Within five days of swearing in as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump passed an executive order immediately suspending all US operations in Bangladesh. In an order dated January 25, 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) directed its implementing partners to immediately halt all the existing contracts, grants, and assistance programmes in Bangladesh citing an executive order by President Trump.

“The letter serves as a directive to all USAID/Bangladesh Implementing Partners to immediately stop, cease and/or suspend any work performed under your respective USAID/Bangladesh contact, task, order, grant, cooperative agreement or other acquisition or assistance instrument”, read the notice.
It further states that “Partners shall take all reasonable steps to minimize the incurrence of costs allocable to their awards. Partners shall not resume work under their awards until notification has been received in writing from the Contracting/Agreement Officer that this award Stop Work Order / Suspension has been cancelled.”
The US is the leading contributor of humanitarian assistance in response to the Rohingya crisis and has contributed around $2.4 billion since 2017. The development comes as a major setback for the Muhammad Yunus-led Bangladesh government as the country is already facing major financial crisis.
The suspension reportedly is part of a broader review of foreign aid allocation being carried out under a comprehensive ‘stop-work’ order issued by the US State Department on Friday. The order drafted by the Department’s foreign assistance office and approved by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio affects all existing foreign assistance with the exception of military financing to Israel and Egypt. No specific reasons were provided for the order.
Trump is reviewing all US foreign assistance
Within hours of assuming office 2on 0th January, President Trump passed an order imposing a 90-day moratorium on US foreign development assistance pending a review of the efficiencies and consistency of his policy. The scope of the order, however, was not immediately known.
The order is likely to cut billions of dollars of assistance. The US is the world’s single largest donor of global aid. It allocated around &72 billion in assistance in 2023 alone. The order comes as a major setback for Bangladesh as the country struggles to restore normalcy since the violent revolution last year that overthrew the Sheikh Hasina government.