The Trump administration has been dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development since President Donald Trump took office last month. The agency provides humanitarian assistance and promotes U.S. interests internationally. While USAID focuses on international public health and human rights efforts, it also funds research at land-grant universities in the U.S. like Michigan State University.
With the agency’s future in limbo, funding to those laboratories has stopped.
Michigan State University is home to two USAID-funded laboratories: the Innovation Lab for Legume Systems Research and the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity and Influence. Both labs work under the Feed the Future initiative, a federal initiative to fight global hunger and food insecurity. The labs work alongside other organizations and universities across the country and the world.
USAID funds 15 other U.S.-based labs that study food security and crop resilience. Without federal dollars coming into these labs, universities are taking different approaches to the financial strain.
Will USAID be funded again?
The current funding structure for these USAID-funded laboratories, called Innovation Labs, is dependent on whether USAID will continue as it has historically or if it will be altered or defunded.
Trump ordered a January 20 funding freeze on USAID and all other U.S. humanitarian aid and development work abroad. He alleged that the agency has been too wasteful and supportive of liberal causes.
The funding freeze was met with legal opposition. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to temporarily lift the funding freeze and set a five-day deadline for the administration to provide evidence it will comply with the ruling. Another ruling in a separate case also Thursday said that the Trump administration order that placed USAID employees on leave would stay in place at least until February 20.
A few days after the funding freeze, the Trump administration also issued a “stop work” order. The order also began a 90-day review of foreign assistance programs. Some foreign aid is exempt from this order, like military financing aid to Israel and Egypt and emergency food aid. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is now the acting director of USAID, also issued a January 27 waiver that said “core-life saving programs” like medicine, medical services, and shelter would also be exempt.
“We owe the American people the assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest,” Rubio said.
Despite the waiver and exemptions, the United Nations’ World Food Programme has since been ordered to stop work on U.S.-funded grants.
USAID manned a staff of 10,000 employees and had a $40 billion budget just a few weeks ago. It currently has a staff of 294.
Trump administration officials have discussed moving USAID responsibilities into the State Department, giving more decision-making power to Trump-appointed officials.
This proposal has been met with opposition, particularly because USAID was created by Congress in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as an independent federal agency.
Senator and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is one of many Democrats who have spoken out against the potential restructuring of the agency because its existence is codified in federal law. Those who oppose insist that restructuring requires legislation passed by Congress.
“[USAID] was created by JFK and established in law to further our national security and spread hope,” Schumer wrote on X following rumors that the USAID would be reorganized. “This’d be illegal and against our national interests.”
The agency’s website, USAID.gov, and Feed the Future’s website, feedthefuture.gov, are both currently offline.
What are USAID-funded universities doing now?
Labs like the ones at Michigan State University are taking a few different approaches to the lack of federal funding.
David Tschirley, a professor in the MSU Department of Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics, directs the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity and Influence. He told Michigan Public the funding freeze did not have immediate impacts on the ongoing research because USAID-funded laboratories expense research costs first, then recover money from USAID later.
“And we already had what is called enough obligated funds to be able to keep operating during that pause as the review was done,” Tschirley said.
Tschirley said that USAID-funded labs were more impacted by the Trump administration’s “stop work” order. Since the order, researchers have stopped their work and the lab is encouraging only absolutely necessary expenses, according to Tschirley.
“This kind of immediately threw everything into quite a condition of chaos, to be perfectly honest,” Tschirley told Michigan Public. “All the different universities in the Innovation Labs system had to kind of figure out how to deal with this. And different universities have taken different approaches.”
One of these approaches includes fronting essential costs to keep the labs afloat temporarily. Tschirley said Michigan State University is taking this approach.
“Basically MSU said ‘We will cover those costs. We believe that the guidance that we received from USAID suggests that these kinds of costs that cannot easily be stopped, that the guidance is consistent with the idea of us continuing to pay this, and that USAID in the end will cover it. But if USAID does not, we will.’” Tschirley said. “So MSU is taking on the risk.”
Michigan State University was able to take on the costs of salaries for faculty and staff temporarily; however, Tschirley said that not all universities were able to take on this financial burden.
The USAID funding is still under review, and Tschirley said he hopes the federal government will understand the value that the Innovation Labs bring to the U.S. and the world. These benefits include improving human welfare, reducing global poverty, creating goodwill among partner countries, and lowering rates of migration from countries into the U.S.
Tschirley also said there are economic benefits to the research such as increasing the number of export markets and potentially improving U.S. farming practices.
“We're trusting that it'll be a good and balanced review and that when these things are seen on their merits that, yes, they'll be approved to continue on. And we’ll kind of pick up the pieces and keep going and still have the people with us, both in the U.S. and our partners in Africa and Asia, to pick up quickly and move the work forward.”
