Blog | 10/24/2025

Sharp Strategy Spotlight

Trump is cutting foreign aid. He’s not the only one.

President Donald Trump has taken an ax to global health funding and cooperation since returning to the White House in January — and what worries public health advocates is that he isn’t the only one chipping away.
In Europe, nine countries, including the biggest donors, are slashing foreign aid and no one is stepping up to fill the void.
While the Covid pandemic underscored the world’s vulnerability to contagions, it hasn’t yielded new investments many global health advocates say are needed to do better next time.
In fact, the opposite: Overall global health funding has dropped precipitously — to a 15-year low in 2025 — as nations focus on other priorities.
After a Covid spike that saw funding rise to $80 billion in 2021, overall global health funding has plummeted to just under $40 billion, according to a July report by the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Just in the last year, America cut 67 percent of its funding, or more than $9 billion; followed by the U.K., which cut nearly 40 percent; and France, with a 33 percent cut, the same report shows.
Analysis: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/19/gobal-health-trump-rfk-who-tedros-00613700
Report: https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/financing-global-health-2025-cuts-aid-and-future-outlook
Nature press: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03384-y
and more...