After Hosni Mubarak became president of Egypt in 1981, his government maintained a close relationship with the United States.

Over the following decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would become increasingly involved in reforming Egypt’s economy, including its agricultural and banking sectors.

As soon as the 1980s, USAID funded an Agricultural Mechanization Project that helped finance the purchase of American farming equipment.

As economist Timothy Mitchell later noted however, the program mostly benefited wealthier landowners who could afford the equipment, while reducing demand for agricultural labor. Yet agriculture was only one part of a much broader effort to reshape Egypt’s economy.

Following Egypt’s 1991 agreements with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, USAID continued to aid the country’s transition toward a market-based economy.

One of the most prominent organizations involved in promoting these reforms was the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (ECES). Established in 1992, the nonprofit research institute described among its objectives the promotion of “economic development in Egypt by assisting policy makers in developing appropriate policy reforms based on international experience.”

Formed through a $10 million endowment from USAID, ECES was developed by Mubarak’s son Gamal along with lawyer M. Taher Helmy. The center initially focused on promoting market reforms through policy papers, conferences, and books.

In 2000, $14.4 million was provided to ECES through USAID’s Commodity Import Program, with the goal of ensuring a “steady flow of resources to sustain the center’s operations.”

Before long, some of the policies promoted in these U.S.-funded papers had made their way into Egyptian government policy, with Gamal echoing their language by calling for “the perfect application of free-market principles.”

The relationship between ECES and the Egyptian government would only continue to grow. The center helped suggest and draft economic policies, while several of its members—including Mohamed Mansour, Ahmed El-Maghrabi, and Rachid Mohamed Rachid—would later serve as ministers under Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif.

USAID was also helping finance Egypt’s Financial Sector Reform Program, launched in 2004 to restructure state-owned banks and encourage privatization.

A March 2006 U.S. Embassy cable revealed that USAID had tied $150 million in assistance to the privatization of the Bank of Alexandria. The cable also identified Citibank as an adviser to the bank’s privatization.

Nicknamed the “businessmen cabinet,” Nazif’s government soon received praise from American officials. U.S. Treasury Under Secretary John B. Taylor welcomed Egypt’s “market-oriented reforms,” while Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes praised Nazif for his leadership on economic reform.

Yet even as American officials privately warned about the potential for “vertical corruption,” Egypt’s privatization program continued to accelerate. In 2005 and 2006 alone, nearly sixty deals generated approximately $2.6 billion in revenue.

While Washington praised Egypt’s economic transformation, the consequences of these reforms were also being felt by ordinary Egyptians.

One significant piece of legislation was Law 96, established in 1992. The law allowed landowners to significantly raise rents or evict families who had farmed the same land for generations following a five-year transition period, after which existing leases were terminated and the land returned to its owners.

USAID, meanwhile, funded research into Law 96’s implementation through Egypt’s Agricultural Policy Reform Program and its Reform Design and Implementation Unit. By removing rent ceilings and allowing landlords to evict tenants, the law ultimately affected hundreds of thousands of Egyptian farmers.

Estimates of the displacement varied. While a USAID-funded study estimated that around 50,000 families had been forced to abandon their land, independent research placed the number of farmers who lost all of their rented land between 137,000 and 240,000—along with their families.

As protests against Law 96 began to spread in 1997, Human Rights Watch reported that the independent Land Center for Human Rights had documented thirteen people killed and more than sixty injured amid the unrest, while hundreds of tenant farmers and their supporters had been detained.

Even with these disastrous results, USAID defended the reform, describing Law 96 in a 1999 policy document as establishing “a more normal and balanced relationship between tenants and owners.”

USAID’s involvement in Egypt’s economic reforms extended well beyond Law 96. Beginning in 1992, the agency’s Cash Transfer Program began providing what would eventually amount to around $1.8 billion to the Egyptian government for economic reforms—with USAID providing funds “as it completes specific activities.”

Crucially, these activities included the privatization of state-owned companies, with USAID able to withhold funding or redirect it elsewhere if the Egyptian government failed to meet the agreed-upon requirements.

However, a 1996 congressional report revealed that USAID had distributed $380 million in economic assistance to Egypt despite failing to verify that certain reforms had been implemented. In two instances, the agency approved payments of $65 million and $75 million even after Egypt’s central bank refused to provide the required financial information.

The report also revealed that auditors had questioned over $1 million in spending by a USAID-funded small business loan program in Cairo. Among the expenditures were $64,583 in bonuses divided among senior bank officials, over $413,000 along with money spent on flowers, car curtains, and newspaper obituaries.

Even as protests spread across Egypt, Mubarak’s economic record continued to receive praise abroad. During a February 2011 interview, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended Mubarak by pointing to Egypt’s economic growth, while arguing that the country’s economy had “something like doubled in the last decade.”

Even USAID itself had acknowledged the limitations. In a retrospective of the Bill Clinton administration, the agency noted that despite economic growth, Egypt had been “less successful in reducing poverty.”

By 2011, ECES’s new executive director Magda Kandil offered a vastly different assessment of the privatization program once advocated by the center’s founders.

“It became a crony capitalism.”

Despite Mubarak’s overthrow, American involvement in Egypt’s economy would continue.

In June 2011, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) traveled to Cairo alongside business executives representing General Electric, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Dow, Marriott International, and ExxonMobil. During the visit, Kerry promoted a new “enterprise fund” that would provide “several hundreds of millions of dollars” to Egyptian small businesses.

Mubarak may have been gone after the January 25 Revolution, but one thing remained clear: American involvement in Egypt’s economy was not.