Discover how Trump’s 2025 re election impacts global development and how the King’s online MSc helps professionals navigate the change.
This guest post is by Professor Andy Sumner, Programme Leader for the online International Development MSc.
The re-election of Donald Trump in 2025 has created one of the sharpest shocks to global development cooperation in decades. The United States which was for long the largest aid donor and a cornerstone of multilateral governance has withdrawn from key institutions, cut budgets, and even dismantled USAID’s operations.
The humanitarian fallout is severe: peacekeeping zeroed out, health programmes suspended, and global coordination mechanisms weakened. For professionals in government ministries, NGOs, policy think tanks, and aid agencies this is not simply a US policy shift. It represents a deeper tipping point for global development cooperation.
What does the Trump era mean for global development?
A recent discussion paper argues that Trumpism is more than aid retrenchment. It represents a reordering of the rules of development cooperation. Development assistance is now framed as a tool of ideological conditionality, demanding alignment with US domestic priorities rather than support for shared global goals. This new “Dissensus” undermines decades of consensus on effectiveness and multilateral cooperation.
On the one hand, the retreat of the United States from multilateralism has increased the danger of new dependencies. Without the relative stability that US aid once provided, many governments face heightened exposure to transactional deals in which development cooperation is tied directly to geopolitical bargaining. This can leave countries exposed to sudden shifts political priorities and to the pressures of great-power competition.
On the other hand, the vacuum created by the US withdrawal has also opened up new political space. Stronger regional ties, mini-lateralism, and South–South partnerships are becoming more attractive, offering governments the chance to pursue development cooperation on terms that reflect their own priorities.
Expanded collaboration with emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil, and others may provide alternative sources of finance and technology. These opportunities are not without challenges, but they signal a growing possibility for the Global South to assert more agency in shaping the future.
Overall, it is clear that global development and geopolitics can no longer be seen as separated. Development cooperation is now a frontline of international competition, with consequences for poverty reduction, inequality, and sustainability.
Why does it matter?
The current crisis carries profound implications for those working in broad area of international development. The first and most urgent are the humanitarian consequences. With aid budgets cut and multilateral responses weakened, critical programmes in health and food security are already under strain. Studies suggest that millions of preventable deaths could occur by 2030 as a direct result of these cuts.
Second, the institutional landscape that once provided a degree of predictability is unravelling. Long-standing assumptions about multilateralism and coordination can no longer be taken for granted.
Institutions that previously helped align strategies and maintain standards of effectiveness may struggle to retain legitimacy in the face of political retrenchment and contestation of policy norms. For policy makers and practitioners, this means operating in an environment where the rules are less clear, partnerships less reliable, and outcomes more uncertain.
Yet the crisis is not only about erosion; it is also about transformation. New formats of cooperation are continuing to emerge. Progressive governments are exploring forms of “like-minded internationalism,” seeking to align policies across borders in defense of inclusive multilateralism.
Middle powers are experimenting with more flexible, ‘club’ arrangements that allow them to act collectively. Meanwhile, institutions such as the BRICS-based New Development Bank are offering alternative sources of finance and governance models.
For practitioners, this signals a shift from a development cooperation system dominated by Western donors to a more plural landscape in which different approaches to development coexist and compete.
How the King’s online MSc in International Development helps you make sense of it all
The MSc International Development (Online) at King’s College London is designed to equip professionals with the tools to analyse and respond to exactly these kind of global challenges.
The programme offers you:
- Analytical frameworks to understand how development happens and is contested, and reshaped.
- Applied learning that helps you understand current debates for example on development cooperation, climate, the debt crises, or trade conflicts.
- Global perspectives through a diverse online cohort of students working in governments, NGOs, and organisations worldwide.
And the MSc is led by academics actively engaged in seeking to contribute to these policy debates. For example, faculty research includes analyses of potential futures of development cooperation and presentation of the policy options.
As a student, you can join these conversations, gaining insight into how scholarship informs real-world strategy.
Why study now?
In an era of disruption, the demand for professionals who can think analytically and act strategically is greater than ever. If you are already working in an NGO, think tank, ODA agency, or a government ministry in the Global South, this MSc offers the chance to strengthen your research skills, and build your international network. And if you are seeking a career pivot it will help you position yourself to seek a that shift and respond to the issues of the moment.
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