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Fact check: What countries received the most foreign aid from the Biden administration in 2024?
Executive Summary
President Biden’s largest single 2024 foreign-aid action was a Congressional supplemental package that funneled the bulk of funds to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo‑Pacific/Taiwan, with most outlets reporting roughly $60–61 billion for Ukraine, about $26 billion for Israel (with variant reporting), and roughly $8 billion for the Indo‑Pacific/Taiwan [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. The OECD’s 2024 donor tallies published in 2025 show the United States as the largest overall donor ($63.3 billion) but do not provide a simple one‑to‑one list of which recipient countries received the most U.S. aid in calendar‑year accounting [6] [7] [8].
1. What the news outlets claimed — big headline numbers and a clear winner
News coverage in April 2024 framed a single legislative action as the defining U.S. foreign‑aid event of the year: coverage consistently reported a roughly $95–95.3 billion supplemental package and identified Ukraine as the largest recipient (about $60–61 billion), followed by Israel (commonly reported as around $26 billion, though reporting varies), and the Indo‑Pacific/Taiwan region (around $8 billion) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. These accounts present a clear allocation picture tied directly to the April 2024 law, and outlets emphasized rapid delivery of weapons and humanitarian aid following the enactment [3]. The coverage treated the supplemental package as the principal mechanism through which the Biden administration directed major resources overseas that year [2] [4].
2. OECD totals complicate the simple narrative — donor versus recipient accounting
The Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development’s preliminary 2024 figures, reported in April 2025, show the U.S. as the largest donor in 2024 at $63.3 billion, but OECD reporting focuses on Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows and aggregate donor rankings rather than the single supplemental package’s recipients [6] [7] [8]. ODA definitions differ from emergency military or supplemental security assistance, and OECD data showed an overall drop in ODA in 2024, largely tied to lower multilateral support and changing flows to Ukraine; the OECD publications do not map the April legislative allocations directly onto recipient‑country totals in a way that makes “most‑aided recipient” straightforward to determine from those tables alone [6] [8].
3. Where reporting diverges — numbers, labels and what's included
Details differ across outlets: major U.S. press reported $60.8–61 billion for Ukraine and $26–26.3 billion for Israel and humanitarian relief, while some international outlets reported $61 billion for Ukraine and $17 billion for Israel in their summaries of the same legislation [1] [2] [3] [5]. These discrepancies reflect divergent ways of grouping funds — military vs humanitarian, direct bilateral transfers vs regionally allocated support — and possibly different drafts or rollups of the bill’s titles, not necessarily substantive contradiction about overall U.S. intent. Each source emphasized different components, with some noting additional political context such as domestic provisions or implications for other policy areas [2].
4. Caveats: timing, accounting rules and what “received” means
Saying a country “received” the most aid in 2024 depends on timing and accounting rules: Congressional authorization and presidential signing create legal authority, but actual disbursement and OECD ODA recording can follow different fiscal calendars and accounting categories. The April supplemental created authorization for transfers concentrated on Ukraine, Israel and the Indo‑Pacific, but OECD ODA totals capture a broader set of development and humanitarian flows and reported the U.S. as the single largest donor overall at $63.3 billion [1] [6]. Therefore, both statements — that the supplemental allocated the most money to Ukraine, and that the U.S. led global donors in 2024 overall — are true under different accounting lenses [3] [7].
5. The balanced takeaway — who got the most, and what reporters left out
The most defensible answer is that Ukraine was the single largest designated recipient of the April 2024 U.S. supplemental package, followed by Israel and then the Indo‑Pacific/Taiwan allocation, as reflected across major reporting [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. At the same time, OECD donor totals show the United States as the top overall donor in 2024 ($63.3 billion) but do not produce a simple ranked list of recipient countries for the year, creating potential confusion if one conflates legislative authorizations with recorded ODA disbursements [6] [8]. Readers should note that different sources aggregate military, humanitarian and development aid differently, producing the observed variations in headline numbers [2] [5].