Vast supplies of U.S. aid remain stranded, despite State Department promises

Source: Washington Post

August 2, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDT


“DESTROY” stickers were affixed this week to hundreds of cases of U.S.-branded food aid — 15,000 pounds’ worth — that have languished for months in a Georgia warehouse and then expired before they could be sent overseas to famine-stricken areas like Sudan.

And Mana Nutrition’s warehouse holds plenty more of the peanut paste, a crucial element in treating malnutrition. A $50 million supply has been stacked for months in the nonprofit’s facility in Pooler, a short drive from Savannah, caught in the chaos as the Trump administration upended foreign aid and never shipped.

The food could still help 60 million people, Mana estimates. “This is a giant glut,” chief operating officer David Todd Harmon said. “All contracted. All bought and paid for. It’s just not been picked up.” A State Department memo in late May signaled that more than 60,000 metric tons of commodities were sitting in warehouses in the United States and around the world and that an “urgent” plan would begin to shift some of it.

The logjam followed the Trump administration’s breakneck dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, slashing more than 80 percent of its programming and laying off all but a tiny fraction of its staffers. The agency’s doors officially closed July 1. Those cuts deeply disrupted a once-robust pipeline that funneled more than $1 billion in commodities and nutritional supplements to crisis zones globally.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/08/02/usaid-expired-food-supplies-malnutrition/