On Monday night, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders upon his return to the White House, including a formal decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Trump slammed the global health agency, accusing it of having “ripped off” the U.S.
As the WHO’s largest financial supporter, the U.S. plays a significant role in its operations, contributing funds and collaborating through agencies like the CDC and NIH on initiatives such as cancer prevention and global health security.
Trump’s latest executive order aims to complete the withdrawal he initiated during his previous presidency.
In 2020, Trump announced the U.S.’s departure from the WHO, which requires a one-year notice period. However, before the withdrawal could take effect, President Joe Biden reversed the decision after taking office.
This time, the yearlong withdrawal process is expected to proceed without interruption, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of law and global health at George Washington University and Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights.
While the formal withdrawal process is underway, Trump is likely to disengage from the WHO immediately. Without bipartisan Congressional support to overturn the order—an unlikely scenario—the WHO stands to lose its largest funder by 2026.
“And these are things that really matter to America, like HIV, AIDS, like Polio eradication and responding to health emergencies,” Gostin told ABC News. “Really in my mind this is shooting yourself in the foot and making America decidedly less safe and less secure.”
Trump, asked by a reporter Monday night about his experience leading the country during the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of the WHO to mount a global response to pandemics, said the withdrawal was about “being ripped off.”
“Everybody rips off the United States and that’s it — it’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said.
The text of the executive order describes an “unfair” demand of “onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”
“China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO,” the executive order said.
Gostin confirmed that China pays far less to the WHO. “But the fact that China should pay more doesn’t mean we should pay less. This isn’t leverage against China. This is gutting the World Health Organization,” Gostin said.
The WHO has an unmatched global reach, Gostin said, offering the U.S. vital insight into the global health system and allowing collaborations for scientific research—and though he acknowledged some reforms are necessary, he said that leaving the organization was “a cataclysmic presidential decision” that would be a “grievous wound to world health, but a still deeper wound to the US.”
(ABC News)
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