Within a week’s time, US President Donald Trump has shaken up a large part of the world, including his own country by movs that included withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, prohibiting non-profit organizations that receive US aid from providing abortions, freezing US assistance for three months, and pausing all federal loans and grants (although that has been rescinded).

US aid recipients, including the Philippines, have been rattled by the “stop-work” order issued on 24 January by the US State Department on all existing foreign assistance and the temporary freezing of new aid following Trump’s order for a 90-day pause while all dollar support allocations are reviewed to ensure that these align with his foreign policy.

A confused President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. could only shake his head and say, “hindi pa maliwanag (not yet clear), it’s hard to comment on the freezing of the aid, it’s very unclear what it is,” when asked by reporters to comment on how the freeze on aid he would affect the Philippines.

The US is the world’s largest single aid donor; it shelled out $72 billion in 2023 to fund over 20,000 activities in 209 countries; last year, it disbursed aid totaling $41 billion for 15,000 projects in 206 countries.

Much of non-military humanitarian US funding assistance comes from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) which was organized in 1961 under the late President John F. Kennedy and which, today, operates in over 100 countries worldwide.

Last year, USAID received over $31 billion from the US Congress; for this year, the US State Department is asking for a $28.3 billion budget to maintain USAID’s funding for priority initiatives that include expanding US diplomacy and foreign assistance in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Philippines.

In nearly six-decades, USAID has disbursed assistance reaching nearly $5 billion in the Philippines, including $198 million in 2023 for projects related to health, governance, education, nutrition, the environment and the like. Last year, USAID gave the country some $180 million.

Of particular concern to the Marcos government, over and above USAID assistance, is the possible loss of half a billion dollars in US military assistance pledged by the US government six months ago.

In late July 2024, then US State Secretary Anthony Blinken announced the “allocation of $500 million in foreign military financing to the Philippines to boost security collaboration with our oldest treaty alley in the (Southeast Asian) region.”

The question is, how will this be affected by the freeze on US foreign assistance? Philippine foreign affairs officials say they’re monitoring developments on the matter, with Department of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega saying that despite the suspension, operations in the nine military facilities used by US forces in the Philippines as authorized by the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) designed to bolster US-Philippines alliance will, “in no way be affected.”

“The US does not have a reason to abandon the EDCA sites,” he said, pointing out that “these are in the interests of both the US and the Philippines." You hope.

John Andrew Byers, newly designated as Deputy Assistant State Secretary designated by Trump to oversee defense policy in South and Southeast Asia has suggested that perhaps, the US should consider using its military presence in the Philippines as leverage in undertaking negotiations with the Chinese.

That was the subject of Byers’ “Can the US and China Forge a Cold Peace,” a paper he wrote in December in which he posits that “the US might begin a cooperation spiral with China by proposing to remove US military forces or weapons systems from the Philippines in exchange for the China Coast Guard executing fewer patrols when operating in the shoal’s vicinity.”

Byers is also said to oppose slapping China with tariffs and other sanctions, suggesting instead the reduction of US military presence in Asia “to see if China reciprocates” in like manner.

That Trump would deal directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, leaving Marcos on the sidelines while the issue regarding China’s presence in Philippine waters is being handled is not a far-fetched thought.

Trump being Trump, who knows what he’s capable of doing? Other than his unpredictability, he could very well engage in rhetorics about continued engagement in Southeast Asia, while — who knows — disengaging in relative terms from the region, sealing trade-offs in the process, all in service of his “America First” policy interests?

Triumphant in his re-ascension to the presidency, he invited his Chinese counterpart to Washington. Xi Jinping didn’t go, sending Vice President Han Zheng instead, but the fact that Trump had asked him to his inaugural — despite all the abrasive sound-offs he’s made against China — makes one wonder, what could pygmies possibly do, if and when giants start to play their superpower games, with their self-interests in mind?