UK foreign aid cuts set to be deeper than Trump’s slashing of US funds
Britain is on track to cut its overseas aid budget further and faster than the Trump administration, new analysis shows.
While Washington spent the past year locked in a political fight over the future of foreign aid, lawmakers in the US Congress ultimately resisted some of the White House’s most dramatic cuts. Westminster, by contrast, has seen less resistance to cuts that would significantly shrink Britain’s global footprint.
according to Analysis by the Center for Global Development think tankThe United Kingdom is expected to reduce Official Development Assistance (ODA) by about 27 percent in 2026-27 compared to 2024-25, while U.S. development spending will fall by about 23 percent over the same period after Congress softened some of the deeper cuts proposed by President Donald Trump, including disbanding the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“In the United States, the Trump administration has made dramatic changes to the US aid architecture and cut international aid spending, but Congress has shown a willingness to push back on the deepest cuts, stipulating in the last spending agreement that support for international aid will continue,” said Ian Mitchell, co-director of the Europe program at the Center for Global Development. “But in the UK, parliamentarians have so far shown little resistance to plans to impose drastic cuts.”
The analysis is flawed because the two countries measure aid differently and operate on different fiscal calendars; but the contradiction is striking given the ruling Labor Party’s historical support for Britain’s international development spending.
To make the comparison fair, the researchers stripped out parts of US spending such as military support for allies including Egypt, Israel and Taiwan, and excluded aid Britain uses to house refugees within the country, saying including those costs would not significantly change the overall trend.
Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at UK aid network Bond, said of the analysis: “The pace and extent of the UK’s withdrawal from international development commitments is already having devastating consequences for millions of people around the world, especially the most marginalized groups, including women and children.”
He added that the cuts represented the “shargest fall in budgets” of any G7 country between 2024 and 202 and risked damaging Britain’s credibility abroad.
This follows the UK government’s decision to reduce aid spending from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of gross national income (GNI); this was a justified move to help fund higher defense spending in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The last time this aid was 0.3 percent of GNP or below It was in 1999At a time when there is much less conflict around the world and nearly 600 million people face chronic hunger. compared to 735 million today.
Mr Rabinowitz said the UK aid budget was a “smart and strategic investment” that “helps prevent future pandemics, supports fragile states in building peace and strengthens our climate security”. He called on the government to “urgently recommit to an ambitious international development agenda” at a time of increasing global instability.
This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project
