Rubio Oversees Foreign Aid Freeze and Meets with Asian Diplomats on Day 1

Secretary of State Marco Rubio entered the State Department on Tuesday for the first time in his new jobTaking the reins of the main agency leading US foreign policy at a time of violent global crisis and as other nations begin to engage with President Trump.

After greeting employees in a ceremonial meeting, Mr. Rubio went to a meeting with his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia to discuss issues in the Indo-Pacific region, an area that , in their eyes, China is trying to dominate.

Mr. Rubio was sworn in as secretary of state at 9:30 a.m. on a frigid Tuesday morning by Vice President JD Vance. He arrived at the entrance of the State Department at 1 pm to applause, as hundreds of employees strained to see him and his wife, Jeanette Rubio, and their four children. Lisa Kenna, a career diplomat who serves as Mr. Rubio’s executive secretary, as she did for Mike Pompeo in the first Trump administration, introduced the new secretary.

Mr. Rubio thanked the many diplomats working overseas, then said the purpose of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy: “This mission is to make sure that our foreign policy is focused on one thing, and that is to advance of our national interests,” he said.

“There will be changes, but the changes are not meant to be destructive, they are not meant to be punitive,” he added.

He said that “things are moving faster than ever” in the world, and that the department had to be quick to act and react.

The meeting between top diplomats from the four nations, who form a non-military coalition known as the Quad, had been scheduled before the transition from the Biden to Trump administrations on Monday. Mr. Rubio was expected to have bilateral meetings with each of the foreign ministers after the first Quad talks.

Mr. Rubio was the first cabinet secretary named by Mr. Trump to be confirmed. He had been in the Senate representing Florida since 2011 and served on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. It was unanimously approved by the Senate on Monday night.

Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has been especially outspoken about China and about the need for the United States to confront the Chinese Communist Party on a wide range of issues.

Some of Mr. Trump’s executive orders are already affecting operations at the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an order to stop any disbursement of foreign aid funds and designation of new funds pending a 90-day review under guidelines to be issued by the Secretary of State.

Nongovernmental groups and contractors who used the money to work on programs are scrambling to figure out what to do, and many programs in impoverished, war- or disaster-stricken parts of the world could end suddenly, an official said. of the United States.

The executive order said the 90-day evaluation will analyze “programmatic efficiencies and consistency with US foreign policy.”

“The US foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” he said. “They serve to destabilize world peace, promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations within and between countries.”