(TibetanReview.net, Feb03’25) –Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the administrator of the newly created US Department of government Efficiency (DOGE) has said Feb 3 that President Donald Trump had agreed that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) needed to be shut down. His comment followed days of speculation over the future of the agency after its funding was frozen and dozens of its employees were put on leave.
USAID is the principal agency that administers the US government aid to the exile Tibetan community. It has a longstanding commitment to supporting Tibetan communities, focusing on areas such as education, health, cultural preservation, and economic development. Since 2002, USAID has assisted over 75,000 Tibetan refugees in collaboration with the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), said the agency on its website which since appears to have become inaccessible.
In Nov 2024, USAID, in partnership with The Tibet Fund and the CTA, launched a new five-year programme titled “Strengthening Economic, Social, and Cultural Resilience of Tibetan Communities in South Asia.” The initiative was aimed at empowering Tibetan communities in India and Nepal by fostering sustainable livelihoods, enhancing social resilience, and preserving cultural heritage.
The programme was stated to underscore the US government’s unwavering commitment to preserving Tibetan culture and fostering economic independence.
However, recent developments have introduced challenges to USAID’s operations. In Jan 2025, the Trump administration announced a 90-day freeze on foreign aid, affecting over $60 billion in international funding administered through USAID.
Trump issued an executive order in Jan 2025, establishing the DOGE, a temporary organization aimed at modernizing federal technology and enhancing governmental efficiency. Musk was appointed as its administrator while the US Digital Service was renamed as the United States DOGE Service to serve as its parent agency.
“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk has said in an X Spaces conversation early Feb 3.
Musk has gone on to say that he checked with Trump “a few times” and the later confirmed he wanted to shut down the agency.
Before the X Spaces conversation, on Dec 2 evening, Trump told reporters, when asked for comment on USAID, “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision” on its future, reported edition.cnn.com Feb 3.
Around 60 senior USAID staff were put on leave last week on accusations of attempting to circumvent Trump’s executive order to freeze foreign aid for 90 days. Another senior official was put on leave for trying to reverse that move after finding no evidence of wrongdoing, the report said.
Musk himself has also called USAID “incredibly politically partisan” and “beyond repair”, accusing it of supporting “radically left causes throughout the world including things that are anti-American.”
USAID was created in 1961 by Congress as an independent body under President John F Kennedy’s administration and is the US government’s humanitarian arm.
It is a key soft power tool of the US to foster relations with communities around the world. It cited officials as saying US national security is approached with the “three D” pillars: defence, diplomacy and development, led, respectively, by the Defence Department, State Department and USAID.