After Elon Musk-led DOGE scrapped the $21 million funding to the Election Commission of India last week, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed that the country doesn’t need this much money as it is one of the “highest taxing countries in the world”.

As Trump was signing executive orders at Mar-a-Lago, he questioned the reason behind allocating millions of dollars to EC’s ‘voter turnout’, saying, “Why are we giving $21 million to India? They have a lot more money.” He further added that India has such high tariffs that US can hardly get in here. Trump further mentioned that he had a “lot of respect” for India and PM Modi but questioned the amount of funding for voter turnout.

DOGE had on February 16 announced scrapping of various initiatives that were funded by the US taxpayers’ money, including the $21 million funding for voter turnout in India. DOGE, led by Elon Musk, posted the list of cancelled initiatives on X and along side shared a note that said that taxpayers’ dollars which were going to be spent on these items, have now been cancelled.

Funding to many other initiatives were also cancelled. These included the $29 million for strengthening political landscape in Bangladesh, $10 million for ‘Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision’, $9.7 million for UC Berkeley to develop ‘a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills’, $22 million for ‘inclusive and participatory political process’ in Moldova, and $20 million for ‘fiscal federalism’ in Nepal among many other initiatives.

After DOGE’s announcement, political leaders in India started questioning the interference of foreign leaders in India’s electoral process. BJP’s Amit Malviya took to X and raised concerns about the intent behind the funding. “$21M for voter turnout? This definitely is external interference in India’s electoral process. Who gains from this? Not the ruling party for sure!” he wrote in his post.