Into the Breach: Will China Step Up as the U.S. Retreats on Global Development?

In early 2025, the U.S. government issued executive orders mandating a 90-day freeze of foreign development assistance financing, consolidating the portfolio of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under the U.S. State Department and eliminating other U.S. development agencies. Media outlets tracking these moves reported in February 2025 that the Trump administration planned to eliminate more than 90 percent of foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in U.S. assistance around the world.

AidData experts have fielded questions from journalists, policymakers, and scholars about the implications of the United States exiting or downsizing its development portfolio and the likelihood that China will step into the vacuum. This policy brief draws upon more than a decade of AidData’s research to provide objective, fact-based analysis of how the U.S. and China have traditionally supported development in low- and middle-income countries, as a departure point to help inform public discussion and debate on these questions.