The Geopolitical Impact of USAID’s Retreat on Humanitarian Aid: Towards a Complementary Approach between China and the EU?

Trump’s decision to cut funding and stop most of USAID’s projects will have lasting consequences. First and foremost, it adds great pressure on an already big funding gap. Forgotten and underfunded crises will suffer from it. But Trump’s action will also bear an effect on the nature of humanitarian aid itself. USAID’s retreat accelerates a geopolitical shift. China, “Champion of the Global South”, will inevitably fill the void and promote its own model of foreign aid. Development, economic and humanitarian rationales are therefore expected to be increasingly mixed at the expense of a principled approach. What could in turn the EU, and Belgium within it, do? Could they play the role of a “missing link” and promote a complementary approach to China? This brief offers insights on some questions ahead of the upcoming European Humanitarian Forum.

About the authors

Edouard Xia and Alexandre Piron are Researchers at the UCLouvain Institute of Political Sciences Louvain-Europe. They are also affiliated to the Centre for the Study of Crises and International Conflicts. They are indebted to all Belgian practitioners who shared their experience, whether as civil servants, members of NGOs or think tankers. They also extend their many thanks to Mr. Jean-Louis De Brouwer (Egmont Institute) for his precious advice and review of the paper, and to Prof. Tanguy de Wilde d’Estmael (UCLouvain) for his valuable guidance. This Egmont Policy Brief is an abridged and policy-oriented version of a chapter that will be published in a pending collective book “L’imagination en relations internationales” (2025). The responsibility for any errors lies with the authors alone. 

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