DOGE Goes to Europe

The US and European govt's both cut 'development aid', but only DOGE gets a bad reputation for doing so: talk about double standards and hypocrisy…

Oh my, you’ll appreciate the irony below, of that I’m convinced…

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine (as is the Schadenfreude).

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100 Days of Trump—1,000 Layoffs: This is How Hard the Cutbacks in Development Aid are Hitting Swiss NGOs

The USA is cutting a large share of its funding for humanitarian projects—with consequences for numerous Swiss aid organisations. A survey has now revealed the extent in terms of personnel and funding for the first time.

By Julia Spoerri, Aargauer Zeitung, 29 April 2025 [source]

Donald Trump hates spending on USAID with a vengeance—his cuts trigger protests.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Swiss aid organisations have cut almost 1,000 jobs. This is because the US government has massively cut the funding of the US development agency USAID, which finances projects worldwide.

Now that individual Swiss NGOs have already reported on the consequences of the cutbacks, an overview of the sector as a whole is available for the first time. Alliance Sud, the Swiss competence centre for international cooperation and development policy, presented the results of a survey completed by 24 Swiss non-governmental organisations in Geneva on Tuesday [predictably, no legacy media outlet links to this content directly, lest the readers might go for the ‘original’ information instead of second-hand write-ups: here is the piece, which I’ll also discuss in more detail below].

USA Has Not Yet Paid its Debts

The participating NGOs have laid off sixty people in Switzerland as a result of the USAID cuts, some jobs have not been advertised as planned and at least 891 employees abroad have been made redundant. Countries such as Burkina Faso, Uganda, and Bangladesh were affected [remember: this piece is about Swiss NGOs]. ‘None of us had anticipated the brutal shutdown’, said Andreas Missbach, managing director of Alliance Sud. He also emphasised that the situation remains unpredictable.

According to the survey, seven organisations are currently waiting for payments from the USA for projects that have already been implemented, amounting to the equivalent of over 12 million Swiss francs. Another five NGOs had to cancel projects totalling CHF 20 million [here’s a question for all you intrepid journos™ out there: if an NGO = non-governmental organisation requires gov’t funding, what would that make of the NGO™ (answer: a GONGO, of course)].

The Terre des hommes foundation has been hit hard. It cut over 400 jobs abroad because 10% of its expenditure depended on the USA [see what I mean? The first jobs that are cut by these GONGOs are aid workers abroad, not the plum admin/management positions in Switzerland: I do wonder what the ratio of job losses would be, i.e., how many such Swiss jobs™ would have to be cut to save the same amount of money spent on aid workers in, say, Burkina Faso, Ugandam and Bangladesh]. ‘The consequences for the organisation are huge, but the biggest impact is on the people we help [one should probably add a ™ to the word help™]: weakened and vulnerable people who are now even more vulnerable’, emphasised Barbara Hintermann, director of the children’s rights organisation [Terre des hommes]. She warned that fatalities could be expected as a result of the cuts [I can see the NYT et al. headlines already: ‘You’ve got blood on your hands, Mr. President’ (while casually disregarding the dead Trump’s strikes on Yemen caused)].

Overall, the 24 Swiss aid organisations estimate that they will no longer be able to reach around 3 million people in need as a result of the lack of USAID funding. In the area of health projects, for example, this could result in the spread of diseases such as malaria [huhum, where is Bill Gates when one ‘needs’ his generosity™: watch this clip].

Solidarity Among the Population is Not Enough

The situation is also tense because the American cuts are not the only ones: due to rising military spending, several European countries have reduced funding for development aid, including Switzerland in December [oh, would you look at that kind of shit-peddling]. According to Alliance Sud, the available funds for Swiss aid organisations will be reduced by a total of CHF 100 million in 2025 [here, it would be good to provide information about how much of the total that would be—but that’s something I can provide you with, courtesy of Swissinfo.ch:

In May 2024, the government requested CHF 11.27 billion ($12.4 billion) to meet Switzerland’s international development ambitions between 2025 and 2028. The spending ceiling was capped to maximum spend of CHF 11.12 by parliament. This compares to a CHF 11.25 billion budget for the 2021-2024 period.

So, the gov’t requested 11.27b Swiss Francs (2025-28) vs. 11.25b for 2021-24: a drastic cutback—100m less are somewhere in the realm of 1.4% less over three years: yes, that’s not nothing, but it’s not the end of the world (except for those lower-level staffer whose CVs read ‘int’l development aid specialist’ or the like. Back to the Aargauer Zeitung’s piece]

The sector is desperately looking for new sources of funding—well aware of the Herculean task. Have private donors at least shown themselves to be more generous in the sense of an anti-Trump effect?

‘We feel that solidarity is increasing, but that can never fill the gaps’, replied Karolina Frischkopf, director of the aid organisation Heks. It sounded the same at Terre des hommes. According to director Hintermann, the organisation is preparing to be ‘smaller’ in future—with a budget of around 80 million Swiss francs instead of the previous 100 million.

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Bottom Lines

Here’s a comment/statement (dated 20 March 2025) by Terre des hommes director Andreas Missbach, courtesy of their website; it’s in English, hence this is their lingo, and I shall restrain myself quoting a few choice snippets:

The dismantling of global US involvement must be of concern to Switzerland, writes Andreas Missbach. The repercussions on multilateralism and development cooperation and, by extension, on the poorest countries in particular, are serious [spare a crocodile tear for the NGO™ employees in Switzerland, if you would, and also, by extension, for the poorest of the poor]. Against this backdrop, the Federal Council cannot opt for business as usual…

[apparently, DOGE cutes caused] pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the US anti-corruption law. It is only thanks to the application of that law that we know the meaning of cash in Baar, which is that up until 2016, there was a counter at the Glencore headquarters where staff members could collect bribes. And thanks to that enforcement, Glencore was fined USD1.1 billion after admitting guilt. In the absence of this menacing posture by the ‘new sheriff in town’, there is great temptation to revert to tried and tested practices in commodity trading. This would have catastrophic ramifications for the poorest countries and their people.

That’s a fair point to raise, and it would be an interesting follow-up; we might do this before too long—here’s the Executive Order, and I’m for one marvelling at the fact that this has so far been de facto omitted from legacy media coverage.

According to media reports, the [Swiss] Federal Council had before it a discussion document that was believed to address the USA’s withdrawal from the WHO, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Paris Climate Agreement; it is understood that it also covered the implications of the ending of USAID payments. Yet the official statement made no mention of this, with the Federal Council opting instead for ‘business as usual’ [if you’re a vassal, you don’t get to piss off the hegemon for no good reason], and attempting the Swiss variant of ‘the art of the deal’: ‘Switzerland’s strategy must be to keep the doors open to the EU, the USA, and China.’ (State Secretary Helene Budliger Artieda, Director of State Secretariat for Economic Affairs).

While the dismantling of the world's largest development agency constitutes a hurricane in the Global South, in Switzerland it is still just a gale. Where is the political outrage? [is Mr. Missbach calling for agit-prop?] Vitally important projects [for whom?] by Swiss development agencies worth CHF 100 million can no longer be continued. Nothing will be the same as before.

As I mentioned, spare a thought/prayer for the poor.

And heap your ridicule/distaste on these GONGO™ people whose lives are now negatively affected.

Note, further, that this isn’t merely the evil™ Trump/Musk cabal who’s doing the cutting, it’s also most European countries, and everybody is doing so due to military spending.

In other words: Western priorities have shifted to ‘job production’ in a different sector, away from foreign/developmental aid.

I’m not sure what the long-term implications of this will be, but the short-term effect is—whining.

If you’re not out of crocodile tears, why don’t you shed some for the Swiss aid workers™ that are laid off. The (mis)fortunes of the poor are but an afterthought for those people.

What a shitshow.