Read this through, because what you are about to see is not a collection of opinions. It is a documented record of what US policy decisions have cost the world over the past 15 months.
- Child mortality is rising for the first time this century.
- The global state-based armed conflict count hit a 70-year record.
- Allies are sitting in Beijing looking for alternatives.
☰ Table of Contents
- 1. The Human Cost of US Policy Decisions: What the Data Shows
- 2. USAID Cuts and Child Mortality: One Year of Consequences
- 3. US Tariffs 2025: Who Is Actually Paying the Cost
- 4. 2026 Actions That Have No Precedent
- 5. Policy Criticism and Response: Real Problems vs. Disproportionate Solutions
- 6. Conclusion
- 7. Frequently Asked Questions (Faqs)
US foreign policy decisions in 2025 and 2026 have produced measurable consequences across global health, trade, and international security. This is not a collection of opinions; it is a documented record of what those decisions have cost, drawn from The Lancet, the Gates Foundation, UNCTAD, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
You can agree or disagree with the policies. But the consequences are already in the data, and the data is not going away.
The Human Cost of US Policy Decisions: What the Data Shows
| What the US Did | The Documented Consequence |
|---|---|
| Cancelled 83% of USAID programs | 762,000+ deaths estimated in the first year alone, including 500,000+ children |
| Cut global health aid by nearly 27% in one year | Child mortality rose for the first time this century: 200,000 extra deaths under five in 2025 |
| Imposed 22.5% average tariffs, the highest since 1909 | At their April 2025 peak, the tariffs were estimated to cost the average US household $3,800 in purchasing power (Yale Budget Lab, April 2025). As tariff rates subsequently shifted through negotiations and court rulings, later estimates were lower. |
| Used tariffs as leverage against NATO allies | Canada and the UK made independent trips to Beijing; the EU fast-tracked trade deals with India and Latin America |
| Withdrew from 66 international organizations | Removed the US from climate panels, democracy bodies, labor and migration frameworks, and 63 other multilateral institutions. Separately, the last US-Russia arms control treaty, New START, expired in early 2026 with no replacement talks underway. |
| Militarily captured Venezuelan president Maduro | The January 3 operation was condemned internationally; it set a precedent for unilateral action against sovereign states |
The Peace Research Institute Oslo has recorded more state-based armed conflicts in 2024 and 2025 than at any point in the past 70 years.
In its 2026 forecasting, PRIO projects the greatest number of battle-related deaths this year in Ukraine, Sudan, Israel, and Palestine. All four of these are conflicts the US has publicly said it wants to end. None of them ended (Chicago Council on Global Affairs, January 2026).
USAID Cuts and Child Mortality: One Year of Consequences
USAID managed approximately $44 billion in its own budget in fiscal year 2023, while total US foreign assistance across all agencies reached around $72 billion that year, together accounting for less than 1% of the US federal budget. That is around $105 per American per year. The agency was operating in 130 countries and, according to a June 2025 Lancet study, analyzing 133 countries from 2001 to 2021, had helped prevent 91 million deaths over those two decades.
On January 20, 2025, an executive order froze all foreign aid. By March, 83% of USAID programs were cancelled. By July, the agency was formally dismantled.
One year on, here is what CIDRAP's January 2026 ImpactCounter data shows:
- More than 762,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of the cuts
- Over 500,000 of those are children
- More than 164,000 additional child deaths from pneumonia
- More than 125,000 additional child deaths from diarrhoea
- More than 158,000 adult deaths from HIV/AIDS after PEPFAR programs were halted
Child Mortality Reversal
The Gates Foundation's December 2025 Goalkeepers report confirmed that 4.8 million children died under five in 2025, up from 4.6 million the year before. That 200,000 increase reversed a trend that had been falling every single year since 2000. The first rise in child mortality this century happened in 2025.
The Human Cost
Boston University professor Brooke Nichols said it plainly: “Sometimes we talk about numbers. A percent increase. What is a percent? It's a human. It could be your child.”
Missing Justification
The review that was supposed to justify all of these cuts was promised on day one. By February 2026, no findings had ever been published (CFR, February 2026).
Expanded Global Gag Rule
In January 2026, the US also massively expanded the global gag rule, applying restrictions on abortion-related speech to nearly $39.8 billion in foreign assistance, far beyond the $7.3 billion affected in the previous version. This went into effect on February 26, 2026 (Guttmacher Institute, March 2026).
Projected Deaths by 2030
The February 2026 Lancet Global Health follow-up study, covering combined US and European cuts, now projects between 9.4 and 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030 if the current defunding trend continues.
US Tariffs 2025: Who Is Actually Paying the Cost
On April 2, 2025, the White House announced Liberation Day tariffs. The US average tariff rate hit 22.5%, the highest since 1909 and more restrictive than at any point in 110 years, as measured by tariff revenue as a share of GDP.
A few things worth knowing that most coverage skipped over:
- The EU was hit with a 20% tariff justified by a claimed $300 billion trade deficit. The EU pointed out the real figure, including services, was closer to €50 billion
- Least developed countries saw their trade-weighted average tariff double to 27% by September 2025 (UNCTAD)
- Brazil was hit with an extra 40% tariff, not because of trade imbalances, but because of how it handled its own domestic social media policies and prosecution of a former political figure (UNCTAD, 2025)
Using trade policy to punish a country for its internal legal decisions is economic coercion by most definitions. If China or Russia did it to a US ally, that is exactly what it would be called.
The Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that all tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were unlawful, invalidating the Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs and the fentanyl-related tariffs.
Tariffs imposed under other legal authorities, including those on steel, aluminium, and autos, remained in effect. Within hours of the ruling, Trump imposed a new 10% global tariff under a different legal authority, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, and announced the following day his intention to raise it to 15%, the maximum allowed under that statute (Supreme Court, February 2026).
Meanwhile, the allies who absorbed these tariffs are not sitting still:
- Canada's Prime Minister visited Beijing
- The UK's Prime Minister visited Beijing
- The EU accelerated trade deals with India and Latin America that had stalled for years
CFR Senior Fellow Zongyuan Zoe Liu wrote in early 2026 that China has positioned itself as a more stable, pro-free trade alternative to the United States in the eyes of many countries. That sentence would have been unthinkable ten years ago.
2026 Actions That Have No Precedent
Venezuela Operation
The Venezuela operation on January 3, 2026, deserves its own paragraph. US military forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and took him to New York to stand trial. Supporters of the action say it removed an authoritarian. Critics point out that it was an invasion of a sovereign nation without UN authorization and without a declaration of war, setting a precedent that other powers are watching very carefully.
Withdrawal from International Organizations
The same week, Trump announced withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation. The last remaining arms control treaty between the US and Russia, which sets limits on deployed nuclear warheads, is set to expire in 2026. No replacement talks are reportedly underway (Chicago Council on Global Affairs, January 2026).
Diplomatic Corps Breakdown
The American Foreign Service Association's late 2025 survey of 2,100 active-duty diplomats found 98% reported reduced morale and 86% said recent changes had undermined their ability to carry out US foreign policy. The institution built to represent US interests globally is, by its own members' account, being hollowed out.
Policy Criticism and Response: Real Problems vs. Disproportionate Solutions
Legitimate Policy Frustrations
These are real institutional problems that have existed for decades:
- USAID had genuine efficiency problems that warranted reform
- The dependency model of foreign aid has thoughtful critics who are not cynics
- China's manufacturing subsidies genuinely distort global trade
- NATO members underspent on collective defence for years
These are not invented talking points. They are real policy frustrations that have built up over decades.
The Core Disagreement
The disagreement is not about whether these problems existed. It is about whether the response to them was measured, planned, and proportionate to the consequences it would produce.
Disproportionate Responses
Life-Saving Program Cuts
Cancelling 83% of life-saving programs with no published justification review is not reform. Hitting every trading partner simultaneously, including the closest allies, with record-level tariffs, is not trade negotiation. Withdrawing from 66 international organizations in a week is not burden-shifting. These are discontinuities, and discontinuities at this scale produce casualties.
Conclusion
The world is less stable now than it was 18 months ago across almost every measurable indicator.
- Armed conflicts are at a 70-year record.
- Child mortality went up for the first time this century.
- The US has withdrawn from the multilateral institutions it spent 80 years building.
- Close allies are actively diversifying away from American economic dependence.
None of that is speculation. It is documented by independent research institutions, peer-reviewed journals, and the US government's own diplomatic corps.
You can argue these disruptions are necessary, that the old system was broken beyond repair, that short-term pain produces long-term gain. Those arguments exist, and they have advocates.
What is harder to defend is the specific claim that pulling funding that was preventing 91 million deaths over 20 years, without a plan, without a review, without a replacement, makes the world more secure.
The countries most damaged by these choices are not the ones with the leverage to push back. They are in South Sudan, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and sub-Saharan Africa, where the clinics closed in January 2025 and have not reopened.