Donald Trump dances at the end of a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, October 27, 2024. Angela Weiss, AFP/Filen

MANILA — The Philippines will be “not so much directly” affected by the United State Department’s recent order to freeze nearly all its assistance and aid packages to foreign countries, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said on Monday.

Balisacan’s comments come days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an internal memo, saying that the Department first needs to review and approve new allocations or extensions of existing aid packages for other countries.

“Not so much directly. In the short term, much of our loans now are with other countries and multilateral institutions,” he said when asked how the new policy under the Trump administration would affect the Philippines.

“For our current infrastructure flagship projects not much, many of those projects are funded by Japan, Korea, ADB (Asian Development Bank) and World Bank,” he said.

The impact of the freeze order on aid from the world’s largest economy to the Philippines “could be more indirect,” the head of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said.

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“The major shareholder of the multilateral institutions is the US. World Bank, ADB, the lending facility, especially for the official development assistance in those institutions is affected,” he said.

“It can also be affected in the medium term,” he said.

Balisacan said he is still “trying to get data” on how much in aid the Philippines is expected to lose because of this policy.

Meantime, the Philippines is also not expecting a direct hit when it comes to the tariffs that US President Donald Trump plans to impose against several countries amid his renewed crackdown on illegal immigrants, the NEDA chief said.

“If there’s higher tariff in the US, [it] will spark retaliation from, by other countries,” he said.

“The most important immediate reply or response that we can make is to intensify our efforts to diversify our economy, diversify our trade and ensure that we continue to be aggressive in bilateral and regional trading arrangements so that we can buffer the economy from these disturbances,” he said.

Most of the Philippines’ exports to the US are services — mostly in the Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) — which are not subject to tariffs, Balisacan said.

“That is not affected by tariffs because tariffs are applied to goods, so in that sense, we are better off [than] many of those countries targeted by the US,” he said.

“The key is to get the local economy strong, more resilient,” he said.

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In 2024, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) obligated $9.27 million in various aid packages for the Philippines for disaster relief items, the management of displacement and emergency shelters, among others.

The amount is around $1 million higher than its 2023 allocation for the Philippines, according to data from USAID.

Malacañang earlier said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) “is closely monitoring reports on the possible freeze of US foreign assistance" and would “work with partners in the US Department of State and the US government to determine how this will affect the Philippines.”