Which agencies will Trump eliminate?

USAID is a particularly plausible target in a Trump administration because it sits at the intersection of foreign aid skepticism, administrative centralization, and longstanding conservative criticism of the agency’s mission. If the White House is determined to shrink or absorb it, there are several paths that could amount to elimination in practice: severe budget cuts, transferring functions into the State Department, or simply hollowing out the agency until it no longer operates as an independent entity. That makes the Yes case meaningfully real, especially over a multi-year horizon with a cooperative Congress or a sustained executive push.

At the same time, full elimination is harder than rhetoric suggests. USAID was created by statute, its programs are deeply embedded in appropriations and foreign policy machinery, and outright abolition would likely require congressional action or a durable legal workaround that survives court review and changes in political control. Even a hostile administration may prefer to pressure, merge, or underfund it rather than complete a legally clean elimination. Historically, agencies this entrenched are easier to weaken than to erase, which caps the probability below a coin flip.

Relative to the current market price of 26% Yes, I think the market is somewhat underestimating the chance of a de facto or formal elimination. A 26% price implies the market sees this as a low-probability, mostly symbolic threat, but the combination of ideological hostility, executive power, and the long time window before 2029 gives the Yes side more room than that. I would still keep the probability well below 50% because Congress and the courts are serious obstacles, but the market appears a bit too conservative on how far a determined administration could go.