Author(s) :

Jonathan Moon.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

In March of 2025, President Trump signed the executive order “Continuing the reduction of federal bureaucracy,” which shut down various agencies that the administration considered to be wasteful, including the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Critics were quick to condemn USAGM’s defunding, arguing that abandoning such an outlet would result in a significant decline of US soft power. However, such critiques have not analyzed the impacts of USAGM’s defunding on US soft power through a replicable methodology, failing to establish what soft power is, how it is measured, and situate USAGM’s defunding within such contexts. This study seeks to fill this gap, answering the question of how USAGM’s defunding will impact US soft power in a way that more thoroughly explores the trajectory of US soft power to this point and USAGM’s impact on it. Conducting a comparative review of global soft power indices and an analysis of website traffic data, this paper ultimately concludes that, while US soft power is in decline, USAGM’s defunding is not a significant driver of this trend. These results imply the existence of a cyclical decline in US soft power caused by factors other than USAGM’s defunding, as well as a long term need to shift soft power projection away from traditional media outlets.