About the Data: The government categorises aid into two objectives: military and economic. Economic foreign aid makes up more than three-quarters of total aid. This analysis focuses on nonmilitary aid disbursed between 2002 and 2023, the most recent fully reported year. The U.S. Government makes this data available on the foreignassistance.gov website.

Aid by Country

In 2023, the US spent over $43 million on economic foreign aid. Though significant, the amount made up less than 1% of the federal budget.

Over 150 nations receive some sort of aid from the United States annually. Some nations, however, have consistently received large amounts of economic foreign aid.

In the last two decades, the United States gave over $100 billion in nonmilitary aid to three countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine. All these countries have suffered from years of conflict, with Afghanistan being the longest, and in each country, the US has been involved militarily. Is the US’s economic support tied to its military actions?

2002-2012

Following the attacks on 9/11, the US made strategic efforts to address terrorism concerns. The Bush administration developed a plan to stop terrorists around the world, known as the Global War on Terror.

The Council on Foreign Relations, in its outline of US counter terrorism efforts, highlighted nine countries in which military action was taken following 2001. These countries are: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Niger.

Some of these countries experienced significant increases in US foreign aid during this time.

2013-2023

While countries like Yemen and Syria remain engaged in civil war, the nature of U.S. military involvement shifted in the countries where terrorism is a concern. The full withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 marked the end of the war, and US airstrikes in Iraq ended more than a decade earlier. Yet, economic foreign aid continued to grow in countries that had been a concern for US national security just a few years ago.

President Trump’s 2016 travel ban targeted several Muslim-majority countries including Somalia and Yemen, but they still ranked among the fastest-growing recipients of U.S. nonmilitary aid.

It’s worth considering not just where the aid goes, but how it’s being used.

Aid by Category

The OECD, which tracks aid from major donrs globally, defines 10 categories for dividing international aid, which the US government applies to its reporting. Of the ten aid categories, three dominate total aid spending across nations: Governance, Health and Population, and Humanitarian.

While official definitions of each category are unclear, humanitarian aid could reflect responses to conflict, displacement, or disaster.

Aid to Counter Terrorism Areas

In countries where the U.S. has conducted counterterrorism operations, humanitarian aid often makes up the largest share of total aid recieved.

This raises the question: Is the U.S. offering humanitarian assistance to the same countries it has attacked or destabilized?

Story Ideas

  • How dependent on US foreign aid is a country relative to its overall economy (GNI) or government budget?

  • In what other ways do US national interests (tariffs, travel bans) affect/relate to how foreign aid is spent?

  • How has and how could the recent shutdown of USAID affect US foreign aid and those who are most supported by it?