foreign aid by year 1946-2022 (adjusted for inflation)
Earliest instances One of the earliest and least known instances of US foreign aid is also a good example of how aid has a long history of being used as a tool of foreign policy. On May 6, 1812, despite continued hostilities over independence from British colonial rule, US senator from Kentucky
Henry Clay submitted a bill appropriating $50,000 for disaster relief food aid to
Venezuela after a
massive earthquake devastated the capitol,
Caracas, that was enacted on May 8 by the 12th Congress (Chap. LXXIX). Coincidentally, Venezuela was also fighting a
war for independence from Spanish colonial rule, from 1810 to 1823. The food aid was accompanied by diplomat Alexander Scott, who stated that this aid was "strong proof of the friendship and interest which the United States…has in their welfare…and to explain the mutual advantages of commerce with the United States." A case may be made that some motivation for this act of generosity was diplomatic (i.e.: transactional) in nature, insofar as that both nations were seeking diplomatic recognition as sovereign from colonizers, and that this gesture would elicit such a desired reciprocal response. Later, in 1927, the US Congress appropriated $41,000 for the creation and transportation of a statue in Henry Clay's likeness to be erected in Caracas, where by all accounts it remains to this day, memorializing Clay as a symbol of US generosity abroad.
World War I During World War I, the
Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), which sent food to the hungry in
Belgium, received $387 million from the U.S. government (as well as $314 million from the British and French governments and about $200 million from non-governmental sources). These government monies were given in the form of loans, but a considerable portion of those loans was forgiven. After the war, the
American Relief Administration, directed by
Herbert Hoover who had also been prominent in the CRB, continued food distribution to war-devastated European countries. It also distributed food and combated
typhus in the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic during its
famine of 1921–23. The
U.S. Congress appropriated $20 million for the ARA under the
Russian Famine Relief Act of 1921.
World War II Levels of United States aid increased greatly during
World War II, mainly on account of the
Lend-lease program. United States government aid remained high in the decade after the war because of contributions to European reconstruction, and competition for influence versus the
Communist powers in the first years of the Cold War. By 1960, the annual aid amount had receded to about half of what it was in the early post-war years, and, in inflation-adjusted terms, it has remained at that level—with some fluctuations—until the present. The Lend-lease program, which began in 1941 (before the U.S. entrance in the war) was an arrangement whereby the United States sent large amounts of war materials and other supplies to nations whose defense was considered vital to the defense of the United States. It began with the passage by Congress of the Lend-lease act (PL 77-11) on 11 March 1941. Initially, the main recipient was the
United Kingdom; the
Soviet Union began receiving supplies (paid for in gold) in June 1941 outside of Lend-lease, and was included in the Lend-lease agreement in November 1941. By the end of the war, most of the
Allied countries had been declared eligible for Lend-lease aid, although not all received it. By the time the program was ended by President
Harry S. Truman in August 1945, more than $50 billion worth of supplies had been disbursed, of which the
Commonwealth countries received $31 billion and the Soviet Union $11 billion. Although formally the material was loaned, in the end only partial repayment was demanded. A second wartime aid program, the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), was founded in November 1943, by 44 Allied governments, for the purpose of assisting and resettling
displaced victims of the war. Its initial focus was on assisting people in areas the Allies had captured from the
Axis powers: distributing food, clothing and other essentials, and helping with medical care and sanitation. Later it also assisted in the resumption of agriculture and industry. Each of the 44 signatories was supposed to contribute one percent of its national income. The chief beneficiaries were
China,
Czechoslovakia,
Greece,
Italy,
Poland, the
Ukrainian SSR and
Yugoslavia. UNRRA returned about 7 million displaced people to their countries of origin and provided refugee camps for about one million who were unwilling to be repatriated. UNRRA ceased operations in Europe in mid-1947; some of its activities in Asia continued under other auspices until early 1949. In the end 52 countries had contributed as donors. Contributions from governments and private organizations during the four years of the program totaled over $3.8 billion; more than half of that was from the United States.
Cold War After the war, the United States began giving large amounts of aid to Greece and Turkey under the
Truman Doctrine. Both countries were experiencing civil strife between communist and anti-communist factions, and the President and his advisors feared that their efforts to keep European countries from adopting communism might be about to suffer a serious setback. In December 1946, Greek Prime Minister
Konstantinos Tsaldaris visited Washington and requested additional United States aid. Truman promulgated his containment doctrine in early 1947, a major component of which was to be aid to the world's poor countries in order to blunt the appeals of radicalism to their hungry peoples and to bolster their anti-communist political elements. In May 1947 the U.S. government granted Greece $300 million in military and economic aid. Turkey received $100 million. The U.S. government gave Greece $362 million in 1949, and U.S. aid to Greece generally remained over $100 million annually until 1998. After the
Chinese Civil War and the
Korean War,
U.S. military aid both to Europe and the developing "
Third World" increased, with military aid composing 95 percent of all U.S. aid by 1954 and going largely to countries in
Cold War proxy conflicts against communist forces. The most well-known, and largest, United States aid program in the immediate post-war years was the
European Recovery Program (ERP). More often known as the
Marshall Plan, it was the creation of
George Kennan,
William Clayton, and others at the U.S. State Department under Secretary of State
George Marshall. Publicly suggested by Marshall in June 1947, and put into action about a year later, the Plan was essentially an extension of the Greece–Turkey aid strategy to the rest of Europe. As the realities of the Cold War began to set in, the Marshall plan would replace the Morgenthau plan as it became increasingly clear that Western Europe would need to be rebuilt to serve as a redoubt against Soviet influence. The U.S. administration considered the stability of the existing governments in Western Europe vital to its own interests. On 3 April 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act, establishing the
Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) to administer the program, and actual disbursements got underway. The focus was on promoting production, stabilizing currencies, and promoting international trade. To be eligible for the aid, a country had to sign an agreement with the United States government committing itself to the Act's purposes. The Communist countries were formally invited to participate in the Plan although Secretary Marshall thought it unlikely that they would accept and they did in fact decline the aid. Also in 1948, the United States and the recipient countries created the
Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC – it became the
OECD in 1961) to coordinate the use of the aid. A large portion of the money given was used to purchase goods from the United States, and the ships used to transport the goods had to be of U.S. nationality. Military aid was not part of the plan. The Marshall Plan ended in December 1951. The United States government gave out about $12.5 billion under the Plan during its three-and-a-half-year existence. The countries receiving the most were Great Britain ($3.3 billion),
France ($2.3 billion) and
West Germany ($1.4 billion). Meanwhile, President Truman had started the practice of giving aid for the development of poorer countries. This was signalled in the famous
Point Four of his
second-term inauguration speech. Initially this assistance was mainly in the form of technical cooperation, but during the 1950s, grants and concessional loans came to play a large role in development aid, within the framework of the
Mutual Security Act and alongside foreign military assistance and defense support. From 1945 to 1953 – U.S. provides grants and credits amounting to $5.9 billion to Asian countries, especially
Republic of China/Taiwan ($1.051 billion),
India ($255 million),
Indonesia ($215 million),
Japan ($2.44 billion),
South Korea ($894 million),
Pakistan ($98 million) and the
Philippines ($803 million). In addition, another $282 million
went to Israel and $196 million to the rest of the Middle East. The main category was economic aid, but some military aid was provided. All this aid was separate from the Marshall Plan.
After the Cold War Congress passed the
Foreign Assistance Act on 4 September 1961, reorganizing U.S. foreign assistance programs and separating military and non-military aid. The Act was established by President John F. Kennedy two months later. USAID became the first U.S. foreign assistance organization whose primary focus was long-term economic and social development. As the Cold War waned foreign aid spending was cut dramatically from 0.44% of GDP in 1985 to 0.16% of GDP in 2002. President
Barack Obama announced to the
UN Millennium Development Goals summit in September 2010 that the
United States was changing its policy towards foreign aid. The President said the country would focus more on effectiveness, and make sure donated food, medicine, and money help countries get to the point where they no longer require such aid. Infrastructure set up for the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief would be used to build capacity in local health care systems to improve maternal and child health, and also fight tropical diseases. The new policy would increase the profile and participation of the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which would coordinate more directly with the
National Security Council and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some observers criticized the link with national security and foreign policy as unhelpful for the impoverished, and others lamented the attempted streamlining as only adding more bureaucracy. Even with the dust settling on the Cold War, and the United States entering into a period of global hegemony, Foreign aid was still utilized as a form of hard power, especially in relation to security or military assistance. Since the turn of the 21st Century, the United States has undertaken a wide range of military campaigns including those in Iraq and Afghanistan wherein the United States concentrated all of American power to achieve its desired objectives. The United States employed Foreign aid across the full spectrum in Iraq and Afghanistan including providing military aid, humanitarian relief, and building infrastructure to facilitate the rebuilding of these countries. In more recent history, the United States remains heavily invested in supporting their allies and their concomitant wars in both Ukraine and Israel. Starting in December 2025, the
Trump administration began signing bilateral health aid deals with various African countries. These deals are part of a larger effort by the administration to procure bilateral aid agreements that differ both from the multilateral approach taken by the
World Health Organization and from traditional
USAID delivery methods. The United States has signed such deals with 17 African countries as of March 2026. ==Allocation==