Trump's USAID cuts hobble earthquake response in Myanmar

China, Russia and India have dispatched emergency teams and supplies to earthquake-ravaged Myanmar. So have Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The United States, the richest country in the world and once its most generous provider of foreign aid, has sent nothing.

Even as President Donald Trump was dismantling the US Agency for International Development, he said that American help was on its way to Myanmar, where a 7.7 magnitude earthquake ripped through the country's heavily populated center Friday. More than 1,700 people were killed, according to Myanmar's military government, with the death toll expected to climb steeply as more bodies are uncovered in the rubble and rescue teams reach remote villages.

But a three-person USAID assessment team is not expected to arrive until Wednesday, people with knowledge of the deployment efforts said. The overall U.S. response has been slower than under normal circumstances, people who have worked on earlier disaster relief efforts as well as on aid to Myanmar said.

Chinese search-and-rescue teams, complete with dogs trained to sniff out trapped people, are already on the ground in Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city and one of the places most deeply affected by the quake. China has pledged $14 million for Myanmar quake relief, sending 126 rescue workers and six dogs, along with medical kits, drones and earthquake detectors.

"Being charitable and being seen as charitable serves American foreign policy," said Michael Schiffer, the assistant administrator of the USAID bureau for Asia from 2022 until earlier this year. "If we don't show up and China shows up, that sends a pretty strong message."

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced on its website that the United States would provide up to $2 million in aid, dispersed through humanitarian groups based in Myanmar. But many of the systems needed to funnel U.S. aid to Myanmar have been shattered.

On Friday, as some employees in Washington in USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance were preparing a response to the earthquake, they received agencywide layoff emails. Career diplomats working for USAID and other employees had been bracing for layoffs for weeks; Trump political appointees in Washington had already fired most of the contractors working for the agency.

The employees who received layoff notices were told they should go home that afternoon. Some had been coordinating with aid missions in Bangkok and Manila, the Philippines, which handle disaster response in Asia.

Two of the employees in Washington had expected to move this winter to Yangon, in Myanmar, and to Bangkok to work as humanitarian assistance advisers out of the U.S. missions there. But those positions were cut. Had they not been, the two employees would have been on the ground to organize urgent responses to the earthquake.

After the disaster hit Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Yangon sent a cable to USAID headquarters in Washington to start the process of evaluating aid needs and getting help out the door. And the next day, a Trump administration political appointee in USAID, Tim Meisburger, held a call with officials from national security agencies to discuss a plan.

But Meisburger said that although there would be a response, no one should expect the agency's capabilities to be what they were in the past, said a person with direct knowledge of the call.

A USAID spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.

The agency typically has access to food and emergency supplies in warehouses in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Subang Jaya, Malaysia. But the big question now is how quickly, after being almost fully dismantled, it can get goods from those places into Myanmar. The goods include medical kits that can each serve the health care needs of 30,000 people for over three months.

Apart from career diplomats, the ranks of the agency's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance have included crisis specialist contractors who live around the world and can deploy quickly in what are called Disaster Assistance Response Teams. Many of those contractors have been fired, and the infrastructure to support them in Washington and other offices -- people who can book flights and manage payments, for instance -- was crippled by cuts over the past two months.

The agency would also usually put certified search-and-rescue teams in Virginia and Southern California on alert for possible deployment to the disaster zone, but transportation contracts for those teams have been cut, said one former aid agency employee.

USAID's annual allocations for Myanmar were about $320 million last year. About $170 million of that was for humanitarian work, and the rest was for development initiatives, such as democracy building and health. Only a few million dollars' worth of projects remain operational, though some of those programs, including one for maternal and child health, have not received funding despite being told the initiatives are not being closed down.

Before the cuts, the annual costs of total U.S. foreign aid were less than 1% of the federal budget.

At a news conference in Jamaica last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would continue foreign aid work, though in drastically reduced form. He said the aim was to provide aid "that is strategically aligned with our foreign policy priorities and the priorities of our host countries and our nation states that we're partners with."

On Friday, Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, said that crisis teams stood ready to deploy to Myanmar.

The United States' ability to provide lifesaving aid has been hampered not just by budget cuts but by obstacles in Myanmar itself. Since grabbing power in 2021, Myanmar's military junta has closed off the country from Western influences. Myanmar is now embroiled in civil war, with a loose coalition of opposition forces having wrested control of more than half of the country's territory.

The United States and other Western nations have responded to the junta's brutal human rights record with sanctions, and the military chief who orchestrated the coup, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, has railed against the West, thanking China and Russia for ideological and economic support.

Nevertheless, in the hours after the earthquake struck, Min Aung Hlaing said he welcomed outside disaster relief aid -- and not just from countries with friendly relations with the military regime.

Myanmar experts say they are concerned that some of the aid that goes through the junta could be diverted to the armed forces. The Myanmar military is underfunded and short on morale as it fights resistance forces on many fronts.

In Mandalay, residents said they were upset to see soldiers lounging around the sites of collapsed buildings. Some played video games on their phones, while locals used their hands to pry bricks from the rubble.

Still, Chinese and Russian search-and-rescue teams, outfitted in orange and blue uniforms, were digging through the wreckage in Mandalay on Sunday, and a Belgian squad was making its way north.

A good chunk of USAID funding had been dedicated to areas of the country not under junta control. U.S. assistance has gone to health care and schooling for internally displaced people. It has supported local administrations that are trying to form mini-governments in conflict areas. And it has tried to provide emergency relief to civilians battered by junta airstrikes.

In the region of Sagaing, a stronghold of resistance against the junta, Myanmar military jets carried out two rounds of airstrikes on Nwel Khwe village hours after the earthquake destroyed buildings there, adding more terror to residents' lives.

"It's as if Min Aung Hlaing wants to make sure we die, if not from the earthquake, then from his attacks," said one villager, Ko Aung Kyaw.

But Aung Kyaw said he did not expect foreigners, American or otherwise, to be able to alleviate the situation. Sagaing has suffered for four years, and its people have died by the thousands in fighting the junta. Foreign aid, he said, would most likely end up benefiting the military regime, not those who most need it.

"In the end, we have only ourselves," he said. "We've been resisting for four years now, and it's clear that we'll have to find our own way forward, no matter what."