President Trump is following through on his pre-election promise to withdraw from the World Health Organization. In one of many orders issued following his inauguration, he announced the beginning of the process of terminating the United States’ membership in the United Nations agency that oversees global health issues.
Trump’s dissatisfaction with WHO goes back to the height of the COVID era. He has repeatedly criticized the organization for being too slow in responding to the pandemic and for being “owned and controlled by China.”
“World Health ripped us off,” Trump said during an extended, casual conversation with reporters as he signed executive orders.
Trump’s pledge will take a year to become official. That is the time frame the United States established for any future withdrawal when it joined the global health organization in 1948.
During Trump’s first term, he halted funding for WHO and began the process of withdrawing. But, before the one-year mark was reached, Biden took office and immediately reversed course.
The implications of Monday’s announcement for WHO are significant. They’d lose arguably their most important member — and their largest donor by far. The United States contributed $1.284 billion to WHO in 2022 and 2023, hundreds of millions of dollars more than Germany, the second-largest donor.
Critics of Trump’s call believe that the United States will also suffer consequences. WHO, among other things, monitors global health threats, evaluates new vaccines and medications, coordinates responses to emerging and ongoing health crises, and provides expert support to countries, particularly during health emergencies.
The United States would lose easy access to critical outbreak data and a seat at the table when health standards and disease responses are established.
“This is the most cataclysmic decision,” says Lawrence Gostin, Georgetown University professor of global health law and director of the World Health Organization’s Center on Global Health Law.
“[This is] a severe blow to American national interests and national security. This will leave our agencies, such as the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the NIH [National Institutes of Health], completely blind.”
Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of the Global Health Council, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for global health, stated that withdrawing is “really bad for the U.S. [in terms of] access to data, surveillance, and being at the table negotiating and holding other countries accountable when there is an epidemic or pandemic.”
Speaking to NPR last week about the possibility of withdrawal, she said: “Other countries with a lot of power—China, Russia—other powers that want to shape the WHO, would take [this] opportunity to do so.”
Brett Schaefer, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, believes there are other ways for the Trump administration to lead in global health after leaving WHO.
“There’s hardly a lack of precedent for maybe addressing pandemic issues outside of the WHO,” he told NPR prior to the announcement. “There’s a reason why UNAIDS exists, and there’s a reason why GAVI [The Vaccine Alliance] exists, and there’s a reason why the Global Fund exists — and that’s because the WHO has, in the past, not been seen as either the most effective or the most responsive vehicle for addressing various international health concerns.”