Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025.

WASHINGTON ― Eight years after sabotaging America’s efforts to combat China’s influence by pulling out of a long-negotiated trade deal, US President Donald Trump is again taking steps likely to accrue to China’s benefit, this time by gutting the United States’ premier foreign aid agency.

The US Agency for International Development is taking the initial brunt of the assault against the federal government by Trump donor and quasi-White House aide Elon Musk, even while Trump and his White House bemoan China’s reach in the developing world.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday boasted of the success of Trump’s pressure on Panama to cut ties with China following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip there. “Panama’s president said he will … no longer allow the participation in the Belt and Road Initiative,” she added, referring to China’s massive, decade-old international aid program.

During that same press briefing, though, Leavitt continued her and the administration’s criticism of USAID.

Leavitt did not respond to HuffPost queries for this story.

Stuart Stevens, a Republican political consultant and Trump critic, said he learned firsthand about USAID’s value while working in 2006 on the first election campaign following the Democratic Republic of Congo’s long civil war, which had produced a generation of orphans who were being recruited by Al Qaeda and other violent groups on the one hand and mentored and given financial assistance by USAID workers on the other.

“It was like a job fair for terrorist organisation,” Stevens said, remembering American workers toiling in dangerous conditions for little pay. “It worked. Tens of thousands of these kids were steered in another direction.”

Trump began his first........

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