One year after USAID cuts, Jordan’s reliance on Washington is laid bare

Hidden multipliers

The US has been Jordan’s largest external backer for decades, providing more than $33.3 billion in total economic and military aid since the 1950s and accounting for more than 40 per cent of the kingdom’s annual official assistance, according to the US Congressional Research Service.

That support expanded sharply in recent years, with a seven-year agreement signed in 2022 committing Washington to $1.45 billion a year in aid until 2029, much of it channelled into civilian budget support and USAID-run development programmes.

Yet Congress stated in its 2025 report on Jordan that recent pauses and reviews of federal funding, staff recalls and the reorganisation of US agencies may affect their implementation.

When USAID funding came to a sudden halt for Jordan in late January 2025, during the new Trump administration's broader withdrawal of foreign assistance, it caused irreversible damage but also sent an important message to Jordan.

"Foreign assistance should not be sustainable unless it's your plan to keep Jordan dependent," said the Jordan-based NGO executive. "Now we know it [a halt to US support] is a possibility".

The Democratic Arab Centre, an independent Egyptian research institute, argues Jordan’s dependence is deliberate. It says US foreign assistance is “one of the essential tools the United States uses to enhance its political and economic influence". The institute adds that aid can lock in asymmetric relationships by tying recipients’ fiscal stability and regime security to continued American support.

Development specialists in Jordan say this dynamic became evident in the domino effect caused a year later by the halt of US-funded projects, which rippled through civil society, stalled modernisation efforts and weighed on future growth.

Brain drain

The most far-reaching impact of the USAID cuts is the collapse of Jordan’s development workforce, according to recent reports.

Jordan, the third-largest recipient of USAID funding after Ukraine and Ethiopia between 2021 to 2025, lost about 35,000 workers (both Jordanian and American) across public institutions, private-sector organisations, contractors and partner agencies working on USAID projects, said a report by US non-profit organisation Anera last May.

Of them, 18,000 Jordanians work directly on USAID projects, an American company executive said, quoting information shared by the US agency. These people will probably leave the country, he added.

“They are highly technical people who have amazing expertise that the Jordanian market cannot absorb,” he said. They included renewable energy engineers, waste management specialists, development focused investment consultants and more.

"These experts often left highly paid jobs with the big four [Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG] and came to Jordan specifically because USAID projects could offer competitive salaries.”

With funding frozen, the labour market shock has caused emigration. The Jordanian market could absorb about “5 per cent of these people who lost their jobs, but not more", he said. “One major implementing partner let go of 62 staff in a single morning.”

The economic ripple effect extends well beyond employment. These workers are upper middle-income and described as “the biggest spenders in the economy". Their consumption supports education, housing, banking and services, said the NGO executive.

The crisis directly undermined financial confidence. When USAID payments stopped, US banks froze lines of credit. “No US banks now would lend to us … because it was literally US government-backed lending … and now there’s a risk of default.”

At macro level, the income shock is substantial. “Losing USAID-linked salaries alone is roughly 1.5 per cent of GDP,” he said – and this is a conservative estimate.

“That adds to the multiplier effect of each dollar that USAID spends on these projects. Each $1 translates into three, four or five into Jordan’s economy," he said.

Ripples hit the most vulnerable

In the legal aid sector, Hadeel Abdel Aziz, executive director of the Justice Centre for Legal Aid (JCLA), said the US halt had created a “ripple effect” hitting organisations that were not direct USAID beneficiaries.

“Anyone working with the UN, they were impacted,” she said. “The UNHCR … stopped many projects that were being funded. We had projects from other donors, but they were also stopped because the original donor was the US.”

Ms Abdel Aziz believes that in some capacity, donors were following in the footsteps of the US. “There was this kind of feeling that … they were not going to fill the gaps [of the US this time]. They wanted to show that the ball was dropped,” she explained.

Overall official development assistance (ODA) from European donors declined sharply after years of growth, with total ODA falling by about 9 per cent in 2024 and projected to drop by a further 9 to 17 per cent in 2025, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. While these figures do not specify cuts to individual country programmes, the multilateral data underlines a broader retreat in development funding that has affected availability across sectors and regions.

The effect was immediate on refugee protection services, gender-based violence case management, and legal representation for women and children collapsed across the country. Vulnerable people are now waiting months to see a lawyer, if they can get one at all, said Ms Abdel Aziz. “Some organisations had to shut their work in Jordan permanently.”

Clinic closes

At the Institute for Family Health, which serves vulnerable Jordanians and refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, director Dr Ibrahim Aqel described a loss of “40 to 45 per cent of the ability and the capacity to provide services across Jordan” as a result of the USAID cuts in early 2025.

The indirect losses were even larger, he said. As UN agencies and NGOs scaled back, services for children with disabilities, refugees and survivors of violence were abruptly halted. Dr Aqel pointed to a hearing-testing and hearing-aid programme for children that survived until May 2025. After that it could not bear the cost any more and shut down, leaving up to 25 per cent of its 14,000 beneficiaries in the lurch.

Dr Aqel warns that when health, child protection, or domestic violence are not dealt with, the full consequences will not be visible for years. “We will start seeing more crimes, maybe more vulnerability … maybe more, even, disabilities, because we’re not solving the need once it’s needed," he said, adding this is a threat to Jordan's security.

"Delaying the response sometimes leads to more complicated consequences.”

Jordan’s already strained social protection system, Dr Aqel said, is entering dangerous territory: “You cannot separate health of certain group of people without talking about the total society health.”

Forced to change

Jordan’s civil society sector has been forced into survival mode following the suspension and reduction of US funding, with organisations desperately trying to plug sudden budget gaps, cut costs and suspend projects, according to a senior executive at a large Jordanian non-profit.

The funding shock, caused by cuts linked to USAID and the US embassy, led to the NGO's immediate suspension of eight programmes across health, disability support and cultural services, the executive said. Several of the projects were funded indirectly through international NGOs and UN-linked partners, meaning the scale of exposure only became clear after contracts were abruptly halted.

In response, the organisation tried to diversify its funding base, reaching out to Arab foundations, development funds and wealthy people abroad.

They said more progress was made with non-US partners and local partners such as national commissions, alongside continued collaboration with a small number of UN agencies. "We now have leads with European partners as well,” the executive said. Unicef and the International Labour Organisation were among the few multilateral partners able to maintain funding, while other UN agencies and international NGOs scaled back or exited programmes entirely.

In the weeks after the cuts, the UN agency lost about 1.2 million Jordanian dinars in annual revenue, forcing it to freeze hiring, restructure contracts and sharply reduce operational spending. While emergency outreach helped recover between 60 and 70 per cent of the lost funding, an executive with knowledge of the agency's work cautioned that they were not safe yet. “We are stable for this year, but not shock-proof,” they said.

The funding disruption has also driven significant internal restructuring. “Now we’re looking into optimisation of resources,” the executive said, explaining that the organisation reassessed job responsibilities, halted new hiring and reduced operational overheads. “We became very rigid about spending,” they added, citing cuts to transport, fuel, electricity and other day-to-day expenses.

Staffing practices have shifted towards short-term contracts to manage risk. “Our hiring practices now – it’s project-based, short term, just in case any suspension of funding happens,” the executive said. “We really worked on the revenue side and the cost factor … and we worked on both,” they added, describing the dual approach as essential to maintaining operations.

Despite these measures, services for people with disabilities have not returned to pre-cut levels, with the organisation operating at about 60 per cent capacity, they said. Cultural and arts programmes were among the hardest hit, as families facing economic pressure withdrew children from music, theatre and dance classes, leading to a sharp drop in revenue.

The organisation also laid off about 100 staff members and saw a decline in volunteers, with the executive warning of longer-term consequences if funding uncertainty persists.