As the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officially ceases its foreign assistance programmes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a newsletter from the US State Department, chastised the agency for creating a global “NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense” and treating its programmes as charitable work rather than “instruments of American foreign policy” intended to advance American national interests. He added that countries that benefited from USAID failed to appreciate the US’s generosity, and that any future assistance will be aligned with an America First foreign policy.