must invest in a new generation of professionals who can operate across these silos. These development diplomats would be trained to design and implement policy reforms, unlock public and private resources, uphold human rights and the rule of law, and deliver programs that build inclusive economies, all while navigating the geopolitical complexities that define modern diplomacy.
Creating this cadre requires more than tweaking existing roles, it demands a serious reinvestment in human capital. The Foreign Service Institute, Office of Personnel Management, and other federal learning institutions should introduce new interdisciplinary curricula that blend foreign policy, development economics, political economy, behavioral science, project finance, and contract management. Public policy and international affairs schools could incorporate development diplomacy into their core training. Congressional appropriations can support cross-agency training and incentivize rotational assignments between development and diplomatic agencies in Washington, DC and overseas.
Such reforms can strengthen the US response to global challenges while also preparing public servants to operate more nimbly within complex, interagency environments. Development diplomacy will not magically fix US foreign assistance, nor will it thrive in the absence of political leadership that values international development. But in moments of renewed commitment to global engagement, it can be a powerful tool for advancing sustainable development, supporting American interests, and earning global trust. As the United States reconsiders how to deploy foreign assistance and define the next era of US leadership, reimagining the workforce to include development diplomats is one place to start.
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Fatema Z. Sumar is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Executive Director of the Harvard Center for International Development (CID). She is the author of the book, “The Development Diplomat: Working Across Borders, Boardrooms, and Bureaucracies to End Poverty.” She has a distinguished career as a practitioner in the US government and civil society, including serving as the Vice President of Compact Operations at the US Millennium Challenge Corporation and Deputy Assistant Secretary of South and Central Asia at the US Department of State.
Image Credit: Eric Prouzet, Unsplash Content License, via Unsplash.
