Millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptives that have been stranded in Belgium since the Trump administration dismantled American foreign aid are no longer usable, according to a newly obtained memo written for a Trump administration official.
About $9.7 million of contraceptives purchased by the United States Agency for International Development and originally destined for low-income nations in Africa got stuck in Belgium after the Trump administration shut down the agency last year.
Only $1.6 million of that was still viable as of September, according to the internal U.S.A.I.D. memo, which was obtained by The New York Times and verified as authentic by two government officials who spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter. The remaining $8.1 million had been transported and stored without refrigeration and could no longer be used, the memo shows.
Of the contraceptive supply that was still good in September, it is not clear how much is still usable six months later, since some of the listed items were near expiration even then.
The diplomatic and political impasse over the U.S.A.I.D. contraception stuck in Belgium has dragged out for a year with little hope for a resolution. It underscores the long-lived fallout of the Trump administration’s decision to abruptly defund and shutter the aid agency last year.
Along with previously obtained documents and interviews with government officials and nonprofit organizations, the memo, dated Sept. 15, 2025, shows how a mix of political concerns, fear of media attention and legal limitations left contraceptives going to waste across two warehouses.
“This situation is just crazy,” Barry Andrews, a member of the European Parliament who is the chairman of the International Development Committee, said in an email.
The document is an “action” memorandum, and is written in the name of Kenneth Jackson, a State Department official appointed to help disband U.S.A.I.D. It is addressed to Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the person in charge of shutting down the agency. The document lays out the government’s options for disposing of the contraception, including whether to incinerate the ruined stock and whether to pursue donating or selling the rest of the material.
It is unclear if the memo was ultimately sent, and if Mr. Vought received it.
Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vought and for U.S.A.I.D., declined to comment on the document on the record. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The memo shows that the government had been sitting on several ways of offloading the still usable contraceptives, including a possible option to give it to the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders. Yet officials were blunt about the optics of that choice. “As with all issues related to this matter, this carries the potential for additional media attention,” the document says.
Until last year, the United States had funded about 40 percent of contraceptives for people in low-income countries, and driven the market for development of new, long-acting contraceptive methods. The U.S. aid cuts were followed by deep reductions in aid from Britain, the other key funder. A recent study published in The Lancet Global Health projected that cuts to U.S.-supported contraceptive programs would leave up to 100 million people across 41 countries without access to contraception over the next five years.
Optical and political concerns have dogged potential plans to donate or sell the contraceptives stuck in Belgium from the start.
In February and March of last year, the government took major steps to demolish U.S.A.I.D. By early June, officials at the State Department had decided to burn all the contraceptives purchased by the agency that were housed in Belgium.
The contractor handling those supplies submitted a plan for destruction, which was supposed to be completed by Aug. 1, at a cost of about $170,000 in transport and incineration expenses, the memo shows.
At the time, the department said the contraceptives that had been flagged for burning were “abortifacient,” meaning that they worked by inducing abortion. None of the supplies registered for storage in the Belgian warehouse fit that description, based on inventory lists. The agency was forbidden by law to purchase such products.
In line with the destruction plan, 20 truckloads of contraceptives were moved from a warehouse in Geel, Belgium, to a burn site in Kallo, the memo shows. They were moved in trucks without refrigeration and then stored in a nonmedical overflow facility that lacked temperature control, after which they were unusable, the document says. Regional officials in Belgium have suggested that some of that load consisted of medical equipment that may still be usable.
The contraceptives were not destroyed by the planned date. On Aug. 6, American officials formally halted the plan for incineration.
The 20 truckloads in Kallo were then apparently stuck in a holding pattern. The four remaining trucks of contraceptives that had not yet been transported remained viable, the memo suggests, but they were stuck in Geel.
That same month, Doctors Without Borders contacted the U.S. government’s contractor to express interest in taking control of the still usable contraceptives, the memo states.
The Belgian government had also become deeply involved in the situation. According to the memo, the Flemish authorities informed American officials in September that the contraceptives could not be destroyed. Local regulations prohibit the burning of usable medication.
The question now is what comes next. The Trump administration’s ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, did not respond to questions about the contraception.
Jeanne Shaheen, a senator from New Hampshire and a Democrat who has closely followed the case, said in an email that it was “unconscionable and wasteful for the Trump administration to leave nearly $10 million in taxpayer-funded family planning commodities to expire in warehouses rather than making them available to the vulnerable women who need them to survive and support healthy families.”
Mihir Mankad, global health advocacy and policy director for the U.S. branch of Doctors Without Borders, said the organization remained willing to distribute the supplies that were still viable.
The organization “maintains its willingness to support a transfer of the supplies to the places that need them most and avoid the loss of these vital items if agreements can be made between the different governments concerned,” Mr. Mankad said in an email.
He said his group did not know why its offer to help had not moved forward.
The U.S. government has continued to pay for the storage of the contraceptives, including the spoiled items, for the past 14 months.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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