Trump Announces Us Withdrawal From The World Health Organization

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday night withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

The move, which was widely anticipated, will see the U.S. leave the global health body within a year from the official notification to the United Nations and the WHO, which Trump tasked newly confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to do.

Congress doesn’t need to agree, but the U.S. must continue paying its dues, according to the 1948 U.S. resolution accepting WHO membership.

However, Trump directed Rubio and the director of the Office of Management and Budget to “pause the future transfer of any United States Government funds, support, or resources to the WHO” with “practicable speed,” in a move reminiscent of the first withdrawal attempt in 2020.

Trump also directed the two officials to “recall and reassign” U.S. government personnel or contractors working with the WHO and find “credible and transparent” U.S. and international partners to replace the “necessary activities previously undertaken by the WHO.”

The executive order also demands the secretary of State to cease negotiations on the pandemic agreement that WHO member countries have been negotiating for years, with a deadline to conclude set for May.

The executive order also notes that actions taken to implement amendments to the International Health Regulations — a set of technical rules governing responses to outbreaks, among other issues — which countries agreed to last year, “will have no binding force on the United States.”

Why it matters: The withdrawal will generate a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for the WHO’s core budget.

The U.S. provides about a quarter of that budget as a mandatory membership fee but often gives more — with the figure ranging from $163 million to $816 million in recent years, according to health policy think tank KFF.

Trump’s order noted that the “WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”

It cited as an example China, which, with a population many folds bigger than the U.S., contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO. Countries’ membership fees to the WHO are based mainly on the gross domestic product.

The loss could hinder the WHO’s ability to swiftly and effectively respond to infectious disease outbreaks and other emergencies around the world, among others.

In exchange, the U.S. is expected to lose access to the global network that sets the flu vaccine’s composition every year.

It will also weaken the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ability to surveil and contain health threats abroad, according to global health experts.

“There are places where we just can't send CDC epidemiologists, they wouldn't be safe,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, who headed the agency for eight years under the Obama administration.

And American drugmakers could lose the WHO’s help in selling their products worldwide since the WHO system endorsing drugs, vaccines and medical devices for global use that many developing countries rely on could be impaired by the loss of U.S. funding.

Background: This is Trump’s second attempt to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO.

In July 2020, he sent a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus notifying him of the U.S. intention to withdraw within a year. Trump accused the WHO at the time of helping China mislead the world about the spread of Covid-19.

But Trump was defeated in that year’s election, and when President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he reversed Trump’s decision.

This time, Trump will still be in office when the withdrawal would go into effect.

But unlike 2020, the WHO could offset some of the financial losses caused by America’s withdrawal.

Last year, it launched an investment round seeking some $7 billion “to mobilize predictable and flexible resources from a broader base of donors” for the WHO’s core work between 2025 and 2028. As of late last year, the WHO said it had received commitments for at least half that amount.