Food aid still stalled; impact could be 'catastrophic,' key senator says
Food aid and other humanitarian assistance remains stalled in ports and warehouses despite State Department waivers that were supposed to clear the way for delivery of the products, a senior Senate Democrat told Agri-Pulse on Thursday.
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the State Department, said a critical payment system apparently remains frozen, and the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as aid organizations have lost staff critical to managing and delivering the aid.
The Trump administration suspended most foreign aid for 90 days and issued a stop work order. Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided an exemption for emergency assistance, which allowed organizations to get waivers for resuming the delivery of aid. But those waivers aren’t enough by themselves to resume aid deliveries, because of the other bureaucratic and payment problems created by the administration, according to Coons.
“Programs are being shut down, medicines and foods, food stuffs are being abandoned or wasted,” Coons said. “This is an incredibly disruptive and inefficient way to conduct a quote, unquote review of our foreign aid programs, and the consequences in cost in human lives will be catastrophic.”
Coons said he asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Thursday to intervene with President Donald Trump on the issue.
“I have heard from every major American based nonprofit whose leadership I know, which is most, and whose projects I visited over the years, which is many, that those funds are not flowing. There is some significant hold up,” he said.
“Literally thousands of field staff around the world with nonprofit partners and hundreds of headquarters staff here in the United States are being laid off,” Coons said.
The global development organization Devex also has reported that “waivers are moving slower than molasses, and even if approved, they don’t amount to much because the payment system is frozen.”
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Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., had reported Saturday that Rubio allowed food aid shipments to resume by issuing notices to aid organizations ensuring that the commodities were exempt from the suspension of foreign aid and the stop work order.
USAID’s inspector general was fired this week after issuing a report Monday that said $489 million in food assistance was at risk. Some 500,000 metric tons of food purchased under the Food for Peace program that was at sea or awaiting shipment. The report also said the aid was left without needed oversight to ensure it’s not wasted or diverted.
The Food for Peace program was funded at $1.7 billion for fiscal 2024. Congress hasn’t passed fiscal 2025 appropriations yet.
Meanwhile, about 200 former high-ranking foreign policy officials are urging congressional leaders to push back on the Trump administration’s attacks on the U.S. Agency for International Development and foreign aid.
“We write to ask you to take all steps in your power to urge rescission of the Trump administration executive orders and directives aimed at freezing U.S. foreign assistance and dismantling USAID,” wrote the former officials, who “served in national security and humanitarian positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations.”
The Trump administration’s directives “inflict irreparable damage on hundreds of millions of people around the world, harm Americans by crippling our ability to protect U.S. citizens from disease and other harms, and invite China and other competitors to fill the gap we have created, thereby increasing their power and influence at our expense,” the officials said.
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