Butch Meily is president of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation, IdeaSpace, and QBO Innovation. He is the author of the new memoir From Manila to Wall Street: An Immigrant’s Journey with America’s First Black Tycoon.
In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy created a new federal agency, the United States International Agency for Development (USAID). Its purpose was “to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms.” Among the 100-plus countries USAID helped around the world over the next 64 years was my own, the Philippines.
Last week, USAID officially ceased operations. Only the day before, the distinguished British medical journal the Lancet published a study warning about the potential consequences now looming. The elimination of USAID, the study found, could contribute to 14 million additional deaths over the next five years. The researchers described the impact for some countries as being “similar in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict,” based on “a conscious and avoidable policy choice.”
I was born in the Philippines, once a U.S. colony, shortly after World War II. But even from afar, I always felt a kinship with the United States. So in 1977, I decided to pursue my ambitions—and a master’s degree—in America. The day I swore the oath of allegiance at the federal courthouse in Manhattan and became an American citizen will always rank among the proudest of my life.
Back then, I had no idea of how much USAID was accomplishing in the Philippines, much less that I would be personally involved with it.
The battle over USAID
In February on Truth Social, President Donald Trump declared that USAID spending “is totally unexplainable…close it down.” He claimed the agency was run by “radical left lunatics.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk—appointed by Trump to head the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency and slash federal fraud, waste, and abuse—had previously called the agency, variously, “beyond repair,” “corrupt,” and “a criminal organization.” “Time for it to die,” Musk posted on X.
In short order, Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates intervened and met with President Trump at the White House to defend—and advocate support for—extended funding for USAID. Gates called USAID “the best” of all the development agencies around the world. In May, he accused Musk of “killing the world’s poorest children.” But by then the die was cast as Trump triumphantly characterized the budget and personnel cuts already inflicted on USAID as “devastating.”
Even so, other prominent opponents of the controversial cuts stepped into the breach. In a private videoconference beamed to USAID staffers worldwide in late June, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, along with U2 singer Bono, delivered a heartfelt farewell to the agency. “Gutting USAID is a travesty,” Obama said, “and it’s a tragedy.” Bush asked the USAID staffers in attendance, “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”
USAID accomplishments
As I’ve learned since returning in 2000 to live in the Philippines, USAID has done, by any measure, an absolutely yeoman job. Food from American farmers fed hungry families and starving refugees. Its staff distributed drugs for malaria, HIV, and other infectious diseases that saved lives. It enabled communities to combat poverty and develop economically, in the process establishing new consumer markets for American goods.
In the 1960s with the country still recovering from the ravages of World War II, USAID helped establish national government agencies and educational institutions. Later, USAID focused on strengthening democratic institutions.
In 2012, a major new USAID program to eradicate tuberculosis improved treatment success rates by 92%.
Hitting home
In my own country, from 1995 to 2013 USAID trained 28,000 former combatants with skills and tools to farm land and otherwise earn a living, helping to reintegrate these civilians back into society, lifting the economy in a Southern Philippines still torn by war.
Thanks to a hand from USAID, our maternal mortality rate over a 23-year period was cut almost in half, from 209 per 100,000 live births in 1993 to 114 per 100,000 live births in 2015. More than 1.5 million Filipinos benefitted from USAID support of sustainable management for coastal fisheries to stop overfishing and environmental degradation.
But that’s hardly all. USAID trained more than 19,000 Filipino teachers in English, math, and science. As a result, the percentage of students in sites assisted by USAID who met national benchmarks for reading fluency and comprehension almost quadrupled, from 20% in 2013 to 76% in 2016.
In the destructive wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, one of the largest storms ever to make land, USAID rebuilt schools, health clinics, and water systems and helped survivors rehabilitate their stores and businesses. More recently, it embarked on programs that strengthened the economies of cities outside Manila to promote sustainable growth.
Today, the Philippine economy ranks as the world’s 32nd largest in GDP—and the ninth biggest in Asia, according to the International Monetary Fund. This year the World Bank said, “Its economic dynamism reflects increasing urbanization, a large and young population, and strong consumer demand, supported by a vibrant labor market and robust remittances, which have raised the incomes of the most vulnerable.” The case can be made that USAID’s funds and on-the-ground volunteerism contributed substantially to the Philippines’ current socioeconomic stature.
As head of a private-sector disaster management organization, I collaborated with USAID on numerous projects over the last 10 years. Together, we helped communities and municipalities prepare for calamities, enabled the Department of Energy to upgrade the power sector during the frequent storms, strengthened the resilience of key provinces, and guided the Office of Civil Defense in partnering with private companies to furnish relief to areas stricken by disaster.
I also had the opportunity to go shoulder to shoulder with USAID as the lead for two startup enablers. We joined forces in the STRIDE program that bolstered entrepreneurship and innovation.
‘From the American People’
The upshot is that USAID embodied for us the very best ideals of America. It created an aura of goodwill between our countries. More tangibly, it helped the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, all while building demand for American knowhow and products.
All of these programs abruptly ended this year, and almost everyone I knew at USAID packed up and headed home. Some 1,600 USAID employees, as the first step in a “reduction-in-force,” were placed on “administrative leave globally.”
Last month, MaryKay Carlson, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines, formally brought down the curtain on this long-standing lifeline between our two countries. She hosted a farewell party at her residence with members of USAID’s local staff to celebrate the partnership. I attended what felt less like a divorce than a wake.
After the party and all of its speeches, someone handed me a bag filled with mementoes of USAID’s role in the Philippines—a pen, a mug, a calendar, a book that captured its many achievements, all inscribed with the USAID motto, “From the American People.” As I walked out into the humid tropical night, I clutched the bag with a tight grip feeling the utmost gratitude to America and all Americans.
Even in the face of this disappointment, as someone with a bilateral perspective whose life has straddled both countries, I’m still hopeful that the U.S. and the Philippines will remain on friendly terms—and more tangibly, that the U.S. State Department will resume USAID’s heroic crusade.
In an address to Congress about foreign aid, President Kennedy said, “We have not only obligations to fulfill, we have great opportunities to realize.” Months later, as he launched USAID, he echoed those words with a message we would do well to heed today. He said, “The people who are opposed to aid should realize that this is a very powerful source of strength for us…It permits us to exert influence for the maintenance of freedom…As we do not want to send American troops to many areas, we send you.”
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