President Donald Trump is pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization for a second time, the White House announced late Monday.
The day-one executive order fulfills Trump’s campaign promise to reject global institutions. Health experts worry it isolates the U.S. with consequences for pandemic and disease response and diplomatic relations worldwide.
The U.S. is and has historically been the largest funder of the global health agency headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. WHO, part of the United Nations, is tasked with preparing for and fighting health emergencies. The U.S. has strongly influenced the agency since its founding after World War II.
Trump criticized WHO for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as his administration faced scrutiny for being slow to respond to the crisis. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, he began the process of pulling out from WHO.
Despite his promise, he failed to do so under U.S. law governing the timeline for withdrawal and funding obligations to the agency. Former President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision after taking office and restored funding to WHO
Trump’s executive order — on the first day of his second term rather than the last year of his first presidency — allows him to actually carry out his decision.
The order said the U.S. was withdrawing “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” It also cited the “unfairly onerous payments” the U.S. has made to support the organization.
During the Biden administration the U.S. continued its role as the largest funder of the agency, which has a budget of $6.8 billion in the current fiscal year. Nearly a fifth of WHO’s budget in 2023 came from the U.S.
The U.S. has been a part of WHO since 1948, the same year the organization launched, and the departure would make the nation the only major power that’s not a member of the 194-country body.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the agency will do everything to cooperate with the incoming Trump administration to continue to strengthen for global health security, Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson, said in an email. The partnership between WHO and the U.S. has “as protected and saved millions of lives in America and around the world,” Jašarević said, citing the director-general.
