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2mo ago

Trump Administration Moves to Shut Down Millennium Challenge Corporation

The U.S. foreign aid agency is set to close all programs, leaving only an acting CEO as staff reductions and project terminations proceed under the Department of Government Efficiency.

White House Senior Advisor Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) on March 9, 2025 in Washington, DC.
A view in 2012 of the Chalatenango Tech Institute in El Salvador, built with funding by the US Millennium Challenge Corporation with the goal of improving opportunities in the country's poor northern region
Police personnel use water cannon to disperse demonstrators in Kathmandu against a project of the US Millennium Challenge Corporation in February 2022
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Overview

  • The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), founded in 2004 to promote economic growth in developing countries, is being dismantled as part of a broader federal downsizing initiative led by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
  • All MCC programs are being terminated, with limited extensions granted for projects in Ivory Coast, Mongolia, Nepal, and Senegal to ensure safety at construction sites or near-completion work.
  • MCC employees, numbering around 300, have until April 29 to accept early retirement or deferred resignation offers, or face administrative leave starting May 5; only the acting CEO will remain to meet statutory requirements.
  • The closure of MCC, which has invested $17 billion in infrastructure and policy reform projects across over 50 countries, is raising concerns over the U.S. ceding influence to China, particularly in countering its Belt and Road Initiative.
  • This move follows the dismantling of USAID and other foreign aid agencies, sparking bipartisan alarm over the strategic, humanitarian, and legal implications of the administration’s aggressive reduction of U.S. foreign assistance programs.