Former USAID head says 'people are dying' a year after agency's dismantling

By — Geoff Bennett Geoff Bennett By — Zeba Warsi Zeba Warsi Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/former-usaid-head-says-people-are-dying-a-year-after-agencys-dismantling Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Wednesday marks one year since the Trump administration dissolved the United States Agency for International Development as an independent agency. USAID was a central tool of American foreign policy, delivering humanitarian aid, fighting disease, responding to disasters and advancing U.S. interests. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Samantha Power, the last confirmed administrator of USAID. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: Today marks one year since the Trump administration dissolved the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, as an independent agency, folding what remained of its foreign assistance work into the U.S. State Department. For more than six decades, USAID was a central tool of American foreign policy, delivering humanitarian aid, fighting disease, responding to disasters, and advancing U.S. interests around the world. The administration called the move a necessary overhaul. Critics called it the dismantling of one of America's most important instruments of global influence. For perspective, we are joined now by Samantha Power, the last confirmed administrator of USAID under former President Biden. She previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Obama presidency. Ambassador Power, welcome to the "News Hour." Samantha Power, Former USAID Administrator: Thank you for having me. Geoff Bennett: You have said the dismantling of USAID amounts to soft power suicide. A year later, where do you see the clearest consequences, not just in fewer aid programs, but in diminished American leverage and influence? Samantha Power: "The Lancet" estimated that 14 million people would die, including 4.5 million kids under 5, by 2030. It is hard to quantify day by day the deaths that are ensuing, but Boston University ran a tracker and documented 800,000 deaths by February of this year. So people are dying because they don't have access to medicine, they don't have access to clean water. The cuts were done not on a glide path, as one would do if one had conducted a reasonable review of programming, but it was a cliff. And by cutting off resources on a cliff, you do the most human harm possible. The cost to the 15,000 people who worked at USAID, patriots, public servants, people who volunteered to serve most often in crisis zones, whether war zones, the scenes of natural disasters, really difficult living environments, they did so because they were motivated by just the cause of trying to help vulnerable people and advance U.S. interests in so doing. And they were escorted out often by security guards, g