Foreign aid is shrinking, but it is not disappearing. Even after the sharpest annual decline on record, OECD donors still provided $174.3 billion (5.75 trillion baht) in assistance in 2025. This includes $29 billion from the United States, despite the slashing of 83% of US Agency for International Development (USAID) programmes by Donald Trump's administration. Moreover, wars, epidemics, displacement, and geopolitical competition will ensure that rich countries continue to spend money abroad, whether for humanitarian reasons or in pursuit of their own interests.
With the number of ongoing conflicts having reached a record high in 2025, and with 117.8 million people ending the year forcibly displaced, the question is not whether foreign aid will survive, but what sort of aid system will emerge from the current retrenchment. This is a moment not to discard decades of progress in learning how to deliver aid, but to reconsider priorities and demand greater accountability.
